June 19, 2009

McCain Shows Palin No Twitter Love

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Last fall, John McCain hailed Sarah Palin as “experienced” and “talented.” He declared, “she knows how to lead,” and he predicted that “she’s really going to have a remarkable impact on the American people.” Nowadays, McCain doesn’t follow her on Twitter.

Palin, as of Friday morning, had 34,558 followers of her feed on Twitter. The Arizona senator is not among them.

Almost all of Palin’s tweets concern Alaskan matters. “Loved all the hard hats,” Gov. Palin tweeted on Wednesday after attending the kickoff of a prison construction project in Alaska. She has not posted one Twitter message on the Iranian elections. But she did urge Alaskans “to celebrate American Flag Day.”

McCain, who has 800,000 followers on Twitter, follows only 48 people. Over a third are journalists, including Jake Tapper of ABC News, David Gregory of Meet the Press, Sean Hannity, and Ana Marie Cox. (An old joke in Washington is that McCain’s base is the DC press corps.) McCain keeps track of his wife, his (shall-we-say) feisty daughter Meghan, and son John McCain IV, as well as several of his aides.

On Twitter, McCain pays little attention to other Republicans. He subscribes to the Twitter feeds of the Senate Republicans and the GOP’s Senate campaign committee. But he only follows three fellow politicians, including a Democrat: Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. The other two pols he’s interested in are Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Chris Christie, who’s running for governor in New Jersey.

In the Twittersphere, McCain just doesn’t seem to care about his fellow Republican senators. Not even Twitter-crazy Chuck Grassley. He is more attuned to the tweets of journalists. And even though McCain once cited Palin as a future leader of the United States, he shows  her no Twitter love. (McCain has tweeted that he was glad talk show host David Letterman apologized to Palin for making a crude joke involving her daughter.)

Palin, though, is keeping an eye on McCain. On Twitter, she follows 41 people, and McCain is one of them. (When she first started on Twitter in April, Palin was not monitoring McCain, but she added him after a media report pointed out that she had left her onetime running-mate off her Twitter list.) Other tweeters of interest to Palin include House minority whip Eric Cantor, California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger, and South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint. She tracks Republicans she could face in the 2012 primaries, should she run for president: Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich, and Pawlenty. Also on her list: Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly.. No Katie Couric or David Letterman.

You can follow David Corn via Twitter by clicking here.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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