February 13, 2010

Another Truther in Texas

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Yesterday I blogged about the political implosion of Debra Medina, the Tea Partier whose Texas gubernatorial campaign came to a crashing halt when she was outed as a 9/11 truther by Glenn Beck (even he has his limits, apparently). Maybe there’s something in the water in Texas, because a few hours ago, hair-care baron Farouk Shami, one of two major Democratic candidates, joined Medina in lala-land. Here’s what he told a Dallas TV station when asked whether he believed 9/11 was an inside job:

“I’m not sure. I am not going to really judge or answer about something I’m not really sure about. But the rumors are there that there was a conspiracy. True or not? It’s hard to believe, you know, what happened. It’s really hard to comprehend what happened. Maybe. I’m not sure.

Does this make the Truther conspiracy bi-partisan? For more Texas Tea Party blogging, check out Kevin’s take on Debra Medina.

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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