April 2, 2010

Bill O’Reilly Defends Al Franken?

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Yes, you read that right. Bill O’Reilly, the bloviating face of Fox News, actually came to the (somewhat) defense of Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) the other night on his wildly popular show. O’Reilly was speaking with Jason Mattera, editor of Human Rights, about the latter’s recent ambush of Franken (a classic O’Reilly tactic, of course) in an airport and interrogating him on the recently passed health care bill, without ever letting a dismayed Franken actually respond. Shockingly, O’Reilly scolded Mattera, who, as evidence of his intellectual rigor, previously claimed the left’s notion of freedom consists of “smoking cocaine,” for the Franken stunt: “The mistake you made,” O’Reilly intoned, “was you were disrespectful for him—to him, when you called him ‘Sen. Smalley,’ and you gave him a reason to blow you off.”

Here’s the video of the exchange, courtesy of Talking Points Memo:

OK, so O’Reilly was just giving Mattera some helpful hints, in father-like way, on how best to be a pesky right-wing journalist. Still, maybe Bill’s warming to that loveable senator from Minnesota after all.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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