Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC Ads Get “Cornographic”

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Last we heard from Colbert Super PAC, the satirist Stephen Colbert’s political action committee, it had nearly created a massive loophole in the nation’s laws regulating money in politics. (In the end, the nation’s top campaign finance cop ruled favorably for Colbert and pro-regulation groups.)

Now, with the Republican presidential candidates descending on Ames, Iowa, for that town’s straw poll this weekend, Colbert Super PAC is at it again with a pair of campaign ads that are hilarious parodies of the typical pre-election spot. With Colbert as narrator, his PAC bashes outside political groups urging Iowans to write in Texas Gov. Rick Perry for the Ames Straw Poll, then tells viewers to write in “Rick Parry”—with an “a”—instead. “We want you to vote for Rick Parry, too—but not their Rick Perry, our Rick Parry,” Colbert intones.

Oh, and there’s some “cornography” in Colbert PAC’s ad. Really. Watch for yourself:

First ad:

And the second ad:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

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.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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