August 13, 2012

Gen. Wesley Clark, Todd Palin, and Nick Lachey Blow Things Up For America

Blue Steel.Courtesy of NBC Universal

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Remember that night you drank too much Drambuie and then had a dream in which Wesley Clark, Picabo Street, Todd Palin, Superman, a WWE Diva Champion, and Nick Lachey were all shooting bazookas and other loud weaponry at inanimate objects in the desert?

Well, mega-producers Dick Wolf and Mark Burnett read your mind, stole your idea, and made a summer reality show out of it for NBC.

Stars Earn Stripes (premiering Monday at 8 p.m. EDT—with a two hour season opener) pairs each C-list celeb with a military or law enforcement tough guy. Together, they simulate wartime scenarios, all of which look like deleted scenes from Joel Schumacher movies. Every time Dean Cain or Todd Palin make something go boom, they raise money for their partner’s charity.

All of this is conducted under the watchful eyes of hosts Samantha Harris and ex-Army general/ex-presidential candidate/ex-non-reality-show-personality Wesley Clark (just for a frame of reference, the guy used to save the lives of Kosovars).

Yes, the show means well. Nick Lachey and co. gush endlessly about how lionhearted our men and women in uniform are. The episodes are set to music that somehow manages to sound even more glowingly patriotic than the score to Air Force One. Things detonate violently.

It’s also one of the most patronizing things to which you could ever subject yourself. But if watching the one-time 98 Degrees frontman fall out of a helicopter in the name of charity and freedom sounds appealing to you, then I suppose it sounds appealing to you.

Here’s a TV spot, in case you need any more convincing one way or the other:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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