November 23, 2020

Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving Special Returns to Air After a Very, Very Close Call

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“Now that’s good news,” a co-worker sighed in relief after a colleague shared with us a breaking news headline: “Charlie Brown Specials to Air on TV, After All, in PBS Deal.” Count yourself lucky if you didn’t know that Charlie, Linus, and Lucy were temporarily off of network TV. They’re back to their historic PBS home after Apple TV+ had gained exclusive rights. An outcry grew with petitions gathering more than 263,000 signatures, and Apple backed down. PBS scored the victory, but Apple didn’t lose either. The platforms teamed up to air the specials in partnership “ad-free!” my co-worker boasted.

The broadcast aired yesterday on PBS and streams for free this week on Apple TV+. If you don’t know Charlie Brown or Peanuts, start with the piano soundtrack. A key theme is anti-commercialism, or striking a better balance of consumption and the meanings found beyond products and services. It’s echoed elsewhere in surprising ways during the pandemic, as more big-box retailers revert to staying closed around Thanksgiving Day for safety rather than fueling elbow-jabbing crowds.

The Black Fridayification of Thanksgiving was summed up in a 2015 Mother Jones article that rings ever truer, and a 2017 academic essay by Williams College student Will Abersek, with footnotes and all, that doesn’t fail to mention at the end, “I have written this essay in the style of David Foster Wallace.” Not sure that helps, Will, but your essay is remarkably good. And support for a less-commercial future of Thanksgiving, after the pandemic, is growing.

Share thoughts on Thanksgiving and opinionated takes on Charlie Brown at recharge@motherjones.com, and if you need a boost, the daily blog is here for you.

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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?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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