Fame and Glory are Mine: I am Finally on the Daily Show

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My dream has finally come true: I’ve appeared on the Daily Show! Sadly, I missed this when it flashed on the screen last night, but apparently one of my blog posts was used as an on-screen example in John Oliver’s bit about the rise of incivility in the media.

What’s double-plus-great about this is that they took it completely out of context! Not only is that post over a year old, but I’m calling my own side idiots. See, I’m a Democrat. It’s true that the post itself asked, “What in God’s name are the morons who pass for leaders of the Democratic Party thinking?” And I guess that wasn’t very civil. But it was my own peeps I was calling out. Aren’t we even allowed to use colorful language within the family anymore?

Anyway, that’s irony #1. Irony #2 is that I’m pretty sure I’ve called Republicans much, much worse on multiple occasions. So why not use one of those posts?

And irony #3? The whole bit was an interview with Froma Harrop, who’s apparently in charge of a media initiative to restore civility but nonetheless said last year that tea party leaders have engaged in economic terrorism for holding the debt limit hostage. Pretty uncivil! Well, it turns out that I know Froma. Sort of. We sat next to each other for a couple of hours last June and shared the experience of not winning a Loeb award in the same category. She seemed very nice.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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