January 28, 2013

Goodbye Sarah, We’ll Miss You. Sort of.

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Paul Waldman pens a bittersweet farewell to Sarah Palin, now that she’ll no longer be appearing on Fox News:

There are few political figures remotely as interesting as Palin, with her unmatched combination of crazy ideas, absolute confidence despite a level of understanding of public affairs that would embarrass an average seventh-grader, and a nearly inexplicable white-hot charisma.

….There really should be a long German word referring to the feeling liberals got whenever Palin said something even more idiotic and offensive than she had before, that combination of shock, disgust, and satisfaction that comes from getting yet more evidence that one of the other side’s leading figures is such an epic nincompoop. Every time, you could almost hear a thousand conservatives plant their faces in their hands.

Palin’s theme was always resentment, the acid bile of the culture war. If you ever felt that you were looked down on by Northeastern elitists, or people with too much education, or condescended to by people who think small towns are rather boring and not the only soil from which morality and patriotism can grow, or laughed at by people who find The Purpose-Driven Life to be a less than profound theological text, Sarah Palin spoke for you. She luxuriated in her grievances—against the establishment, against the media, against everyone from the mightiest politician to the lowliest teenager who happened to knock up her daughter (as Levi Johnston put it at one point, “It’s almost funny, that she’s like, 46 years old, and she’s battling a 19-year-old, and I’m winning”). Resentment was her instrument, her tool, her vehicle and her purpose.

Sarah Palin is to modern Republicans what Richard Nixon was to Republicans of the 60s. The resentment that Nixon tapped so brilliantly reached its peak under Ronald Reagan and then degenerated steadily over time. The downward path led through Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Roger Ailes, and freedom fries, finally reaching its debased apotheosis in Sarah Palin and the tea party. With her gone, it might be a sign that the long, twilight success of Nixonland as a political strategy is finally starting to fade. I think Rick Perlstein should write a few thousand well-chosen words on the subject.

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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.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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