November 6, 2007

Livin’ It Up in the Hotel Islamofascism?

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The Eagles have always annoyed me (“Hotel California” ranking as the number one depressing song ever to be played at parties), but I can’t let a right-wing critique of the boring 70s band go without a fight.

Warner Todd Huston this week dissed The Eagles’ new album, Long Road Out of Eden, in his blog on the website NewsBusters: Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias for “attacking the integrity” of the United States and forgetting to mention the “Islamofascists trying to blow us all up” in their lyrics. Sure, it’s important to be cognizant of terrorist activity, but what lyrics could possibly rhyme with the word “islamofascism?”

First of all, since when do we expect concise political commentary from The Eagles? Personally, the band’s songs are more likely to conjure up yawns from me than activism. Second of all, why is Huston wasting almost 2,000 words on an essay dissing a laid-back, folk-rock-pop band that hasn’t released a studio album in 28 years? Surely there are other bands, artists, and organizations out there with much more influence and a bigger following who are much more worthy of some conservative backlash.

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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.

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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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