November 6, 2007

Prince Declares Images of Prince Off-Limits

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Lawyers for Prince have ordered several of the superstar’s biggest fan sites to remove any image that bears his likeness prompting fans to form a group to fight the demands. Three websites: housequake.com, princefams.com and prince.org have come together to form ‘Prince Fans United’ in response to the situation, which even sees demands to remove images of fans own tattoos. – NME

Bruce Springsteen has instructed his legal team to track down all web sites which feature his ass and have them eliminated, the Riff has learned. The New Jersey star’s rear, clad in worn denim, bulged proudly on the cover of the 1984 album Born in the U.S.A., and lawyers believe any internet representation of the cheeks’ signature curves could constitute an income loss, as fans ogle the booty for free instead of purchasing the album. The Boss has enlisted a squadron of buttock investigators to identify his own personal posterior amongst what experts say must be “as many as 30” other backsides pictured on the internet. No bloggers were available for a rebuttal.

Chicago rappers Cool Kids have demanded all pictures of cool kids be removed from all websites, despite the fact that the members of the band themselves are not kids, and only cool in a kind of ironic sense. “We saw some pictures of like a couple actual cool kids on the news, and we had the feeling maybe the news guys were making fun of us, since that’s the name of our band,” said Cool Kid Mikey Rocks, wearing a fluorescent pink baseball cap. When asked if they were trying to be funny or ironic or artsy with their request, he replied, “I don’t even know any more,” while making air quotes with his fingers.

In a related story, obscure 80s combo The The have demanded all instances of the article which they doubled to form the name of their band be excised from the internet, starting at the end of the sentence you are reading on the Riff right now. “There’s tons of other determiners around for people to use that don’t interfere with our clients’ ability to control their own image,” said a spokesperson, “like ‘a,’ or even ‘an,’ and in many circumstances, ‘da.'” Da spokesperson then ran out of da room, so nobody could take his picture.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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