John McCain, All-Around Good Guy

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If John McCain does something hypocritical in a forest, does anyone notice?

As everyone knows, John McCain is just a great guy. So great, apparently, that he can criticize negative ads one moment, then turn around and issue his own attack ads the next, and no one will report it. According to a biting Media Matters piece:

Numerous print media outlets reported on Sen. John McCain’s assertion following the Iowa caucuses that “[t]he lesson of this election in Iowa is that … negative campaigns don’t work.” But none of those articles noted that McCain has run negative TV and Web ads against Mitt Romney.

Numerous attack ads, indeed. McCain just released another one today, which says, in part: “Mitt Romney, leading? He’d rather call lawyers.”

The main-stream media, tell the full story? They’d rather just keep loving John McCain. Let’s hope they at least report the “Let’s stay in Iraq for 100 years” comment.

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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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