June 29, 2007

Celebrex May Lead to Death, or Just Tripping Out

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This may be the weirdest commercial I’ve ever seen. I just saw it for the first time last night during Olbermann, and I was dumbfounded. It’s apparently a spot for Celebrex, and I had to look it up afterwards to find out that it’s a pain reliever, because I was so hypnotized by the visual effects I had no idea what was going on. First, there’s the weirdly creepy “all the lines turn out to be text” effect, which you don’t notice right away. It’s very cool technically, and quite beautiful, but kind of has “Big Brother/Matrix” overtones, like, “everything in the world is made of fine print!” Then, out of nowhere, the voice-over gal says something like, “Celebrex may lead to heart attack, which can lead to death.” Death? What?! That’s bad, right? Is that in the fine print somewhere along the side of the coffee cup? But, thankfully, there’s a lovely ambient acoustic guitar soundtrack—reminiscent of, I dunno, Air’s “Cherry Blossom Girl” (link NSFW)—that lulls you back into a state of tripped-out bliss. Look at all the bubbles.. they’re made of words! So pretty! And it goes on… and on… and on… for two and a half minutes. Did I dream this, after some bad salmon? No, it’s on YouTube:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

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.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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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