{"id":3930,"date":"2014-09-30T12:37:13","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T18:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=3930"},"modified":"2014-10-01T10:58:49","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T16:58:49","slug":"begging-politicians-ring-alarm-bell-one-too-many-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/09\/begging-politicians-ring-alarm-bell-one-too-many-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Begging politicians ring alarm bell one too many times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bs\"<\/a>I don’t want to pick on the Democrats because I know from my years in the newspaper biz that the Republicans are just as bad, but for some reason I am only on the Democrats’ email list this election cycle.<\/p>\n

These past few weeks I have deleted many dozens of emails from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in addition to “personal” emails from Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, James Carville, John Walsh, John Lewis and others.<\/p>\n

I looked in my email Trash file today and was struck by the great string of alarming subject lines, which included these dandies:\u00a0\u201cKiss any hope goodbye,\u201d \u201cMidnight tonight,\u201d \u201cBegging (12HR),\u201d \u201cShocking setback,\u201d \u201cThis could be the end,\u201d \u201cTerrifying,\u201d \u201cBegging, begging,\u201d and \u201c12:01 will be too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

People, you need to know that alarmism only works once in a great while. Ten times a day for weeks on end tends to take the edge off those Nightmare on Elm Street headlines.<\/p>\n

And then the emails themselves, with their whining, cajoling, pathetic tones! I think they hoped to invoke tears of pity \u2014 followed by a rash of check-writing \u2014 but my inclination increasingly has been to laugh out loud at these lachrymose pleadings. Here are some of their opening lines or opening paragraphs:<\/p>\n

“We don\u2019t mean to nag, but President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi have all asked for your help\u2026 and we\u2019re still lagging dangerously behind.”<\/p>\n

“Our FEC deadline is at midnight tonight. Out on the campaign trail, we\u2019re battling through Karl Rove\u2019s $5.5 million attack spree, and we need your help to push back.”<\/p>\n

“When we say we\u2019re begging, we\u2019re REALLY begging.”<\/p>\n

“We have never seen it this bad.”<\/p>\n

“Seriously, we’ve tried everything. If we had the time, maybe we could go back to the drawing board.”

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

“We now have the opportunity to reopen the TRIPLE-MATCH for our final push towards the most critical deadline of the election \u2014 in 24 hours.”<\/p>\n

“I’m sorry to email you first thing on a Monday morning. But I\u2019m pleading with you because, as it stands right now, we will fall short of our goal.”<\/p>\n

Here’s the opening of an email supposedly written by James Carville:<\/p>\n

“We’re out of people to email you. In the last week, you should have received an email from:\u00a0President Obama,\u00a0Vice President Biden,\u00a0Hillary Clinton,\u00a0Nancy Pelosi.\u00a0We\u2019re not making this stuff up. Control of Congress is at stake.”<\/p>\n

And here are a few “from” Pelosi:<\/p>\n

“Hillary Clinton asked for your help this week. President Obama asked for your help this week. So far, more than 8O,OOO of our best supporters have responded to their calls-to-action. But sadly, it doesn’t look like you’re on that list.”<\/p>\n

“Ok, I\u2019m emailing you again, because I have to. I\u2019m pleading with you again, because I have to.”<\/p>\n

“OK, we\u2019ve asked, we\u2019ve begged, we\u2019ve pleaded.”<\/p>\n

“Honestly, I wasn\u2019t planning on sending you an email this early in the morning. But then I saw our fundraising numbers\u2026”<\/p>\n

Let me respond:<\/p>\n

“Barack, Joe, Nancy, et al., I feel your pain, but at the moment I’m having troubles of my own. Hell, my website was down all day yesterday.<\/p>\n

“Anyway, I’m pleading, begging, throwing myself at your feet: please send me some dough, immediately, before midnight or even before 6 p.m., because the future of independent journalism in the Milky Way Galaxy may be at stake. I don’t even have time to check and see whether I should have capitalized “galaxy.” That’s how serious this is! Thanks.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t want to pick on the Democrats because I know from my years in the newspaper biz that the Republicans are just as bad, but for some reason I am only on the Democrats’ email list this election cycle. These past few weeks I have deleted many dozens of emails from the Democratic Congressional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[212,1426,1428,1429,1430,552,1427],"class_list":["post-3930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-barack-obama","tag-dccc","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-james-carville","tag-john-lewis","tag-john-walsh","tag-nancy-pelosi","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}