An Important Message To Our Sponsors

So here's something that happened over the weekend:

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"A Personal Message from Josh Marshall

Hi, It's Josh Marshall.

This is a real email. I'm sending it to 92 people. But if you click reply, you're replying to my personal email address. This isn't some automated email. I'm writing it.

I'm writing to invite you, to ask you to rejoin Prime.

Some time over the last month or so your membership lapsed. In many cases, that's because the credit card we had on file had expired. Others don't know their membership lapsed. Maybe it was just inadvertent. Or maybe you decided it wasn't a good use of your money anymore.

I'm writing to tell you that if you're still a regular TPM reader, it really couldn't be more important to have your back as a member.

The future of what we do depends on getting getting at least 50% of our revenues from membership dues. The reasons are tied specifically to TPM and also to the evolution of digital publishing and the advertising economy generally. Last last year I explained a lot of the details here: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/tpm-and-the-future-of-digital-news-publishing

Independent journalism is critically important these days. And we believe TPM has a unique mission tied to that independence. If you could take a moment to renew your membership, I would truly, truly appreciate it. You may have seen our new "Prime Beta" editorial features, which are Prime only and we have a lot more new stuff to come. But the most important reason is that a fully independent publication can't survive without paying members. We can't make a go of this without you.

If you'd like to rejoin, simply sign in with your existing ID on the front page. The same one works even if your Prime account lapsed. In fact, it's important not to start from scratch. Because if you use the same email our system will say that email is already taken (i.e., by you). Once you are logged in, click "Join Prime" at the upper right of the site to upgrade your account back to Prime. The system will walk you through the steps. If anything is unclear we have a colleague on hand who can help at this email address: siteissues@talkingpointsmemo.com

Again, thank you.

If you'd like to drop me a line to ask a question, say hi, explain why you ended your membership, anything, just click reply on this note.

Like I said, this is my email.

Thanks so much,

Josh"

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"Dear Mr. Marshall,

I admire the reporting on your site. I miss my Prime membership. But there are a couple of caveats there.

First, I lost my job May 1st, and while I'd expected to pick something up pretty quickly, that hasn't happened yet. In fact, it looks as if I'm going to have to return to the employer I was at previous to my last job. If I were single, I could say almost honestly that I'd rather starve on the street that work in that place again, but I'm not single, so I can't do that. But going back there will be a pay cut from my previous position,and will require some sacrifices.

And I'm not 100% I can get my job back there, either. I left on good terms but who knows if they're actually hiring right now.

Things are bad when you have no income coming in. Little things, like, there's a new chicken place in our neighborhood and I'd like to take my wife and kids over there for dinner to try them out but, well, I have no income right now. My mother in law died a few months ago and my wife is the executor of her estate and we were planning to hire a truck to move some stuff out so we can put her house on the market and now that's not going to happen. If you've never been the executor of an estate, or if you have been but the estate didn't belong to someone who never threw anything out in seventy years of life, you really have no idea what a tremendous amount of strain this is on my wife, and now that I've lost my job, I can't help out by paying for that truck which would make things just a little bit easier.

My youngest daughter just graduated from high school and a lot of the things we were going to do for her got cut way, way back because her father lost his job. And my wife says she doesn't blame me and my kids say they understand but I know I've disappointed them.

And Unemployment just denied my claim and I had a four week temp assignment that had a good chance of going permanent except instead it turned into a one week temp assignment. The four weeks would have been two months mortgage payments. The one week leaves me about three hundred short of the July mortgage payment, and honest to God I have no idea where that $300 is going to come from.

Caveat the second: in a way I was telling myself that the subscription to TPM lapsing was a mixed blessing. Because while I enjoyed, and really miss, the subscription only reporting your excellent staff does, I wasn't using my access to the Hive any more, because of the frankly horrible treatment I received, not just from my fellow subscribers, but from your mods. I had so many threads closed down because they were supportive of Bernie Sanders and critical of Hillary Clinton and the DNC, and the mods didn't even try to hide their bias. I was told by one that my post was confrontational, unnecessarily aggressive, and, I swear to God, "made people feel bad". I was told by another that I kept making minor changes to my posts to 'bump' them back to the top of the forum, when the minor changes were either adding another bullet point to my daily "Snark Like You Mean It" posts, or just me going back and correcting typoes. And my favorite was when people told me I was posting stuff that was inappropriate to the Hive. This on a site where the front page's upper left hand space was frequently given over for days at a time to a discussion of Bob Dylan's music, and where much of the Hive itself was devoted to discussions of people's favorite movies and TV shows.

I'd just stopped posting to the Hive, and it made me feel kinda cheated, because that was part of my subscription I wasn't using -- not because I didn't want to, but because I got so viciously abused, not just by all my fellow subscribers, but by the mods as well.

So I have to tell you that even if my finances get straightened around, I'm not sure I'm going to be renewing my subscription. I do love the journalism. But I genuinely feel I've been treated pretty badly as a contributor to your site. So even when I do get a job, even when I do have the money again, I'm going to have to think really hard about it.

I have a lot to say, and I think my opinions are well reasoned, lucidly and cogently put, and I think they add something worthwhile to any site I participate on. I certainly never felt even remotely appreciated or welcome as a contributor to your site. I understand you want my money. I'm just not sure, given the givens, I want to give it to you -- even if I had it to give.

But thanks for giving me a chance to air all this.

Sincerely,

D. Madigan"

* * *

"Hi Darren,

The Bernie/Hive issue is complicated. But on the money side, we do have credit subscriptions, precisely for people in your situation. If someone is making a nice living we want them to subscribe. But we don't want anyone shut out for financial reasons. I would suggest applying for a credit subscription. It's the same subscription but free. You go into the system as though you were reupping and there are directions about how to do it. Thanks for being a reader. "

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So, let's see. 'The Bernie/Hive issue is complicated'. Um, no. It's not complicated at all. It only seems complicated because Josh Marshall is one of the biggest Hill Shills in the known universe, and for a Hill Shill, any statement that in any way indicates Hillary might not be The Perfect Candidate Who Was Robbed By Everyone (Especially Those Fucking Bernie Bros), well, those statemenets are not covered by 'freedom of speech'. Because things that make Hill Shills uncomfortable are not speech. They're trolling. They're deliberate provocations. They're re-litigating the 2016 elections. They're a million things, but they are not by any standard something that should be respected, regarded in an open minded way, or responded to in a civil manner.

I tell this guy that his mods treated a paid subscriber like shit on his site and his response is "it's complicated". No, motherfucker. It's not. It's as simple as "I was a paid subscriber to your site and your mods treated me like shit and made me feel very unwelcome and now you're asking me for my money again and what are you going to do about it".

It's not 'complicated'. It's, you're running a journalism site where you post whatever the fuck you want -- long columns about Bob Dylan's Christian music, articles labeling a book written by a Chairman of the Democratic National Committee that you don't like "nonsense", endless pleas for our fucking money, whatever -- and encouraging your mods and editors to be as hostile as they want to be to people who express political opinions that don't agree with your own.

That's pretty simple. It's also pretty shitty. But it's not in any way 'complicated'.

There are two kinds of people in this world -- those who believe in freedom of speech, and those who don't. A lot of folks want to believe there is a third type. These are the "it's complicated" folks, the ones who say "Well, I believe in freedom of speech, BUT --"

But again, it's not complicated. Two types of people -- you believe in freedom of speech, full stop, no but, or, you don't believe in freedom of speech.

Now, I'll admit, I also don't believe in freedom of speech. I also have a 'but' list. However, my 'but' list starts out pretty much where my definition of 'wrong' starts -- if it causes real harm to real human beings. Not hurt feelings. Not anger. Not embarrassment or discomfort because one is being asked to think about things one really doesn't want to think about, or admit to things that one knows are actually true but that one really doesn't like to contemplate or accept. Actual harm to actual people.

Which me calling supporters of Hillary Clinton who insult me and abuse me for criticizing her "Hill Shills" does not do.

It's not complicated. It's simple. Josh Marshall wants my money. He doesn't want my opinions on his site. And now that he knows what's going on, I suspect he doesn't want my money any more, either. Because it's really really important that the journalism on his site be supported -- but not if you're going to expect to be treated fairly and decently by the people who run his site, if you have the poor taste to not only dislike Hillary Clinton, but to be able to express that dislike in ways that are not easily and comfortably dismissed.

As to the charity sub, I went through those things and the step I balked at was where they wanted me to submit some kind of documentation -- whatever I thought appropriate -- to demonstrate that I really did need a free subscription.

You know what? I don't need a free subscription. TPM and Josh Marshall and his "well you were treated badly on my site by my moderators and jesus I wish I'd paid any attention at all to what was going on because I never would have written you how do I get out of this conversation jesus, jesus, um, I'll say it's complicated and hope you don't write back, jesus" nonsense can all go fuck themselves.