Your Age Is The Hardest Age: Lawyers, Guns and Money Turns 16 and It Needs Your Love
By 
Sixteen years! Sixteen banners united!! Fundraising is not an easy or pleasurable undertaking. That’s why it’s not called “Funraising,” or something equally whimsical. No one particularly enjoys beating the bushes – you never know when bats are going to fly out. But LG&M cannot operate on expert political and legal analysis and sly cultural references alone. ‘Twere that it were so simple.
As Robert explained in a previous post, this is a particularly difficult time to ask for contributions. Many are suffering economically as a consequence of the pandemic, a fact not lost on any of us. There is also the matter of the ever so crucial revolution taking place all over America’s streets – a much needed and long delayed uprising poised to bring about a sea change in our social hierarchies. To distract from any of this, in even a small way, is annoying.
Having said that, I would stipulate that the events of the past few months are the very thing that ratifies the importance of donating. Long before the stalwarts at LG&M allowed me to tag along with my intermittent musings on the Washington Nationals and my favorite LPs and the other assorted detritus of my addled consciousness, the website played a pivotal role in helping me parse the ever more opaque and hyperactive news cycle we are confronted with. That has never been more true and more important than today.
Think of what it has meant to be able to access the LG&M community throughout the events of the past several months. For me, the adroit, humane, funny and proportionately outraged analysis provided by the gang has been nothing less than a panacea. I can scarcely count the times when I found myself perched on the precipice of full-fledged lunacy after some ill-advised cable news binge, only to be reeled back to some semblance of rational balance by the well-reasoned analysis on the site.
Think of how the comment board has provided a consistently smart and civil forum for the open exchange of ideas between concerned citizens during a time characterized by the crazy-making, the panic-inducing and the socially estranged. I do not think it is an exaggeration to refer to this as anything less than a crucial and deeply patriotic public service.
As mass media continues to consolidate and corporatize at an alarming rate, there is almost no overstating the value of a fully independent news entity characterized by its expertise, sobriety, seriousness of intent and Stones quotes. Whether it is Robert writing on national security, Erik on labor and music, Scott on the intricacies of the law and the continuing adventures of SCOTUS, or Paul, VacuumSlayer and others on the general signs ‘o the times, there is simply not a better and more qualified cabal of working scribes to help us navigate the insanity. I honestly don’t know how you put a price tag on it.
They do put a price tag on it though: they essentially do this work for free. When we ask you to donate to LG&M, I can promise you it’s not for strategic planning purposes in the Hamptons. There are no Buckley-style lawn parties – or at least none I’ve been invited to. It’s to pay the server fees and the other hard costs of maintaining and updating the site constantly and keeping the message board operational and maybe if there are a few shekels remaining they are distributed amongst the sundry contributors for the purposes of splurging on a six pack or, hypothetically, some Cheladas.
So anyway! If you can make a donation to LG&M I heartily encourage you to do so. If it’s not such a good time, we understand. Please continue to visit the site and use it as the invaluable coping mechanism it is. But also please do bear in mind the truly Herculean amount of effort that these folks exert in order to bring you this service. (And I’m not talking about me jabbering on about something Elvis Costello did four decades ago, though you can anticipate more of that sort of thing as well.) And do remember that keeping this up is greatly abetted by your assistance.
And keep up the good fight. Our hearts must have the courage of the changing of the guards.
Here are some ways you can donate:
LG&M Merch Central Station
