Southpaw Fundraising Drive
Help us produce more of the grumpiest sports coverage in the media-sphere
Dear loyal readers,
Before we ask for your money, allow us a brief aside for your reading pleasure.
Imagine a group of people standing in a perfect circle. Each of these people is aiming an air gun at the person to their left. This isn’t an Anton Chigurh-style weapon, though. The air gun, when it goes off, just lifts its target a few feet into the air. Now, imagine you’re standing next to this demonstration. Everyone in the circle shoots every few seconds, and you watch as the group starts to lift itself into the air. The circle levitates, moving farther and farther away from solid ground, until it’s so lost in the clouds that nobody on the ground can see what’s happening.
This is the state of American political commentary in 2020, and the air gun is the opinion column. Plenty has been written about how America’s so-called “diploma and density divide” has created a major disconnect between the commentariat and just about everybody else, and there’s probably some truth to that. But the issues are even more fundamental. In reality, those within the elite media bubble are too busy airing workplace drama in the pages of other major publications to be curious about much else. After leaving The Intercept to launch his own newsletter on this very platform, Glenn Greenwald, the same guy who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the Edward Snowden controversy, started casually equating editors with the ~CIA~.
Greenwald is lost in the clouds, and most progressive commentary isn’t far behind. (We recommend The Drift’s first Editors' Note for a full account of their delusions.) And though the two of us certainly aren’t in any position to solve these endemic issues, we are committed to giving you something different.
Amazingly, for all their navel-gazing and tedious self-criticism, major outlets still fail to cover a whole lot of important stuff. Top-tier publications, in particular those on the Left, devote few of their precious resources to serious sports content. We’re not sure why, though we do have a few ideas—sports fans are too crude, athletes are too individualistic. We think these ways of thinking reveal a lack of imagination.
When we launched Southpaw a few months ago, it was our goal to compile the good work that is being done on the politics of sports and to add some of our own. We think that, so far, we’ve done a pretty good job. Our coverage is unique, well-researched and—excuse the hubris for a second—more comprehensive than a lot of what’s out there in greater SportsWorld.
But it’s just the two of us, currently writing for free, and we want to grow. We’re launching a winter fundraising drive in order to produce more and better content, pay guest writers and illustrators, open the newsletter up to pitches, and generally grow the scope of our coverage. We spend most of our free time thinking about this project, and we’re ambitious about its future, so please, if you have it to spare, consider donating here. (One note: though we’re hoping to get there, Southpaw is not yet incorporated as a nonprofit. So unfortunately, you cannot write a contribution off.)
Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for all of your support thus far.
-Calder and Ian