In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Jon Carroll gives Mother Jones a sloppy wet kiss.

Carroll compliments the two editor-in-chiefs, Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, for keeping the magazine entertaining while maintaining its ideals, which is all well and good. But when he goes so far as to suggest that his readers visit the Mother Jones Web site to help their advertising rates, we began to get a little suspicious.

Then Carroll made this disclosure:

I once wrote an article for Mother Jones, but that was five editors ago. I don't recognize any of the names on the masthead except Adam Hochschild.

So is this all part of Carroll’s scheme to reconnect with the editors of Mother Jones? Because surely no progressive political magazine could be that good.