Okay, but as Ogged asked, what *should* Edwards say if some intrepid reporter reads off the "hot white sticky" quote to Edwards and asks for his opinion?
"We're proud of Amanda's work for the Edwards campaign; her writing from before I hired her is her own affair."
I haven't read the other thread yet but I think we should beat on this story until Elizabeth Edwards shows up. I won't be happy until she comments here.
That Marcotte's work for his campaign should be judged on its own merits, and that the right is routinely held to a totally different standard, and then give examples. Then ride out the storm.
The difference between Democrats and Republicans, I sometimes think, is that Democrats have no solidarity. They run scared from the right, and they don't think about changing the political discourse in the long term. In fact, that's as good a reason as any to distrust Democratic policies--Republicans obviously derive benefit or satisfaction, or both, from Republican policies, and this makes them stick to their guns even when there's controversy or they themselves can't personally win. Democrats don't seem to enjoy their own politics enough to stay with them when the going gets tough. They just seem like a buncha opportunists. And I say this as a cop-out radical who always votes Democratic when alone in the privacy of the voting booth.
So I agree that it's a screwup, and it's indicative of bad stuff, but a major screwup? No. Fairly minor moves by Edwards that I approve of could make up for it, therefore it's not a major screwup.
what *should* Edwards say if some intrepid reporter reads off the "hot white sticky" quote to Edwards and asks for his opinion?
"Really? She said that? That's hot."
How many Republicans in individual instances actually think about changing political discourse in the long term? Somehow the habit of doing things which have the effect of changing the discourse have just been inculcated in many Republicans, so that they respond that way quasi-instinctively.
In the absence of a statement from either the campaign, Marcotte, or MacEwan, we should probably not jump to any conclusions about what has happened. So far, this is only attributed to Salon's unnamed sources.
LOL, Felix!
But I don't think that LB's reply works. We're not just talking about Catholics here, and Edwards can't shrug, "well, that was then, this is now" on something important.
If Marcotte had written something racist, for ex, I don't think we'd be saying "oh she can't be judged by her past writings." I would submit to the Unfogged jury that, to many Americans whose votes are in play, writing vulgar remarks about God fucking Mary is not any more defensible than writing something racist. The two are obviously distinguishable, but that's not the point; the point is, how will it actually play in Peoria?
I figure the number of women offended by 'feminazi' is probably greater than the number of Catholics bothered by the kind of things Marcotte's said.
In Iowa?
I think a lot of it's conscious, or was before it became habit. There's Reagan's Eleventh Commandment: Never Speak Evil Of A Fellow Republican, and that Gingrich memo from the 90's on the words to use to smear Democrats and build up Republicans... they've worked on this stuff.
If Marcotte had written something racist, for ex, I don't think we'd be saying "oh she can't be judged by her past writings."
A candidate for Senate with a noose in his office and pictures of himself wearing a Confederate flag pin was doing fine until he used a racial slur during the campaign.
2 isn't going to work, since Edwards presumably hired her because of her blogging.
Right, but thinking that it demonstrated the skills he needed doesn't mean that he has to take responsibility for everything she's ever said.
A candidate for Senate with a noose in his office and pictures of himself wearing a Confederate flag pin was doing fine until he used a racial slur during the campaign.
In Virginia. I know this will boggle minds, and rightly so, but most white Southerners do not consider the Confederate flag racist. They are mistaken, but that's not the point.
But the question was, How would "we" (Unfogged, the blogosphere, liberal Dems) react? Which was meant as a gauge for "how would many Christian voters react to what Marcotte wrote?"
I am trying to gently convey to agreeable but non-religious people that religion does indeed matter to some other people. They act like it's holy or something.
Yeah, 11 was what I was thinking of, also those fundie whackaloon planning sessions from the seventies and eighties that one reads about.
But I feel more strongly about my second point, which is that Democratic politics don't provide any satisfaction--they are a compromise defence against the worst depredations of the right, they are a career for some sincere people and a bunch of careerist prats, and they are a way to cater to certain well-organized sections of the middle class. But they're not passionate, they're not heartfelt, and they don't actually help most people anymore. Where is our healthcare? Where is an effective OSHA? Where are bankruptcy laws that make sense, and a reasonable limit on the workday? All those routine things that ought to be Democratic policies have just gone by the board, and I suspect that they'll continue to go by the board until we do change the discourse, becase we've got a discourse in which those things are simply non-discussable by serious adults with actual power.
Republican politics are mean and thuggish, but they provide spoils and a lot of emotional gratification to a lot of people. That's why people stick with them and that's why Republicans win.
And that's why people just a millimeter to my left would never, ever waste their time voting for a Democrat at the national level.
Ogged is wrong that "a rough-and-tumble but non-constituency-alienating blogger" would have been treated any differently. The right doesn't enjoy the netroots boon that the left enjoys, so 101st Keyboard-types have every reason to drag something from the archives and meme-ify it, no matter how innocuous. Edwards could've hired Kevin Drum and the reaction would have been just as hostile.
Marcotte was the test case—there's a mechanism in place now for SBVTing bloggers. You won't see Obama or Clinton or Edwards recruiting bloggers—it's done.
* if Marcotte was indeed fired
The difference between Democrats and Republicans, I sometimes think, is that Democrats have no solidarity.
It's that the left is self critical. It was right to question Edwards's decision to hire Marcotte, in the sense that investigation leads to illumination—but self criticism is at opposites with aggressive, completely arbitrary solidarity.
One group I haven't heard addressed is non-blogger campaign workers - you know, most of them. If Edwards lets Marcotte go, doesn't this signal that it's open season on every single person who works for a campaign?
But the thing is, it's not anti-Catholic to say that there's hypocrisy and sexism in the Catholic church. It's just not. And that's what Marcotte has said consistantly (and crassly).
Many conservative Christians bring their religious beliefs to their politics, and that makes their beliefs--to some extent--fair game. If you want to restrict access to birth control for everyone because your religious beliefs suggest this, then it is not wrong for me to look at your religious beliefs. And if I feel that your espoused political position is based on internal contradictions in your beliefs, it's not wrong for me to point that out.
Yes, except that most people don't have a significant public record. The thing about a blog is that it's quotable -- if I didn't have one, no one who didn't know me personally would have any way of proving thing one about my politics or whether I've ever said anything inflammatory.
self criticism is at opposites with aggressive, completely arbitrary solidarity
Well, yeah. Republicans are better at acting fascist, which gives them some strengths and weaknesses Dems don't have. Dems will never beat Repubs at this. All we can do is use it against the Repubs (as on the Iraq war) and try to spin our contentious nonconformity as a good thing. (Trouble is, Americans like to say they're not conformists, but they are.)
It really doesn't matter what a blogger has said specificaly—any blogger with archives has said something that won't play in Peoria. Basically, the polite fiction that every candidate is Ned Flanders is untenable when anyone can access the intertubes (cf. Allen's Macaca moment). The mistake Edwards (potentially) made is giving a victory to the 101st.
Broadening the discussion, is it an obvious idea that a good blogger makes for a good campaign communications staffer? I think the Shakes hiring is a good one, but is it there any reason that hiring a name blogger to run your campaign blog is sensible? What you want from a blogger is either really good policy insight and analysis or really good snark, or some combination of the two. What you want from a communications worker is the ability to be tirelessly on message and dishonest without appearing so.
Also not directly related to the Marcotte question -- but closer -- who will give me odds that any racist, sexist, or murderous fantasyist comments Republican staffers wrote under their Freeper IDs ever make it into the paper, even on page A19?
18: The solidarity I was thinking about was the willingness to stand by the principles that Democrats espouse even if it doesn't advance your political career, rather than breaking and running when the right jumps on you. That's how Democrats could win in the long term, but they don't and they won't because they don't have the courage of their convictions and the willingness to decide on some principles and stick with them.
Of course, now that I think about it I begin to doubt that Big-D Democratic politicians actually espouse much of anything these days.
I'm not talking about standing behind people when they violate principles; I'm talking about standing with people when you have principles in common, even if that means that you-the-individual don't get as much for yourself.
This bit doesn't sit quite right with me: "Marcotte's smart and funny, and no more politically incorrect than plenty of people who are respected on the right -- by hiring her, Edwards appeared to be sending a message that he wasn't buying into the double standard anymore." I mean, I suppose it's true in a way, but not in the direction that I want the end of the double standard to go; my interest is in seeing the repellent people on the right lose respect, not in creating one big happy pile of respect for everyone.
21: I don't get your point. If you don't have a blog, who cares whether Edwards hires you as a blogger—right?
Yes, in Virginia, but Allen was the candidate, not his &#&&@ blogger.
21 was to 19 -- I'm agreeing that it's open season on everyone, but that open season doesn't mean much as against low-level staffers who don't have blogs.
12: & 15: There's higher algebra involved, individual things are additive and multiplicative in complex relationships. One Confederate battle flag doesn't necessarily make a racist. A flag, noose, and a Maccaca do.
That Edwards picked (or approved) people and then flipped immediately thereafter certainly doesn't impress me with his ability. As with Kerry and his joke, it's not as if Edwards came into a presidential campaign cold after living in a cave on Mars for the last decade. We should be expecting performance well above "pretty good" from our leaders and I've almost no tolerance for goofs at that level. IMO, if he can't campaign, he can't govern.
26: You change what you can. Talking about how ghastly Coulter is hasn't done us any good. We can't stop them from spewing hateful crazy talk, and we can't seem to make it politically damaging for them. So making it clear that we're not going to watch our language either is one of the only ways to unilaterally level the playing field.
What LB said.
Or, to put it this way, where ogged might have a point is if he had said "the double standard that treats William Donahue as a civil rights sage and has no problem with an apologist for apartheid being the #2 Republican in the Senate but sees attacks on Catholic doctrines most Catholics disagree with are beyond the pale of civilized discourse" is real, and the Edwards campaign has to work within its limits and not hired Amanda. OK. But leaving aside the way that the pacific McEwen is getting lumped in here, ogged also implied that this double standard had sort of rational or objective basis--Catholics are "in play," but women, Islamic Americans, Hispanics, etc. etc. aren't? It doesn't matter in Florida whether the GOP gets 5% or 15% of the African American vote? And with all due respect that's just absurd.
30 -- Oooh, ooh! "Higher algebra." That's a bat-signal of sorts, around these parts.
And if I feel that your espoused political position is based on internal contradictions in your beliefs, it's not wrong for me to point that out.
And if your nuanced argument pointing that out is a gorilla picture and some "you poke it, you own it" snark, you're not going to win over anyone.
I am, of course, pleased that the general reaction has been "don't take their shit!" But sometimes the weaker hand really is the weaker hand, no matter how loathesome the person who calls you on it. And I haven't heard a convincing response to the point that you can get away with being offensive, but not to a specific constituency.
But I'm also interested in this.
The Edwards campaign hired someone with an extensive public record that they knew was controversial
What makes you think so? This is pure speculation on my part, but I'll be amazed, when this story is told in full, if it doesn't turn out that these hires were made by the "tech" side of the Edwards operation, with little or no input from the "message" side. This seems like a blogger or techie who was already on board brining on his/her favorite bloggers, without giving much thought at all to the politics of the decision.
You change what you can. Talking about how ghastly Coulter is hasn't done us any good. We can't stop them from spewing hateful crazy talk, and we can't seem to make it politically damaging for them. So making it clear that we're not going to watch our language either is one of the only ways to unilaterally level the playing field.
That's fair -- I guess I'd just rather that we failed to watch our language in ways I found more personally congenial.
This is the same old Iran-Contra defense. If the people in charge knew it, it was a bad decision; if the people in charge didn't know it, then they're incompetent.
you're not going to win over anyone.
But this simply isn't true. You may not like it, but Marcotte has fans, just like the significantly nastier speakes on the right have fans. Ridiculing a position may make some people who believe in it hold on tighter, but if it's done well it's going to make others sidle away from it embarrassedly.
Saying rudeness is always going to be ineffective is just flat out false -- it works fine on the right, and it hurts the left that we aren't rude in return.
Edwards could've hired Kevin Drum and the reaction would have been just as hostile.
I don't think this is right. And even if it was, "just as hostile" is different from "just as much traction".
This is pure speculation on my part, but I'll be amazed, when this story is told in full, if it doesn't turn out that these hires were made by the "tech" side of the Edwards operation, with little or no input from the "message" side. This seems like a blogger or techie who was already on board brining on his/her favorite bloggers, without giving much thought at all to the politics of the decision.
Elizabeth Edwards shows up in blog comments, and Pandagon isn't obscure. If no one realized that she was rowdy enough to be controversial, and no one combed the archives to look for anything that might be a serious problem as a consequence, than that was a major screwup.
Oh, for fucking fuck's sake, why not just fucking tell'em to fuck off?
34: Well, yes. I have to admit that you're right on that.
That's why I have mixed feelings...I've gotten a little worked up about the Democrats, but I do fundamentally agree that the remarks on Catholics were sure not nice.
I'm completely down with "Hey, you rightwingers need to shut the fuck up about this, because you live in a big glass house," but not so much with "This was actually a fantastic move because it says 'Shut up, glass-housers!'" If the politicos and chattering classes can make hay out of the former, though, I'll be delighted.
More generally, that line of argumentation has lately begun to be stretched beyond its limits. The basic point, that it's more important to stand and fight than to inoculate yourself, is true. It doesn't follow that you might as well choose the most controversial candidates/rhetoric/spokespeople that you can possibly find.
Meanwhile, we've spent two days talking about some bullshit low-level campaign staffer working for one of three major contenders for the Democratic nomination for president over a year from now, instead of Warner et al's bullshit move to cut off debate about Iraq, the Bush administration's firing of a shitload of US Attourneys to be replaced with political cronies, Waxman's Halliburton investigation, the downing of five helicopters in Iraq so far this calendar year, or the forthcoming indictment of high level Bush appointees to the CIA. And what has it cost the right wing? A few hours of Michelle Malkin's time, and one phone call by anti-Semite Bill Donohue, combined with a blogocentric inclination towards navel-gazing and a dumbfuck media ecosphere.
Talking about how ghastly Coulter is hasn't done us any good. We can't stop them from spewing hateful crazy talk, and we can't seem to make it politically damaging for them.
This is nuts. If someone knows of a campaign on which Coulter has been staff recently, note it. Same with Limbaugh. No one thinks Edwards would have been hammered in anyway if he'd given Marcotte an interview at Pandagon.
But this simply isn't true. You may not like it, but Marcotte has fans, just like the significantly nastier speakes on the right have fans.
But fewer, I suspect, than you think, or she'd have more institutional "netroots" backing to secure her place (assuming yada yada). If Edwards had hired Sirota (I may be thinking of Raimundo), he would have been relatively easy to push, too. Because he has gone after people that people in the netroots might think are them.
As I think I've said before, this is a small decision, and I think Edwards should ride it out just to get in the habit. But it's not going to kill him either way.
44, 45: Eh, I'm not arguing that hiring her was obviously the best thing the Edwards campaign could have done -- staying away from her as too controversial would have been fine -- just that hiring her and then firing her was bad.
But fewer, I suspect, than you think, or she'd have more institutional "netroots" backing to secure her place (assuming yada yada).
I don't think she has fewer fans than I think -- I think that those who aren't fans are much more willing to speak up about how terribly vulgar she is than for some other bloggers. Steve Gilliard, who I also think is great, is comparable in tone, but I hear a lot less about how he's 'just not my cup of tea' than I do for Marcotte.
. Steve Gilliard, who I also think is great, is comparable in tone, but I hear a lot less about how he's 'just not my cup of tea' than I do for Marcotte.
Which campaign hired him?
46: This is kind of what I mean by the need to remake the discourse. Those things that you bring up are non-discussable right now because of the way official political discourse is framed.
To wonky people, those things make some sense because they fit into a narrative about policy. So they are of some interest.
To non-wonky people, those things are a series of disconnected facts that all sound depressing. What would animate those facts? A bold and coherent Democratic discouse with some principles--that would make those facts into a story, something that people would understand and care about.
To my mind, there's no way to tell a Democratic story in the existing discourse. The existing discourse is all about personal scandal, "I am shocked, shocked!", and "I don't want to pay for benefits that go to other people", plus "The US is a great, moral nation and that's why we must fight the Wah on Terrah!".
It does not matter if we spend two days on something stupidly-controversial if the end result is that people see Democrats with principles and a convincing political vision. But in this case, we've spent two days on something stupid with, apparently, no benefit to anyone.
46:
Exactly. That is why the Republicans keep beating us up.
You may not like it, but Marcotte has fans, just like the significantly nastier speakes on the right have fans
You might not like it, but I'm not six or mentally challenged, and I was well aware of Marcotte's fans. I'm sure her cheering section really likes her snark, and that there's a place for ridicule; I'm just not confusing it with pointing out the inconsistency in someone's position, which is what Frowner was saying.
Ridiculing a position may make some people who believe in it hold on tighter, but if it's done well it's going to make others sidle away from it embarrassedly.
Has this ever happened before? Seriously. I'm not expecting that reachable swing voters would rally around Donahue, but it doesn't have to drive them into the arms of the Republicans, just Obama (or Clinton.)
I actually agree that Edwards shouldn't (have?) fired Marcotte. What's done is done and that's the best loss-cutting strategy available. I'm only disagreeing with one particular argument which I think has been overdeployed on liberal blogs and has started to annoy me.
Marcotte's gotten a lot of discussion as 'not quite the thing' before she was hired by the Edwards campaign, Gilliard doesn't get nearly as much.
And Dick Cheney appears as a guest on Rush Limbaugh's show - isn't that pretty near as much of an endorsement as hiring someone as a low-level staffer?
Has this ever happened before?
Yes. Ridiculing anti-war people in 2002/2003 shut a lot of them up, and flipped a lot of leaners to pro-war. It's a tactic that works. Doesn't mean that Marcotte's language was specifically guaranteed to work, but the tactic generally works.
36: If the tech side of the Edwards campaign was allowed to make this kind of hire without serious vetting by the message side, well then, the Edwards campaign is not the right operation to go up against the GOP in 2008.
I've heard rumblings around the net that the Edwards organization isn't that, you know, organized, but I've chosen to believe that winning a nomination can cure many of those ills. But perhaps that was naive.
Having said all that, I find it hard to believe that this hire could have been trumpeted so widely across the blogosphere without higher-ups in the campaign being fully aware of Amanda and her prior writings. Like I said, if it went down that way, this is a symptom of something far more serious.
BTW, that holds true whether or not the end up standing by Amanda. Refusing to fire her in the face of tut-tutting by rightwing nutjobs would show a certain measure of political courage, but I'm not sure it would make up for the organizational crew-up (if there was one).
I have a theory of what's happening now. The campaign is trying to persuade Amanda to resign for the sake of the campaign. That's why we're not hearing anything.
I don't think the "but the Right has Coulter and Limbaugh!" arguments hold. There's a difference between people like them lending indirect support to a candidate or to the GOP and someone hiring them to work on a campaign. (Not that I think Amanda comes close to the level of a Coulter in her discourse.)
56: With a group with a strong identity? (Thought most of the flippers were convinced by the lies about WoMD.) My sense is that you get more of a "no, fuck you" reaction out of people.
I guess that if I was looking to win the Hispanic vote (overwhelming Catholic, culturally conservative, and otherwise a perfect constituency), I probably wouldn't start by making jokes about the Virgin Mary.
right-wing freaks like Limbaugh and Coulter can say literally anything without it reflecting badly on politicians who associate with them
I'm not singling out your saying the above; it's rather just the most recent of the many places I've seen this, or something like it, written over the past day (and before) and I have something to say:
I disagree with the "without it reflecting badly" premise, at least insofar as it's too broad of a statement. For people like me--and, trust me, I ain't that special or unique--things said by people like Limbaugh, more so Coulter, and Lord know there are worse, DO reflect badly on politicians who associate with them. I question their judgment and their sucking up. And I do the equivalent on the other side.
I find both feminazi etc. and the "kind of things Marcotte's said" to be examples of sentiments which differ in terms of from what side they're offered, not in their intent or style; they're bile over substance, even when the substance could stand alone. They're flip sides of the same "I can say what I want, how I want, which of course is the single most important thing, so f-you!", adolescent, least-common-denominator, let's-shock-the grups, foot-stamping. They're BOTH offensive. They're different flavors of the same thing. Candidates who embrace opinionators of either flavor are entitled to do so, but I'm entitled to think less of their judgment because of it, and to take my opinion of their judgment into account when choosing whom to support.
I'm female. I vote. I'm not Catholic, much less religious right, though I am an active in the Episcopal Church (not the part that's splitting off). I'm not overly sensitive to criticism of religion, and I sort of think that it comes with the territory anyway. The truly religious ought to be far more worried about what they're called to do in their own lives, not what they're being called by other people who disagree with them, IMHO. Also, Donohue nauseates me--not because of this, but in general; I definitely include him in the "opinionators" class that I referenced in the previous paragraph.
But even I found that "hot, sticky..." bit to be over the top, gratuitous, and irresponsible (not to mention outright demeaning, and to women as well as the religious) when I read it...which was when it was written, not as a result of this flap. In fact, it's an example of why I generally don't read Marcotte, or Pandagon, anymore unless I come across a specific link of interest (as opposed to Shakespeare's Sister, which is a regular read for me).
Anyway. I expect since I'm in that territory which no side likes, this is probably just a waste of a comment. Still, this is the blogosphere: Let No Thought Go Unexpressed!
One more thing: I like Unfogged. Its writers appear capable of expressing strong, independent and even original thought without pissing all over people and gleefully excluding vast parts of the American public with contempt, while expecting lockstep support when someone objects. Only sayin'... .
I think it started to annoy me mainly after I kept seeing it on recent Dailykos-type threads discussing Al Franken's Senate candidacy.
A: "Hooray for Al Franken!"
B: "That's a really terrible idea. Are you even from Minnesota? Franken's a comedian, and a polemicist, and an avowed atheist, with a long paper trail of controversial remarks, and he hasn't lived here since he was a kid."
A: "So? The Republicans will swiftboat anybody!"
58: Maybe. But a principled campaign wouldn't accept her resignation if it were based on the hypocritical ramblings of bigots on the right.
And ultimately, it doesn't cure the problem -- Edwards hired someone who's resignation he accepted days later due to the "hate speech" content in her earlier writings.
At this point, the Edwards campaign should take answer #2 above, spam reporters' inboxes with hate-filled nonsense from rightwing bloggers and personalities, and keep talking about Iraq and healthcare.
Franke-Ruta says: "Salon is reporting that the John Edwards campaign has fired its two controversial new hires. I hear otherwise from grapevine sources, but don't know anything for sure."
Marcotte's gotten a lot of discussion as 'not quite the thing' before she was hired by the Edwards campaign, Gilliard doesn't get nearly as much.
I haven't seen it, but I bet it's because Pandagon's much more popular than Gillard's site. Even when measured solely by links from major sites. Gillard--whom I read only briefly, and who is less than half my cup of tea--writes about race in the same way that Marcotte writes about women's issues. The VRWC would kill for him a guy who has made (what is to me a fair) a defense of Sharpton. And if he got a job on a campaign--if he doesn't already--he'd be subject to a much faster version of what's happening to Marcotte. And depending on how it went down, he'd have even less "institutional" support: for all the "where are the women bloggers," there are nearly no black folk on blogs other than DS, and he's fucking Canadian.
And it's absolutely loopy to have fired Shakes along with her.
This isn't loopy, it's predictable. It's obvious in the sense that the campaign feels vulnerable about employing a blogger, but there's more to it than that: If Shakes were the only blogger Edwards hired, the response would have been the same. It might've taken longer, but some rightwing blogger would have found some snarky or ungenerous comment, e-mailed it to Michelle Malkin, and from there the rightwing blogosphere. Hell, give me half a day and a fascistic bent and I'll find something to lie about in the archives.
Doesn't matter that it's ultimately an insignificant position—it's someone from the left wing of the blogging fraternity getting a leg up, and we can't have that.
67 was mine.
Reliable sources tell me that Edwards fired Marcotte to hire Unf.
I don't know whether Amanda and/or Melissa have been fired, but "Salon has learned" means an anonymous Edwards staffer has told an anonymous Salon writer. I'm not surprised, considering this thread, that there are Edwards staffers leaking against them. But I don't think one should write as though they're fired until we read it in Pandagon.
For the record, if they have been fired, I agree with LB.
46 gets it exactly right.
Sometimes Marcotte is vulgar, sure. Guess what? The shit she's criticizing is way, way, more vulgar than anything she says about it. Which is why hand-wringing about tone is so offensive, and why it's so annoying when we say "well, they do have a point, it's not nice to say that."
If you want to restrict access to birth control for everyone because your religious beliefs suggest this, then it is not wrong for me to look at your religious beliefs. And if I feel that your espoused political position is based on internal contradictions in your beliefs, it's not wrong for me to point that out.
Amen and hallelujah. And if your religious beliefs are that I shouldn't have certain civil rights, then crass jokes about hot sticky jism pale by comparison.
49: I think the reason you hear more "not my cup of tea" remarks about Marcotte than Gilliard is that Pandagon is unique, in that it moved from being part of the "wonky left blogosphere" (when Klein was there) to being part of the "activist left blogosphere."
I like the wonky stuff (Klein, Yglesias, Drum, DeLong), and I started out reading Pandagon when it was wonky. I kept reading it when Marcotte took over, and the nature of the the blog changed completely. Ultimately, I gave up in frustration: it's just not what I'm looking for in a blog.
On the other hand, I've never read Gilliard or Atrios or Kos on a daily basis. I know they exist, but they're just not on my radar in the way Pandagon once was.
53, 60: Oh, I'm not saying that the quoted posts would make any sense at all coming from Edwards' campaign. As Marcotte's personal writing in opposition to opponents of contraception, they're rude and nasty, but I don't think necessarily ineffective.
There's an argument that she shouldn't have been hired because the quoted posts actually do reveal that she's an anti-Catholic bigot -- I think that's mistaken, but someone who thought that (and that may be the position you're taking, I'm not dead sure) would be making a respectable argument. But saying that expressing political opinions that aren't in themselves wrongful through profanely offensive ridicule is necessarily going to be ineffective seems wrong to me -- it works great if you do it well, and judging by her fan base, Marcotte seems to appeal to plenty of people.
Well, so much for replacing Marcotte with Professor Bitch.
BitchPhD in 70 and the Yorkshire Ranter in 42 (among others) have it right.
"Fuck right the fuck off" is the principled response to this sort of right-wing hoo-ha.
It occurs to me that the only cogent argument in favor of firing them ("Catholics are swing voters, and Democrats can't afford to be seen as insulting them.") is actually not that hard to address. I agree that the campaign should fire either woman, but what it should do is find a bunch of Catholics (e.g., me) to stand up and say truthfully, "The most embarrassing thing to me about being Catholic is Bill Donohue. That man doesn't speak for most of us. He speaks for a right wing fringe, and taking his criticism seriously is the real insult to our faith."
In other words, the required solidarity isn't Democratic; it's liberal Catholic.
Um, "should" = "should not." I cannot emphasize that enough.
Tangent: Is her last name pronounced mar-COT or mar-COAT?
Dammit: the first "should" only. The second "should" remains as is.
61: But what motivates lots of people to go out and act? I too like Unfogged a sight more than a lot of radical blogs (though not, I should say, all) and yet the sense I get from a lot of political conversations here is that people are often in a sort of TS Eliot-ish, Wasteland kind of political paralysis. Indeed, I generally am myself, even though I do from time to time wield a puppet. (I mean, maybe I'm wrong about people's level of political involvement)
I'm not sure that I can tell you exactly what drives people to take political action, but I think that rough-and-tumble, sometimes rude, sometimes vulgar discourse is part of it. (Although I think there are specific instances--like the hot/white one--in which it's counterproductive.) There's a reasonable amount of smart, polite, thoughtful political discourse available, and many of us read that stuff, comment on it, nod wisely and then sit on our hands. Or at least I feel like I do. (And since I seem to insult people by accident on a regular basis, let me clarify that this is puzzled pondering about what I see as the behavior of people like me, not some kind of accusation.)
74: FRTFO is always the answer to anything that Michelle Malkin says. Ogged's right about Edwards's left hand not know what the right was doing: A campaign that made the measured decision to hire Marcotte over concerns and objections would know already that FRTFO is the only response to Malkin's witch hunt.
Is her last name pronounced mar-COT or mar-COAT?
You're not writing a poem about this, are you?
I've sort of been through this. During the Kerry campaign I put together two pages which I hoped would be useful to them, but they were actively and explicitly not interested. Kos and "Hesiod" had similiar experiences. I suspect that Mary Beth Cahill was the villain, but I'm not sure.
Peter Daou, now with Hilary (recently with Salon), was the Kerry web person, but his hands were tied. He's very sharp and should do Hilary a lot of good. (Wish I liked her).
I am more sympathetic to the Edwards campaign than I might seem. If a spokesman's personal voice is too strong, it can interfere with the voice it's supposed to support. A lot of bloggers (including Amanda and me) "let it all hang out", whereas party reps and candidate reps should be more circumspect (as Daou has always been).
I've suggested setting up free-lance non-candidate non-party surrogate groups to put out an unofficial but partisan message and do muckraking, satire, and speculation. That's pretty much what Republicans do -- groups like that are funded, but the cash flow doesn't go through any official channel. (My suspicion is that Rove informally tips off some of the big-pockets people, possibly through a couple layers of intermediaries.)
It goes without saying that Amanda and S's Sis were the victim of an organized attack. Gotta expect that. This attack is part of the Republicans standard "They're just as bad as we are" tactic -- a lot of Republican secondary people have skeletons in their closets. The media seem happier to relay R accusations against Dsthan D accusations against R -- they've done a better job of networking the legit press, and I thik that some media people are in their pocket.
All y'all saying Gilliard might be a better choice seem not to have read Gilliard much. Or else "I'm sorry to say this, but if you go out and get drunk, you're courting rape" (that's a paraphrase) is less offensive to you than obscene jokes about non-existent entities and people long dead. C'mon.
I don't think anyone's said that -- I've been bringing him up as someone equally abrasive who gets less crap.
All y'all saying Gilliard might be a better choice
Um, who said that?
All y'all saying Gilliard might be a better choice seem not to have read Gilliard much.
I have no idea where this could have come from. Are you scanning the thread, catching words, and inferring comments?
Though admittedly, rationalizing rape plays better in Peoria than talking about sex.
If a spokesman's personal voice is too strong, it can interfere with the voice it's supposed to support. A lot of bloggers (including Amanda and me) "let it all hang out", whereas party reps and candidate reps should be more circumspect (as Daou has always been).
This is about the only articulation of the situation that doesn't piss me off.
72: You seem to be arguing against something a lot stronger than I meant... maybe it was the "win over anyone"? Maybe put the emphasis on "win over." I don't know if she's an anti-Catholic bigot, and I don't really care. And I don't think that invective is ineffective generally; I just don't think that invective wins over the people you're invecting against. (And this leaves aside the question of whether it was terribly good invective.) Donohue's bigoted rants probably haven't made very many Hollywood producers say, hmm, I really need to rethink my position on anal sex.
It may shore up her own camp, and she's fantastic at getting her base excited, but that's not the same thing as "winning over" a swing group. And maybe that's enough. There's no rule that says you have to be nice to Catholics or anyone, and if Edwards doesn't need them, or needs the feminist vote more, then this was a very wise hiring decision.
I'm guessing that hiring Marcotte, if it was given any thought, was to steal feminist votes away from Hillary, and probably not intended to swipe the moderate-to-liberal religious vote. I see no reason to pretend that her generally anti-religious tone is going to bring win over a religious constituency.
89: Oh, and I never thought it would -- she's the last person I'd hire for religious outreach. Now that I understand you, I don't think we disagree all that sharply.
Donohue's bigoted rants probably haven't made very many Hollywood producers say, hmm, I really need to rethink my position on anal sex.
Hmm, maybe missionary would work better than doggie-style?
Funny you should ask, slol: apparently not.
Jesus fucking christ. If I read one more comment (and I don't mean just here) that someone's support for Edwards hinges on whether or not Amanda has been fired, I'm going to puke.
Yes, this whole thing is stupid and frustrating and may indicate some minor missteps at the hiring and/or firing stage. Yes, I wish Edwards and all Dems would learn to tell Malkin et al. to fuck themselves (but not, you know, in a potty-mouthed way). But the "netroots" needs to get the fuck over itself. My DD: "throwing the netroots under the bus would be a deal-breaker for me."
Even more pathetic is this: "I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired." OK, you're pissed off if they're fired. But you'd vote for/work for/give money to someone just because they didn't fire someone who spends some of her leisure time doing something that you also do?! Way to show Edwards how to take a stand on the important issues.
46 and 51 are right. Let's do our part and stop talking about this.
What is at least partly interesting about this whole debacle is that, I would assume, the Edwards campaign hired Marcotte and Shakes Sis to advise them on blog relations. Thus, the most qualified people on the Edwards team to advise them on responding to this shitstorm are these two.
Hindsight notwithstanding, it seems that Marcotte at least should have realized what the blogosphere's reaction to her hiring would be and so could have prepared the Edwards campaign to respond more quickly and forcefully than they have so far. That she seemingly didn't is dissapointing and perhaps a better reason to think she is not qualified for this job than her actual blog writing.
I especially draw our shared attention to the candidate's own words: "We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked."
I'll be amazed, when this story is told in full, if it doesn't turn out that these hires were made by the "tech" side of the Edwards operation, with little or no input from the "message" side.
BTW, this isn't the case. I've got a bit of insider info.
apparently not.
This is why I posted my #8.
BTW, this isn't the case. I've got a bit of insider info.
Interesting. Thanks, Kraab.
Funny you should ask, slol: apparently not.
I do hope it all goes away.
What drives me crazy is that the conversation has become about Marcotte, which never should have happened. Marcotte and her dirty wordies do not matter at all. The answer to "But... but... she said bad things!" should be Grow the fuck up, and what about A, B, and C fucked-up things this right-wing guy said, and I don't audit my employee's past writings because I like freedom of speech, don't you, etc, etc.
Listen to the right wing noise machine: you don't have to actually make sense. What you DO have to do is shout down detritus like Malkin, and ridicule the mainstream narrative-makers for getting played by them. Pull a Cliff Shecter and call them all criminals and pedophiles, it doesn't matter - must make Wolf Blitzer stammer. It's the only way to beat back the wingnut orcs, it's a fight not a debate.
In case 92 is too cryptic, Edwards has put out a press release that makes it sound like they won't be fired. (I almost didn't click on the link, since 99% of all Unfogged links are to porn. You guys are better than spammers in suckering me to going to porn sites.)
95: Yay, Johnny! The post is updated.
I think he got the tone just right: "I wouldn't have said it like that, but they both assure me that they never meant to malign anyone's faith." (paraphrased)
Let's note for the record that John Edwards did not fire Marcotte, though he did find some of her comments previous to her hiring offensive, and that he issued a smart, simple, yet politely worded statement about how this SO doesn't matter.
99 - I agree 110%. The fact that the Democrats don't do that now shows that they still don't understand how the game is played now.
LB, you misspelled Edwards' name in the update.
Okay, not "all y'all." Although I note that LB's said more or less exactly what I'm saying, invoking a comparison between the two, and no one's saying "where are you getting that?" I was going off what she said, that there's some implicit comparison between Gilliard and Marcotte, and that the former seems less of a lightning rod.
But whatever, if I'm wrong, then fine.
Although I note that LB's said more or less exactly what I'm saying, invoking a comparison between the two, and no one's saying "where are you getting that?" I
Actually, she said exactly the opposite of what you said.
Good for Edwards.
(Now counter-attack! Attack!)
The former is less of a lightning rod because he isn't working for a campaign. But the righties consider him the craziest of the crazy and, believe me, the outcry would have dwarfed this one had he been hired.
Is Amanda a lapsed Catholic? They seem to be the most ferocious anti-Catholics.
Or, I suppose, he could talk about something important instead, like a serious grown-up. (Attack!)
This has convinced me to set up a "campaign blogs" category in my reader. Yay, more things to waste time reading!
Ok, between LB's post, this comment and the fact that Amanda is simply correct about how stupid official Catholic birth control doctrine is (as opposed to unofficial Catholic practice), I am now convinced that we should totally stand by Amanda, and spend the rest of the time making fun of Donahue.
God, I love them both for the "I'm sorry if" apologies.
110: Okay, fine.
112: Agreed.
113: I don't think she's anti-Catholic. She's anti the current Catholic leadership, but that ain't the same thing.
I didn't see the update when I posted 116. I'm glad that this is all moot now.
Is Amanda a lapsed Catholic? They seem to be the most ferocious
in the sack.
I swear, I thought that's where you were going.
81: Apo needs to know whether he's evoking a cold weather garment or an army bed.
118: I'm not going to argue, but one of the defining traits of Catholicism is the enormous authority the institutional Church has. A de-institutionalized Catholicism is hard to imagine, and a less-offensive Church institution seems like a very distant possibility -- movement seems to be in the other direction.
So Amanda is not anti-Catholic (anti- born ethnic Catholics) but she seems to be anti-Church. "Anti-Catholic" could really mean either.
Historically there's always been a category of "anti-clerical Catholics", so I suppose that's what she is.
81:
There once was a blogger from Texas
Who frequently called others sexist...
Several folks upthread elucidated a need for the left to go on the attach against Donohue et al. Can we get a color-coded post to discuss methodology? The info's out there, there were Kos-ian groups doing "rapi9d-reaction" work in the last campaign...can't we leverage some of the expertise here to do a little work for the side of the angels?
The IRS and the FEC might be good places to start.
103: Do spill if possible.
I know an Edwards partisan who was asked for ideas on whom to hire. Given the current sitch, I doubt s/he would want to discuss it online. (Maybe we can use "teh" for inspiration and make "seh" a non-gender-specific pronoun. At least it would give us a new blog-o-project.)
Pet peeve here, but singular 'they' has a long and honorable history -- you just have to grit your teeth and bull through people who are going to be incorrectly snide about your grammar. No one's ever going to use an invented genderless pronoun, and the language already has a natural one.
I'm actually with you in general, though I can't bring myself to use "they" in formal writing. I'm curious, do you ever use it when writing for work?
Nah, I dodge around it. But I'm in a law firm, which means nitpicky enforcement of nonexistent rules of grammar; heaven forfend an infinitive should be split, no matter how uneuphonious the avoidance is.
In formal writing, I try to default to "she."
Again, because it's legal writing, I have more permission to repeat the original noun over and over again than I would in another context.
"An apology for the below post is hereby extended."
This is why time-stamps are crucial.
Why did you write a long post about them being "fired," anyway?
If you read the long post, it contains plenty of caveats about how we're not sure what happened yet, including a promise of an apology if it turned out they hadn't been fired. And the title of the post, interestingly, is also conditional. Anyone who took my post as confirmation of the firing would be reading carelessly enough that I can't worry about them as an audience.
I wrote the post to indicate that I thought that firing Marcotte, if that were what Edwards had done, was a mistake.
"I wrote the post to indicate that I thought that firing Marcotte, if that were what Edwards had done, was a mistake."
Well, I was probably overly grumpy when I asked. I was just surprised, because I'm baffled at the notion that anyone could have found that Salon report credible. I don't mean in hindsight: I read it, and thought "well, this is obviously completely unsourced, and there's nothing to it." I mean, there was no there there, nothing but assertion-from-nothing.
And I thought the "but if she's winds up not fired, it will be because she'll have been rehired!" one of the most ludicrously transparent attempts to cover nothing-there that I'd ever read in something pretending to be a legitimate piece of journalism.
But it doesn't matter now. Sorry for having been grumpy.
More often than not my sensibilities are completely alien to popular ones on this blog, and vice versa, anyway. (Note: that's a comment on me; you people are the relatively normal ones.)
131: I either alternate, or punt to the plural. It's usually not infelicitous.
I think that LB was very wise to act preemptively. That way, Edwards could know what would happen if he actually did fire Marcotte. Once he had actually fired Marcotte, he couldn't have backed down without looking bad. It's like yelling "Rape!" You don't have to wait until there's actual penetration.
See, the Discourse of Truth sucks. Once something's true, it's usually too late.