Does anyone know where one can get an MP3 of Bill O'Reilly reading that "hot sticky spirit" quote on his TV show?

I love Amanda's writing. I think she kicks ass. But if I were running a campaign, I wouldn't want anything or anyone around that would distract reporters from the candidate, unless I weren't interested in winning the election.

Eh, maybe not actually a campaign, but some professional venue.

I'm not an expert in getting a message out, and I'm not much of a bomb-thrower myself, but I have to say that the panicky reaction from the right when our bomb-throwers start getting a little more publicity and a taller soapbox makes me think that it's probably a pretty effective tactic.

Is this panic or salivation? If a Republican campaign hired a blogger who made "macaca" like comments just how many dem activists would be scrambling over each other to bring said blogger down? Both parties have certain stereotypes about them that make them politically vulnerable (dems: hate religious folk and 'middle' America; repubs: racist plutocrats). Whenever a scandal comes up that relates to those weak points, the opposition understandably seizes the opportunity to try to score points.

1: I don't, but if you can find it, FL should make another cheesy dance mix.

Whenever a scandal comes up that relates to those weak points, the opposition understandably seizes the opportunity to try to score points.

Maybe, but it wasn't a very effective scandal -- if they were playing it for political advantage, the thing to do would have been to leave her in place, and pull out the embarrassing quotes later in the campaign, when she was more firmly associated with Edwards.

the lesson I'd take away from this is to go look for someone else who writes like Amanda,

Oh. My. Gawd.

Fair enough. I'm hardly an expert when it comes to politics.

The rightwing response had nothing to do with Amanda. Any prominent lefty blogger, coarse or gentle, would have served as the fulcrum. A question like If a Republican campaign hired a blogger who made "macaca" like comments fails to appreciate that the right didn't jump on Amanda's coarse writing, they leaped at the opportunity.

Maybe this is a silly question, or maybe this has already been thrashed out in a 300-comment thread sometime when I blinked for an instant, but I'll go ahead and ask it anyway:

Why would a political candidate need to have a paid-for blogger on their campaign staff? I mean, what's the point? If you have a good message and a snowball's chance in hell of being elected, hundreds of people will be blogging about you for free, and it will have a lot more credibility since you won't be paying them to do it. What am I missing here?

5 - Why do you think I'm asking? Free beer!

the lesson I'd take away from this is to go look for someone else who writes like Amanda

They say aesthetic differences are more unbridgeable than political ones.

Amanda's article was a little strange in that the actual Edwards campaign barely figured at all. Nothing about the hiring, nothing about the response to the attacks, and nothing about the resignation. I shouldn't expect her to do a "tell all" about a campaign she'd like to be successful, but its total elision here was noticeable.

A question like If a Republican campaign hired a blogger who made "macaca" like comments fails to appreciate that the right didn't jump on Amanda's coarse writing, they leaped at the opportunity.

Fine, but it only works if less nutty nutters think the more nutty nutters have a point. I don't know how Daou is being coded, but he's stuck. And in '06, there were a few attempts to link Kos (something of a bomb-thrower himself) to various candidates, and it didn't get much traction.

Why would a political candidate need to have a paid-for blogger on their campaign staff?

You need to have some sort of updated content on your website. If you're hoping for a lot of energized online donors, you need to interact with them in some way--including rapid response to online communities. For that you need a blogger.

However, the more immediate the medium, the more you need to be able to trust your messanger to get it right the first time. So, I'd say that campaigns need to hire internet representatives at a higher pay grade.

You need a blogger, but the blogger shouldn't have a personality. I am completely serious about this. Bloggers with their own cult followings became a big problem on the Dean campaign.

But obviously you need a blogger. The blog is the hub of the online campaign. Everything gets posted there in realtime -- speeches, ads on youtube, press releases, etc. Plus, the commenting and interaction and people powered blah blah internet revolution crap.

Bloggers with their own cult followings became a big problem on the Dean campaign.

You killed the Dean campaign, didn't you, Joe D?

I wish!

The campaign track is a separate thing and requires someone without a strong personal message who has made an effort to keep their nose clean.

A lot, maybe most, of the most effective Republican hacks are surrogates with no connection with the party or with any campaign. Malkin, Coulter, Limbaugh, mand all the people promoted by Scaife or Regnery or Olin or the Heritage Foundation. That's the kind of place where Amanda belongs, I think.

Except that liberals with money don't put it into message development and dissemination. I don't know whether it's because they're all morons or whether it's because they're all fake liberals, but they don't. (No, there are no possible good reasons).

And there's lots of liberal money. But dumping it all into media buys during six-month campaign every two years is the alpha-loser strategy.

There are dozens of people besides Amanda who should be doing political journalism full time who aren't: Digby, Billmon, and the list goes on. Look at where Yglesias is compared to the moron hack Jonah Goldberg. (As I also keep saying, the media problem is at the ownership level. Who hired Jonah, and who told him to hire Jonah?)

I dislike this discussion insofar as I feel like there are implicit tests of one's liberalism and feminism at work, but...

1. Every blogger (at least in the near future) will be attacked if hired, and yes, the right-wing noise machine will lie about them all. But just as it's a mistake for the left to pre-censor itself because it will be attacked, it's also a mistake to think that we can do and say whatever the hell we want without consideration for the public, which ultimately sits in judgement. Most of the attacks won't stick, because people might be stupid, but they're not infinitely stupid, and some of the attacks will, because they'll have some plausibility and will be about things that people care about.

2. Most of the attacks on Marcotte didn't, in fact, stick. The charge that she was shrill and foul-mouthed bubbled up a bit, but they clearly could have ridden that out. The "scrubbing the archives" thing no one gave a shit about. But there was no way that she was going to survive what were plausible charges of anti-Catholicism. Like I said a while back, you can say a lot of stuff, but you can't say bad stuff about a constituency that's in play.

3. Some people might like Marcotte's style, and maybe there's a place for it on an advocacy site, but it can't ever work for someone running for President. Edwards isn't mounting a protest candidacy, he's trying to win.

20: Anti-semite.

A lot, maybe most, of the most effective Republican hacks are surrogates with no connection with the party or with any campaign. Malkin, Coulter, Limbaugh, mand all the people promoted by Scaife or Regnery or Olin or the Heritage Foundation. That's the kind of place where Amanda belongs, I think.

Yeah, this. I think ill of that class of people on the Republican side, but it's because I disagree with them and think they lie a lot rather than because of their brashness. I'd like to see a parallel environment in which Democrats could get paid for being brash (while remaining honest and mostly correct).

"Reasonable people," I thought, "can tell the difference between a personal blog post and those I'll write for the campaign."

That's what passes for "thinking" these days? Is she living in some dream world where the past (and concurrent) events never influences the present? Had she never heard of "Opposition research"?

I'll excuse her on the grounds she's still a child but I have to wonder about the alleged adults who still haven't figured out how politics is played these days and so tossed her (and their campaign) into the whirling machinery.

I'd like to see a parallel environment in which Democrats could get paid for being brash (while remaining honest and mostly correct).

It's starting to happen in talk radio; we're catching on.

Is she living in some dream world where the past (and concurrent) events never influences the present?

Or, you know, does she really think we'd be OK with someone who was only a racist (which she's not, and no, not anti-Catholic either, etc.) on his own time?

As another ex-Deaner, I think it's fine for campaign bloggers to have personalities, but they should also have a total focus on the job and some common sense. I wouldn't want my campaign bloggers to all sound the same or like soulless shills, but I also wouldn't want them to write something about the virgin birth on their personal sites after a week of getting attacked by faux-outraged Catholics. Her link to her Children of Men article isn't working, so I don't know how bad or pretend-bad what she wrote was, but the fact that she couldn't stay away from trouble, even if the trouble was (again) made up, meant it was probably best for her and Edwards that she quit. Or, what 23 and 25 said while I was writing this.

I was a little surprised by Marcotte's piece, in that she seems to think that the problem was that the Man was motivated to attack her because she is a woman; I really hope that's not what she gets out of this experience. It seems more likely to me that she had a set of pre-established enemies with nothing better to do.

I was also struck -- and I noticed this on the campaign blog, too -- that without her trademark snark, Amanda doesn't convey much of a personality. Meaning that had the right not jumped on her immediately, in a few months at the Edwards' blog, she would have a history of bland, measured posts that would have made it much easier to dismiss older snark.

Otherwise, I think Joe D's got it exactly right.

Watched Attenborough's Gandhi again the other night, then went online for a couple hours, researching Gandhi and Satyghra...whatever.

To paraphrase Bupa:It is never passive resistance. The point of the resistance is the reaction. If the reaction is withheld or not strong enough, resist harder.

The point is to control the dialogue, not only to force one, but to force in a specific direction. Sometimes defensive about a specific subject your opponent feels uncomfortable defending:coarse language vs religious tolerance. Or yelling:"How dare you attack my patriotism?"

Durbin wimped out, but it was very lovely hearing Republican Senators say they are not Nazis.

I think the right thinks about this stuff in a deeper and better way. Liberal bloggers think they win if the facts or arguments are refuted. Conservatives will just smile at that. I havve said I don't care about facts for years. Nobody but liberals care that there were no WMDs.

I was a little surprised by Marcotte's piece, in that she seems to think that the problem was that the Man was motivated to attack her because she is a woman; I really hope that's not what she gets out of this experience. It seems more likely to me that she had a set of pre-established enemies with nothing better to do.

Seriously, you don't think that she has the set of pre-established enemies largely because she's a woman? I'm not even blaming Republicans, it goes both ways -- while Michelle Malkin is awful, the reactions she gets are significantly more hateful than those equally awful men get.

I'd say Amanda might have had to quit over the Catholic stuff even if she were a man, but I'd bet the initial flurry of attacks wouldn't have been the same.

Liberal bloggers think they win if the facts or arguments are refuted.

Agree entirely with that, and that this belief is just wrong.

I think the right thinks about this stuff in a deeper and better way.

They don't "think" about this stuff "in a deeper way"; they've built a party of morons, and they play to their prejudices. The Reds, within the Republican Party, are basically a party of spite. We don't have that group; the closest we could come would be the Naderite types who fucked us in 2000.

20, Drymala: Interesting. I had a hunch about this but of course did not actually know anything. But I too would have thought you'd want a blogger who's not known for personality and opinionating. I thought you'd want voice and style of course, but more observation, less musing. Isn't the point of the campaign blogger to *follow* the candidate and campaign around and constantly fill the masses with a sense of what's going on *today*, a sense of physical description and detail that connects the fanbase with the home ops? to be sort of the eyes and ears of the people? I think I would pick bloggers who have strong political sensibilities and knowledge but have non-political blogging experience---people who are very good at liveblogging--- not panels and discussions, but sporting events. Travelbloggers. Someone who's known for writing evocatively about the real world . You basically want someone to a) crush the Maureen Dowds and b) build on local flavor for the day's campaign.

At least I would think so.

The question should not be:What makes a liberal feel righteous and vindicated, but what makes those bastards go crazy?

It should be really unfair but defensible. Something that divides them, wedge stuff.

Gay rights, racism, intolerance is good.

Wounded soldiers, Ron Kovic and the marrying melted Marine hurts them, I think.

But we should be thinking about them.

Seriously, you don't think that she has the set of pre-established enemies largely because she's a woman?

No. Would you have that set of pre-established enemies?

Amanda's schtick is to play around with hyperbole, crassness, exaggeration, and plain old outrageousness. That needles, and that gets the enemies.

That the enemies flood her inbox with nasty threatening sexually explicit letters is totally because she's a woman. But I hope to hell the campaign at least doesn't think that this backlash would have happened with any woman blogger.

31:Nah, see I don't think so. Let the candidate take care of himself, don't defend Edwards, why he needs no defending. None at all.

Don't explain the details of the Health Care Plan, ask why is that SOB over against Health Care for kids?

I think LB is right. The viciousness has a whole lot of misogyny in it. Not every woman would be attacked in the way that she were, but a man who'd written similar things (like, say, if they'd hired Oliver Willis for example) wouldn't have been served the O'Reilly special. In my opinion.

31 - yes, totally. That's exactly what a campaign blog should be.

33: Saying that she's got enemies partially because she's a woman doesn't mean that all women are going to get the same treatment. I'm not a bomb-thrower, and wouldn't get treated as one. I still think male and female bomb-throwers get treated differently.

I still think male and female bomb-throwers get treated differently.

Yeah, but that's because of the tools available more than anything else.

37: Yeah, one can use word-weapons without believing in the words, it's sufficient they have the desired impact.

6

Since the vast right wing conspiracy is not actually a conspiracy it can't coordinate things in that way.

28

"... Nobody but liberals care that there were no WMDs."

This is simply not true.

39: It actually is a conspiracy. There are people in the major media coordinating their activities with the Republican Party. There are also a lot of b-list freelancers who always know what the Republicans need and usually give it to them. But none of them admit to that.

Part of the evidence for this is the way, when one Republican talking point starts to embarass the Republicans because of new information, a lot of the media just drop it without comment. Just repeating a Republican talking point from time to time doesn't make you a conspirator, but changing your tune that way is good evidence.

Now, I don't have the data to prove this. I've just specified what I mean by "conspiracy" and what kind of evidence there is, and I think I've made the idea plausible.

But you can't prove #39 either, and there's no reason that your assertion should be assumed as the default position. Cinsiracies and collusion are commonplace in poltics; politics is one of the main places where conspiracies are born.

Do they wear black masks and talk in secret code, though, Emerson? Do they? What about a handshake? Do they have a handshake?

Hmph. Didn't think so, sucka.

41

Can you give an example in which everyone in this putative vast right wing conspiracy knew some damaging fact about a liberal but withheld fire until the most damaging time?

40: Define "care"

Care, Bob variation:My headstone will be engraved:"This man never voted for a Republican"

Care, "Good" Republican variation:Bad Bush, bad Cheney, bad Rumsfeld. Didn't cut spending, either

I was thinking of the way media people have been switching smoothly every time the Bush people have changed the rationale of the war. They just drop the old rationale without mention and pick up the new one.

I wasn't merely thinking of smear jobs. But the coordination of the attack on the Wellstone funeral in the few days before the 2002 election was tremendously impressive, though it's not specifically a case of what I just mentioned.

45

Attacks like that don't require coordination, it is the blood in the water phenomena. Withholding an attack when the pack smells blood requires coordination.

There are people in the major media coordinating their activities with the Republican Party. There are also a lot of b-list freelancers who always know what the Republicans need and usually give it to them. But none of them admit to that.

Emerson is just, like, indisputably right. Though you maybe have to have been reading political blogs for a few years to recognize that.

What they call "talking points" are prioritized issues. That's coordination. For example, immigration is not a prioritized issue. Once in awhile they might try to make Bush's immigration plan look good in a polite kind of way, but by and large they don't want immigration to be talked about. (Pat Buchanan and Dobbs are off the reservation on that one, right wing but not, or no longer, Republican tools).

In the case of the Wellstone funeral, the word got to the right people at the right time. National people who normally knew and cared nothing about Minnesota hopped to it on a sped-up election calendar. There was coordination. It was nationalized where it normally would have been a pure state issue.

Ironic that McEwen's piece is possibly the best thing of hers I've read.

For another very current example of coordinated media, the term "slow bleed" as a description of the Democratic Iraq strategy has been whizzing through the media in the last day or two (Wolf Blitzer, for example.)

This is the buzz word that the Republicans have decided puts the Democrats in the worst bad light. It's mostly innuendo; insofar as it has cognitive content it means something like "Wittingly or not, the Democrats have proposed an Iraq strategy which will maximize the long-term American suffering".

There was no reason at all for the media to use or reference this meaningless term -- they should leave it to the Republicans to get their own propaganda out. But they picked up on it immediately in a way that they do not pick up on Democratic buzz words.

Any woman? No. Any outspoken pro-abortion-rights feminist? Yes.