Amanda and Shakes rock!

[Placed on top for updates...]

I think that the whole brouhaha that the extreme wingers are raising about new Edwards bloggers will have a) no effect on Democratic primary voters a year from now, b) no effect on national voters two years from now, and c) negative effect on the wingnutosphere as they are getting more and more obviously unhinged, and thus marginalized.

Edwards did a fantastic scoop with these hires and the outcry from the extreme Right was surely expected. He has now positioned himself as more woman-friendly and more netroots-friendly than Hillary and Obama combined. And the fact that this has touched such a raw nerve on the edge of the Right abyss just confirms that this was a brilliant move.

I suggest not to bother actually going to myriads of inconsequential Wingnut blogs (like Malkin or Protein Wisdom) to defend the hires there (though a sharp letter of rebuke to WaPo, NYTimes and ABC for publishing the atrocious AP hit-job by the certified nutter Nedra Pickler may be in order). Let them enjoy their own echo-chamber. Instead, join the growing chorus of smart bloggers who are coming out in support of Edwards, Marcotte and McEwen, for instance:

Major Danby on DKos
Kagro X on DKos
Expo on DKos and on JRE08
EdwardsRayOfSunshine
Chris Clarke on Pandagon
Sadly No
Majikthise
Misty on Shakespeare's Sister
Pharyngula
Tom Watson

Update:

Alex Koppelman and Rebecca Traister posted another hit-job with unnamed sources and nasty speculation. The Right wing must be very worried.

Check the comments.

Also see commentary by:

Atrios
Atrios
Media Matters
Chris Bowers
Chris Bowers
Wilbur on DKos
Liza Sabater
Phoenix Woman
Phoenix Woman on DKos
Thirdestate on DKos
Melissa
The Heretik
Waveflux
Paul The Spud
All Spin Zone

...and the Diaries on the Edwards blog:
Expo
EdwardsRayOfSunshine
EdwardsRayOfSunshine
EdwardsRayOfSunshine
TehipiteTom
Rooktoven
Suswah
AdamMarin19

There has been no message from the campaign yet so all rumors are unfounded until they say something, and they promise to say something later today. Stay tuned....I hope they do the right thing and use this opportunity to hit the slimeballs back and hit them HARD!

And some more:
Zuzu
Glenn Greenwald
Pam's House Blend (also here)
Mahablog
The Carpetbagger Report
Corrent Wire
Pharyngula

Even more....

Hotline:Blogometer
Kevin Drum
Ed Cone
Ed Cone
Ed Cone
Ed Cone
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein
BooMan
Mike the Mad Biologist
Mike the Mad Biologist
Mike the Mad Biologist
Abstract Nonsense
Matt Stoller (not him, but the commenters)
Deborah Lipp
August J. Pollak
Think Progress
Culture Kitchen
Jill (Feministe)
Mcjoan on DKos
Scott Lemieux
Scott Lemieux
Ilyka Damen
First Draft
Sadly, No!
Tbogg
Crooks and Liars
Crooks and Liars
Crooks and Liars
Digby
Crooks and Liars
Crooks and Liars
Punkass Marc
The Liberal Avenger
Feministing
Feministing
Hugo Schwyzer
Echidne of the Snakes
Echidne of the Snakes
Rising Hegemon
The Heretic
Josh Marshall
Steve Gilliard
TPM Cafe
Pen-Elayne
Suswah
JosephGarcia
AdamMartin19
FunLuvn1
Garance Franke-Ruta (not him, the commenters)
Ilyka Damen
Thoughts From Kansas
Publius
Publius
JayAckroyd
Tbrucegodfrey
Rockridge
BobcatJH
Sarahlane
Kagro X
Aeolus
Bink
FISG
Kung Fu Monkey
The Fat Lady Sings
Paul William Tenny
Chris Bowers
Chris Bowers
Chris Bowers
The Liberal Oasis (a different angle to the story)
David Winer
Scoble

Addendum

Ilyka (in that last link) puts in words what I've been thinking throughout this two-day saga. This is an effort of the power elites: politicians, old-timer internet-illiterate campaign managers, and MSM to eliminate bloggers from teh conversaiton and influence. Not just Amanda and Shakes but ALL bloggers, Left or Right. All the Rightwing bloggers who jumped on this story with glee are, due to partisan blindness, underminining their own cause.

The way the MSM is framing this is as if bloggers are ALIENES!!!!

Somebody did a quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation of the traffic of the blogs linked in this post - together they reach over 20 million people. The operative word is PEOPLE!!!!!!

The bloggers, the commenters (some of those posts have several hundreds of comments!), and the readers.

They are people. Flesh and blood. Every single one of them.

Almost all of them are American citizens. Eligible to vote.

Almost all of them are voters. People who exercise their right to vote.

Almost all of them are Democrats. People who vote in primaries.

Almost all of them are party activists. People who travel to Iowa in January to knock on doors.

Almost all of them are 'influentials' - people who are hyperiformed about politics and cannot keep their mouths shut about politics when talking to everyone they meet.

Almost all of them are internet savvy and can influence many others through their online writings, exponentialy increasing their influence.

A concerted and persistent efforts of bloggers has before, and will in the future, force MSM to take up stories or to change their tone.

You can't just nonchalantly dismiss all those people.

People will not be dissed.

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Hit job, eh? The AP piece was actually rather subdued, but then they couldn't actually quote a lot of what Marcotte wrote, because of the content and language. I notice pandagon.net is down, probably because it can't handle the traffic.

I could give a flying fig what she wrote, by the way. I thought it was juvenile, crude and gratuitous, but then so much of the stuff the Left spews these days is all three of those things. You're kidding yourself, however, if you think associating himself with this sort of thing won't hurt Edwards with Catholic voters.

Who cares what wingnuts and Republican strain of the Catholic voters think? They are voting GOP anyway - let them melt in their own madness.

Liberal Catholics understand that the bloggers are attacking Papa Razzi and his idiocy, not all of the Catholic people. They themselves do not feel that Razinger represents their views.

Actually, Catholic voters largely mirror the national averages when it voting, and traditionally have leaned towards Democrats. Suburbanization has increased the Republicans' share of the Catholic vote, but Catholics are still an important Democratic constituency.

That said, Bill Donahue is a nutty publicity hound. I'm not sure how much influence he has. Caving to him would be a mistake.

Salon has a confusing article up claiming Amanda and Melissa have been fired.

Edwards campaign fires bloggers

The right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps -- John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach, Salon has learned.

The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare's Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan "anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots," and an accompanying article on the controversy in the New York Times this morning, put extra pressure on the campaign.

Speculation from sources that the two bloggers might be rehired was bolstered by Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, who said in an e-mail that she would "caution [Salon] against reporting that they have been fired. We will have something to say later."

Theat last bit makes it completely unclear what's really going on, but if Edwards is letting the likes Donohue and Malkin determine who can and cannot be on his staff, he might as well close the campaign now.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/02/07/edwards_bloggers/inde…

I got 50 bucks for Amanda if she gets fired from Edwards, to help with moving expenses since she just moved to take the job. If Edwards still has her working for him in a month, his campaign gets the money. Anyone else with me?

There are fewer Catholics than non-Christians who vote Democratic. Catholics are split about evenly and are 27% of the electorate, while non-Christians vote Democratic by a 3-to-1 margin and are 20% of the electorate and growing.

Once a mainstay of the Democratic party, Catholics now are a separate bloc. Ignore the 'Catholics vote like everyone else' baloney - they don't. And they are not in step with Evangelicals, either. There is some very good analysis of Catholic voting by Greeley (himself an avowed Democrat) showing that A) Catholics that attend Mass at least once a year are a unique voting bloc B) they do not vote for a single party, but on issues and C) they have 'weathervaned' the last 5 presidential elections.

Early analysis of the 2006 election seems to point to Republicans annoying Catholics as a major issue in their loss.

Also, Bora, Liberal Catholics may be progressive, but even they don't like being called names. Or are you fine with bigotry as long as you don't like the targets, either?

Nobody called the Catholics any names, but the current mediaval-minded Pope is ripe for ridicule and deservedly gets it. Try to dissociate millions of Catholics from their idiotic Pope who they did not elect and did not want in the first place. Haven't you actually read the posts in question - or some of the posts linked here?

Bora,
You know better! After all, you and I often comment in the same threads at Pandagon, don't we? You also know better than to claim Amanda never directly attacks Catholics (she often sounds similar to the hate you spewed here, but more general). She has specifically called Catholics and other Christians racist and genocidal a number of times, let alone such commonplace (to her) terms as deluded, ignorant, stupid, etc., etc. You probably remember the time she and Pam went out of their way to call my wife a "house negro", don't you?
So save the 'she never insults anyone but the Pope, and everyone knows "good" Catholics think the Pope is Teh Ev1l, too!' stuff - well, unless you intend to delete this comment and then scrub the Pandagon archives.
I read Pandagon often, comment there often, and have exchanged personal emails with Amanda on a number of occasions. I even invited her to dinner when she came to Atlanta 2 weeks ago. She's harmless. But she can also be crude, insulting, and tends to attack those she disagrees with. She (and her supporters) need to either admit that this is true or drop the issue.

How many of those 20 million are overlap? After all, I assume a fair number of people who visit Sadly, No! and Alas! A Blog are also regulars at Shake's and Pandagon.

Bora. The new post at Majikthise points to a Time Mag article, desperate to be hip, that perfectly illustrates Ilyka's point [and yours] that this is blowing up so big because it is a culture clash, a collision of MSM media culture and the new media culture of blogging [and the biggest difference? All "truths" need, and readily get, double checking but conversely there is no place for lies to hide.] And how does Time betray their ignorance of new media? Thusly:

But bottling the lightning of blogger authenticity is not easy. Many blogosphere activists suspect anyone signing on with a campaign of selling out. And in the era of drum-tight message control, campaigns are not inclined to tolerate the independence bloggers need to maintain their credibility.

...As if we were all in Rove's message machine, having to dice our lies into sentences that would keep disparate one-issue constituencies placated. That is NOT the kind of campaign Edwards is going to run.

And to think my single boyhood news source was Time Mag. tsk tsk.

greensmile,
You don't think Amanda didn't sell out with that message/ A woman who has spent years writing 'I hope that what I am saying and doing offends those I disagree with' now saying 'I didn't mean to offend anyone' *isn't* selling out? She just disowned a huge volume of her own work!

Instead, join the growing chorus of smart bloggers who are coming out in support of Edwards, Marcotte and McEwen...

Apparently, your standard is intelligence is much lower than mine.

coturnix,

If they're legitimately Catholics (ie. believe the basic doctrines of the Church) then the fact that they "didn't elect" B16 means nothing. They can certainly disagree with him, but it doesn't mean that his authority is any less. Inasmuch as he occupies the seat of Peter, he is the head of the Church.