After writing her side of the story in Salon, Amanda Marcotte is quite busy in the media these days, making various apperances on radio, including NPR's DayTo Day next week. She will also be joining TPM Cafe and has a post up on Huffington Post: Think Tanks, 503s and Rush Limbaugh--What's The Real 'Soft Money'
Now, Melissa McEwen published her take on the whole affair in Guardian: My life as a rightwing target. Check the comments and tell me that the Rightwingers are not delusional, dangerous psychopaths. And they are in the White House right now. (Oh, and if anyone thinks that Amanda and Melissa were wimps for quitting, you should read this)
I think that Donohue has jump-started their careers. And what they will do, now that they have more prominent soap boxes, is reveal to everyone how the Rightwing sliming machine works, how it is financed, and how it can be counteracted.
What Donohue has done successfully is make the story of Amanda and Melissa be framed as Bloggers vs. Edwards. And it pains me to see how many on the Left bit that bait (and hook and sinker). It is a multi-faceted story about the Rightwing sliming machine and how it works. It is also a story about the way the Party Establishment (both Left and Right) resists the democratization of the political process (it is the old-Millennium, dinosaur, computer-illiterate campaign managers who, I guess, wanted to get rid of the bloggers in the first place until Edwards stepped in and said No). It is also a story about the way Media resents the citizen journalism and the many-to-many conversation of the new media unrestrained by the he-said-she-said tropes. It is a story about the Beltway protecting their turf against the "rubes."
If this is the future, we are now in the middle of the war between the powers of the Old-Way-Of-Doing-Things that tends to protect the old power sturucture, and the New Way that gives the little man a say and overturns the old power structure.
Check out this Salon editorial as an example of this turf-protection. It is all about silencing the people. As I stated before, the netroots ARE the grassroots. It is the same people who knock on doors and donate money. Except, this time around, they do not just take orders and write checks, they have the means to talk back and tell the campaigns what to do (or to shove it). Of course the campaign managers used to the old way of thinking are afraid of the new world.
Here is another example from ABC: Loose Lips in the Blogosphere Don't Sink Presidential Ships
I hate the subtitle - what do they mean by "even Edwards" when everyone (including the techies with no political axe to grind) agrees he is the leader on the use of Internet and netroots: his website is by far the best, he announced to the bloggers first, then by video on YouTube, then by Video and post on his own website, and only the next day announced to the MSM dinosaurs down in New Orleans. He hired and (stood by in spite of calls for their heads) two of the most outspoken and popular feminist bloggers. He is prominently present and active on all social networking sites, not just MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Del.icio.us and Facebook, but also the second-tier places, like Gather.
There are 199 Groups on Facebook for Edwards. The two biggest ones have 2,126 members and 1,849 members respectively - the rest are smaller, mainly due to being geographically restricted. Barack Obama has more than 500 groups, with the biggest one having 5,002 members and the others being small, local chapters. So, even including the overlap (people joining more than one group), there is not such a huge advantage for Obama on Facebook as the Media likes to point out. Edwards is right behind.
And he is the first candidate on Second Life. Yes, on Second Life! If you have no idea what that is, or if you want to know what techies and politicos think, follow the links here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Also, note that in fundraising, Hillary Clinton is expected to raise $100 million from the Beltway power-mongers and Holywood, Obama somewhat less, from the same sources, while Edwards is expected to raise about $50 million mostly from small online donations. He is killing all other candidates together in such donations through ActBlue ($860,861.35, compare that to Richardson's two separate funds at $284,916.57 and $10,154.85 and Obama's $16,885.56).
Oh, and if you do not believe Edwards stood by his bloggers and does not understand the netroots, I hope you watched the Situation Room earlier today (there should be a YouTube clip of it here soon). Listen to his defense of the bloggers and phrases like: "I stood by them," "new brave world with the net and the blogosphere," "a powerful world which will have a huge effect," "grassroots politics at it's best," etc. Here is the clip:
As for the bloggers, Jude, aka Iddybud, has an excellent take on the bloggers saga and Dave Neiwert takes another look at the 'Christofascists' who are Unhinged indeed. Also read important posts by Ampersand, Jeffrey Feldman and Richard Cranium.
And finally, let's look again at the posts for which Amanda got so much flak from Donohue and his ogre minions. They are about Plan B. Here are Part I and Part II.
She is not the only blogger explaining Plan B and why the opposition to it by wingnuts (including but not only Catholics) is bad politics and bad public health. For instance, Ema of Well-Timed Period blog wrote at least two posts on it here and here. PZ Myers of Pharyngula wrote about it here, here and here. DarkSyde of DailyKos wrote about it here and Bitch, PhD wrote about it many times, most recently here.
Is there any difference between these posts? They all get the facts about Plan B right. They all demonstrate that the opposition to it is hypocritical and based on mysogyny. And they are all written in typically blogospheric colorful language. Yes, those who deserved to be insulted got insulted. Now, tell me. If any campaign hired any of these bloggers to work on the technical and esthetic parts of their campaign blogs, don't you think Donohuse and his basement monsters would not come out against them? Of course they would - their goal never was to destroy the careers of Amanda Marcotte and Meilissa McEwen. Their goal is to undermine a Democrat - any Democrat - running for President because their job (for which Donohue is paid $300,000) is to go on TV and lie for Republicans. It has nothing to do with these two bloggers, it has to do with silencing the voices of the people who are actually telling the truth as it is, as opposed to The Truth as the conservatives want "to create" for themselves.
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If the comments on the Guardian are any indication of what McEwen faced, it's no wonder she resigned.
It's so funny to see the right-wing cry-babies once again flood the comment threads of both posts. These people are a perfect example of why cults (religions) exist.
Here we have another example of how absurd 'hating the sin and loving the sinner' is in a context other than homosexuality. Miss Marcotte made a comment that was offensive to Catholics, but instead of having her comment [or sin] ridiculed and condemned, she is herself persecuted and threatened along with Miss McEwen.
When arguing against Catholicism, we can probably use examples like this to perform the same function as the inquisition and the crusades. Although this affair thankfully lacks actual bloodshed, the fact that it is a present-day affair lends it extra power.
PZ and DarkSyde never used red meat phrases like "Hot, white sticky Holy Spirit." PZ has said some unsavory things about religion in general, but nobody's ever contrasted Amanda with PZ. The people I personally contrast her with stylistically are Lindsay and Ezra, who just don't say anything of that sort.
Ezra is right about this whole affair: Edwards had no idea who he was hiring when he asked Amanda to come on board.
Don't be naive. Have you read the stuff linked in this post?
Why did Melissa also have to quit? For what quotes?
Do you remember they tried to put Amanda down initially for the Duk elacrosse case quote? And it didn't stick because nobody is sympathetic to the Duke boys except for the card-carying members of Men's Rights and White Power organizations. So, they found another quote and invented "anti-Catholicism".
Any blogger can be quoted for something that they can pretend they are "insulted by". Whil PZ's posts on Plan B are tame, if he gets hired, for instance, to build Al Franken's website and blog, the wingnuts will find something offensive for sure. That goes pretty much for every blogger except those very few who started out with political ambitions (like Ezra) and thus used the medium in a much more tame way keeping this in mind.
My blog is pretty tame, but I have stated in the past that conservatism is a psychopathology, I have used the term "Christofascist", I have impied that today's American conservatives are proto-fascists, and I have called Horowitz an a**hole. Does this mean that all bloggers are forerver disabled from working for a campaign? That is exactly what the entire Donohue episode (and the MSM going along with and all the other campaign keeping mum about) was designed to accomplish.
Our fighting back is the only hope. The bastards appointed a pResident, Shanghai'd our Constitution, handed the keys to our Treasury to Halliburton, as well as inciting a Holy Crusade. We have to win big now or lose America.
These are two different issues. Amanda had to quit because she said things that Donohue could blow out of proportion, and because Edwards stuck by her halfheartedly. Melissa had to quit because of a spillover effect.
Actually, you're a pretty good example of what I'm saying. Even as you call conservatism pathological, you do it in the form of long, theoretical posts. That's how you're supposed to do it; not coincidentally, that's the formula conservative thinktanks adopted.
No, but if bloggers post stuff like that then they should not be surprised when politicians are, quite reasonably, reluctant to put them in high-ranking positions in their campaign--and, if you look at it from a strictly political standpoint, rightly so. Nor should they be surprised when their previous words come back to haunt them and the candidate for whom they work. In the case of your use of PZ as an example, it wouldn't be a matter of rightwingers looking for something offensive written by hime. They wouldn't have to look far at all or "pretend" to be offended. PZ has written a fair amount of stuff that's offended and pissed off me, and I'm hardly a rightwinger. That doesn't mean that I don't respect him and admire his work, but it would be very easy to find a lot that would offend lots of people in his blo and use it against whatever candidate he worked for, if he worked in a very publicly visible role. (Working in less visible and less important roles would probably not be affected.) So your example isn't so good, because PZ's intentionally offensive rants against religion would pretty much guarantee that he won't be hired by a politician running for major office any time soon. Yes, the lefties might love it if he were hired, for example, to work on Al Franken's campaign in a public role, but it ain't likely to happen Politicians have to appeal to a wide constituency, particularly for statewide or national offices. With few exceptions, they have a word for politicians who forget that simple fact during an election: the losing candidate.
Oh, and maybe by blogospheric standards your blog may be tame (although I would dispute that), but by the standards of national political campaigns it most definitely is not.
Finally, the more I read about this whole kerfluffle, the less I understand what the big deal is. For one thing, I gave up reading Pandagon a long time ago because, quite frankly, it irritated me. For another thing, I've never been as impressed with Amanda as a writer as you, PZ, and a number of others seem to be. Be that as it may and even if my opinion about her writing is unsupportable, Edwards obviously had no clue about some of the more--shall we say?--vociferous writings of his newly hired bloggers. If he did know about them, then his political instincts are perhaps not as good as you think they are.
You and I may scoff at, for example, Michelle Malkin's "dramatic readings" of some of Amanda's prose as ridiculous, but I looked at the video again and tried to imagine it would play to my parents and my in-laws, all of whom are staunch union-style Democrats. Even though they all detest Malkin, they would nonetheless be appalled that the Edwards campaign would hire someone who regularly writes such things to a very public role in his campaign. This would particularly be true of my parents, who are both devout Catholics, although I can just picture my mother-in-law saying, "Oh, mercy, what IS wrong with that woman?" No Democrat can expect to win the Presidency if he alienates voters like my parents and in-laws, and particularly not Catholics.
You have to remember that the blogosphere is not the real world. Basically, this whole thing is a tempest in a teapot, and we all should have seen the end of the story coming right from the beginning. Hiring Amanda was a strategic blunder on Edward's part, and it backfired.
Do you remember they tried to put Amanda down initially for the Duk elacrosse case quote? And it didn't stick because nobody is sympathetic to the Duke boys except for the card-carying members of Men's Rights and White Power organizations.
I'm sympathetic towards anyone who gets caught up by the unethical actions of a DA who runs roughshod over a person's rights for his own agenda. Although the lacrosse players may be drunken fratboys who hire strippers, the last I heard,such people are supposed to be equal under the law. Marcotte's post about this was inexcusable.
And, no, I don't carry cards for either such organizations.
There was NOBODY good in that case, not the boys, not the girls, not Nifong, not the lawyers, not the University, not the media, not the bloggers, so it is hard to be sympathetic towards any of them, even if one really WANTS to root for one side or another. That's why that did not catch on.
Bora, it wasn't just the wingnuts who were disgusted with the bloggers' postings. It's NOT a smear to point out their anti-religious garbage.
To this day, they REFUSE to take any responsibility for their actions. They absolutely do not understand they cannot maintain private blogs while working on a political campaign in an official capacity.
Sure, their "careers" will be jumpstarted, if people like badly-written screeds against groups fashionable to be bigoted against, but the rest of the world simply won't care about this matter.
If people like badly-written screed against groups fashionable to be bigoted against (e.g., women, gays, blacks, foreigners, atheists, liberals...), they will read Right wing blogs. There is no rational reason NOT to expose religion and supertition for what it is - and while teh truth hurts the believers, this does not mean the screed is badly written - quite the opposite: better it is written, more the Truth touches all the right nerves.
Orac, what you say about how reputation-sensitive a national political campaign job is [and should be, for some roles] true enough and given that, Edwards, a nice guy and a Methodist, or somebody working for him, made a very contorversial choice. Tempest in a teapot is what many in the mass media, the large circulation papers and the networks, are fervently hoping..so much so that, for instance, even though Time Mag had an article up on its website about the flap, CNN cancelled showing an interview with Amanda that it had already taped...why? The Time write up clearly depicted blogging as too loose a cannon to be used in national campaigning...what are they afraid of? There have been, there are and doubtless will be bloggers as members of staff for national campaigns from here on out. These people don't owe us any answers just the sponsors and the organzed pressure groups. Maybe they realized that interview was just advertising their own competition.
At any rate, its a dismal rung in the ladder that blogging as alternative to controlled news and opinion sources must climb.
Why do you blog?
"There is no rational reason NOT to expose religion and supertition for what it is"
Can the Democratic Party afford to write off the religious left / peace church (several mainstream Protestant denominations at this point, as well as a major strand of Catholicism), the black churches, Mormons (Harry Reid), and Catholic Hispanics?
Bora,
Yeah, brilliant - write off the motive force behind abolition, the civil rights movement, and other major progressive movements in this country and expect to win with a progressive candidate. The majority of people in America are religious; without at least some of them, you can't win an election. There are a fair number of Democrats who happen to be religious that are upset not only by the hiring of Amanda and Melissa, but more upset by the number of 'progressive' allies that are now attacking all religious people, regardless of their outlook.
You are doing Edwards (a Methodist, I believe) no favors.
You've read all of my posts on this issue and you know that I am speaking here a) for myself, and b) long-term, not 2008. I have stated before that Edwards has to appease the religious - as he did - because of the Zeitgeist. In this Millennium, unfortunately, some people are still ascribing to religious dogmas and superstitions. Edwards is doing the pragmatic thing for which I commend him. I am lamenting here that this is what he has to do at this day and age.
Bora,
You know, I do a lot of research and writing into these very topics and I do my best to be on the cutting edge of demographics and socialization research. The 22nd Century is going to be more religious than today. Indeed, the current decade may be the high water mark of secularism. How do you propose dealing with that major shift?
I've seen that research and it is bogus. Biased due to being done by people who are themselves religious and wish for the rest of the world to become religious as well. It is about as good research as Intelligent Design Creationism. The general trend over the past couple of hundred years is away from religion. Look at Europe. Globalization and techonological advances in transportation and communicaiton are bound to inspire some resistance by the religious making the apperance of resurgence of religion due to the high volume and pitch of their whining. But that is a swan's song. Once Islamic cultures get over the hump (and they will - inevitably, there's no other way), religion will either turn into something benevolent or go away to be replaced by a different kind of belief required for the feeling of group identity and belonging.
Bora,
Your prejudices are blinding you, again. You're telling me that you are both familiar with Prof. Eric Kauffman's work *and* know that he is, somehow, not just a demographer, but also a biased liar? You have examined Jennings, Stokers, Bowers 2001 from Berkeley and have found flaws? You can prove that McDevitt of U-Colo is a partisan hack? When Strike was arguing (just as you do) that Liberals must be aggressively intolerant of religion, his belief that this is critical because his own research shows an increase in religious population over the next 100 years reveals that he is improperly ideologically motivated?
C'mon, Bora - this is simple math! Very Liberal and Very Conservative parents have children that share their parents' worldviews 80% of the time, roughly. Very conservative women tend to have twice as many children (or more) than Very Liberal women. Extrapolate over 4 generations and bingo! A more religious world. The end of the 'secularization trend' in Europe was well-documented and well-tested before you left there and further research has shown that these trends are intensifying. This includes research from that bastion of Conservative religiosity, Karl Marx University in Germany.
Oh, gosh! This silly argument has been debunked so many times! I can't believe you still hang on to it? Only stupid David Brooks and you still believe it.
First of all, from a guy who thinks that there is "scientific evidence" that people who disagree with you on politics do so because of mental illness/not enough hugs, the general sentiment is a riot.
Second of all, attacking me instead of the data is a great way to promote yourself as a man of reason - way to go! Why not just, oh, I don't know, imitate me by naming some scientist who have 'debunked' this? Some papers? A link or two? I mean, I have 10+ articles on my blog about this with citations and links, you have... well, you say 'nuh-uh'.