Does John Edwards Condone Hate Speech?Apparently Marcotte attempted to edit the Pandagon archives to appear less unbalanced:
A bit of a tempest is brewing over the strident and profanity-laced writings of John Edwards' official campaign "blogmaster," Amanda Marcotte. She joined the Edwards campaign last week, and she's already gotten a lot of attention.
Part of what lends the Marcotte episode such a comic aspect, however, is the timing and nature of her post and later revision. Her vitriolic rant asserting the lacrosse players' guilt was posted a mere two weeks ago, almost certainly at a point after (as the Atlanta airport reference indicates) she had already entered talks with the Edwards campaign and thus had reason to know that she might soon come under the heightened scrutiny accorded to an official spokesperson. These were not the impulsive utterances of a Net Newbie. Moreover, the temperate-sounding new "official stance" with which she replaced the scrubbed post is ludicrously different in both tone and content from the rant it replaced; at a quick reading, one might even take it for a defense of the lacrosse players. A closer examination of its dodgy language, however, reveals that she does not actually take anything back; there is no indication that she has reconsidered her view of Jan. 21 or sees it as being in need of actual correction.And now it seems they've been "let go."
As for whether Marcotte was just having a bad day and slipped into an abusiveness that is unrepresentative of her usual tone, even a cursory glance through her output at Pandagon makes clear that there is much more embarrassment for the Edwards campaign to come: a few examples are collected at LieStoppers (scroll to "Earlier Comments"), Michelle Malkin, and Creative Destruction.
But that's not what's so funny.
This is just my way of setting up a reason to watch these two videos of conservative hottie Michelle Malkin doing an impression of Marcotte whilst blogging, in her own words, which highlights a lack of judgment on the part of the Edwards campaign.
Watch and laugh!
Part 1.
Part 2.
See here and here for more links to original source material.
And the indispensible Belmont Club opines with the deeper analysis:
The underlying problem was that Edwards wanted the Netroots crowd on his campaign but didn't want them to represent themselves. He probably wanted the Netroots people to stand silently on his stage against a backdrop of bunting and vaguely patriotic organ music while he declaimed solemnly in the foreground. Unfortunately Edwards put them where they could unload what was coiled up in their minds. People have often assumed that the Internet has been unkind to the Left because it has allowed conservatives to evade Mainstream Media censorship. But maybe the game worked the other way round. Possibly the greatest function the MSM [previously] fulfilled was to sanitize the Left's own speech. To liberally apply the cut and paste and where necessary, the Memory Hole. The Internet has been bad for the Left because it allows its members to come through directly with the public.
...
The interesting thing about the post at Shakespeare's Sister is the argument that the "Right Wing blogosphere" made Edwards fire the Netroots people:
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.
There is in this type of thinking a curious duality. The Right Wing is on the one hand, regarded as omnipotent. Creating monstrous weapons; assassinating Presidents; preparing a military takeover; orchestrating global conspiracies, engineering the deaths of billions, getting John Edwards to fire his bloggers by unexplained telepathic means. But at the same time it is pathetically weak. Unable to defeat any enemies anywhere. Always being "slaughtered" in combat with enemies -- who they are elsewhere killing in droves -- witness the Lancet report. Somehow the Right Wing has these special weapons capable of massacreing women and children by the million while mysteriously missing anyone who presents himself as an enemy. Or turning John Edwards into a Zombie. It's amazing.
But I've long since stopped thinking. "Ok. Now they'll snap out of it, they've gone so far." It's possible they'll never snap out of it. Not if a nuke, biological weapon and nerve gas weapon signed and delivered by Osama himself detonated in their living rooms. Not if aliens from the Coma Cluster materialized on their doorsteps. I'm still trying to come to terms with the implications of that possibility.
