Much Ado About Blogging: The Meaning of the Edwards-Marcotte-McEwan Scandal
Feb 8th, 2007 | 35 responses
I’m sure many of you are already familiar with the details of the Edwards-Marcotte-McEwan scandal (or “scandal,” pseudo-scandal that it is) that has been brewing over the past couple of days. You know, the John Edwards campaign hired two prominent progressive bloggers, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare’s Sister, Catholic extremist William Donohue called them “bigots,” and the Malkin-fueled right-wing machine burst into action against them, demanding that they be fired. And the news media, ever desperate for scandal of any kind, however manufactured, have been lapping it all up.
Well, over at The Reaction, Heraclitus weighs in on the “scandal,” focusing not so much on Marcotte and McEwan themselves but rather on what it says about Edwards on the one hand and Malkin and her ilk on the other. It’s an interesting and rather blunt take.
You can find his post here. (Caution: It includes some foul language.)
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UPDATE: Edwards has decided to keep Marcotte and McEwan (while not approving of some of the language they’ve used in the past).
For additional commentary, see here.
35 Responses to “Much Ado About Blogging: The Meaning of the Edwards-Marcotte-McEwan Scandal”
O.K.
Please try to square the following:
Marcotte writes the following:
And we learn of this from candidate Edwards:
How could ANYONE be gullible enough to beleive that?
If this is representative of John Edwards judgement I wouldn’t want him on my local school board.
But hey, Marcotte’s statement was “anti-Catholic” bigotry and that often finds a more sympathetic ear in this day and age.
sadly.
Neither defending nor assaulting, but… it seems like collegete satire stylistically similar to Family Guy taken a step further aligned with a rant.
I mean, it’s not pretty to look at, but it’s slandering enough of Christianity in general that I sure wouldn’t call it anti-Catholic.
Yes, the accusation of misogyny was just a constructive criticism! It’s too bad that the right wing hate machine had to attack these bloggers and misconstrue their intentions. Good think John Edwards cleared up that whole misunderstanding. Carry on!
PS…I’m thinking maybe I should get together with some women from my parish and make up a sign “Halp us Jon Edwurdz we’re being brainwashed by misogynists!”
BTW, lest anyone should accuse me of being hypersensitive to anti-Catholic bigotry, I’ll take solace knowing that David S will come to my defense.
CS Bill Donohue is on the lead over ths faux scandal. This BD:
In the link John McCains web consultant is brought up, no problems.
I don’t think this story warranted the attention it has gotten.
That said, Iconic Midwest’s quotes are great! If one thing is enjoyable in this story, it is Marcotte being compelled to publicly disavow her own words.
Contrast Marcotte’s words above, with her current comment:
“My intention is never to offend anyone for his or her personal beliefs, and I am sorry if anyone was personally offended by writings meant only as criticisms of public politics,” Marcotte said.”
I am sure she choked on writing those lines hahahaha….
Shakespeare’s Sister is, I am very sure, unaware of Shakespeare’s insightful understanding of the sweet delight in seeing someone “hoist by his own petard”.
Rudi,
BD is a red herring. There are black ‘leaders’ who cry foul over ridiculous stuff, that doesn’t mean that some of what they complain about isn’t true.
CS If the Captain Ed pushed this instead of BD I could accept the story. This is like the savants at LGF telling Edwards who should be on his staff.
Rudi said:”CS If the Captain Ed pushed this instead of BD I could accept the story.”
Actually I first saw this story on CQ.
I don’t particularly care who Edwards feels comfortable working with, but please dont try to tell me Marcotte wasn’t actively trying to offend people. She obviously was.
Hell, by this standard you could claim that Michael Richards wasn’t trying to “offend” anyone. Maybe he was trying to “start a dialogue” with African-Americans?
Of course she was trying to offend people. On a blog. And the apology is forced B.S.
The whole situation is ridiculous, however. I’m glad the sharks found their blood. Maybe they’ll be happier for it.
Rudi,
I’m not defending the strongarming of Edwards to pressure him to fire them. Heck, from my perspective I have to hope that these two give Edwards a silent Howard Dean scream moment. In fact if I was really a devious person I’d be hoping that Hillary would find some nice “respected progressive bloggers” to work on her campaign.
I just felt that your remarks about BD were diverting from the actual offensiveness of the anti-Catholic remarks that were make.
Do you truly see anti-Catholic biggotry in those remarks? Granted, I’m only going on the quote from the first post here in the comments but…
Offensive: yes.
Biggotted: … huh?
Where do we draw the line?
When are you allowed to offensively criticize without being biggotted?
This is getting blown way the heck out of proportion.
egrubs, since you would even ask that question, I know there’s nothing I could say that would persuade you. I think most people can see the difference between criticism and condemnation, especially condemnation that’s based on ignorance (which is a pretty good definition of bigotry in my book.)
Oh, and where is David S when I need him??
CS The offensive argument didn’t work against Webb. The Allen hacks tried to tie him to pedophilia. This is a similar smear for offensive language.
McCains webmaster was working for McCain on the sly while continuing to do a personnel blog. This is worse than offensive speech. If the woman said that Catholics cannot be POTUS, the Kennedy argument, that is anti-Catholic, not gross out diatribes against the Churches stand on the contraception. Maybe if the Wingnuts breed more…..
.
Yet again…another sign atheists or agnostics aren’t going to be able to win a congressional seat, the God people are just too intolerant of us. Hmm…so if someone doesn’t believe in God and they jokingly make fun of someone’s faith, that’s somehow worse then somehow who’s not joking at all telling an atheist or agnostic that they are going to Hell (which means being burned, and tortured, and have awful inhuman things done to you)for not believing, or in my case doubting, the existence of God. I just don’t get it. What happened to, “Judge lest ye be judged,” or, “he who is without sin throw the first stone.” I’ve come to the conclusion that people do dumb things, and if the person recognizes their mistakes to forgive them for it. I don’t need religion to tell me that, its common sense. Why does it seem like today’s religious righty’s are the most judgemental of all? And please, anti-catholic bigotry is bad you say? How about be a Muslim living in America right now. Or an atheist. Or even an Evangelical Christian. Either of those three have had tons of media exposure maligning their views, distorting their messages, and creating hysteria about their religion. We have a War in Iraq, Global Warming, Terrorism Abroad, Economic Instability in the near future, Job instability, and infrastructure decay in our country. It seems like we’d have better things to worry about.
CS, I’m catholic and I wasn’t offended.
Actually this is funny in one way only.
A person makes a obviously insulting remark concerning those who believe in Jesus Christ, and the Catholics decide it’s directed at them.
Why leave out the Southern Baptists, Espiscopalians, Methodists, etc?
I don’t want to put any ideas in the heads of folks, but do you sense a bit of Catholic as Superior Christians at play here?
I am an atheist, and there is no doubt in my mind that these comments are not ‘jokingly make fun of someone’s faith’, ‘collegete satire stylistically similar to Family Guy taken a step further’, or ‘offensively criticize without being biggotted’.
They are not anti-Catholic per se, and in reality not even anti-Christian, IMO. They are anti-religion. How else to explain comment ‘justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology’?
This is a person who has demonstrated throughout the sum of her postings a great hostility towards religion, men, and ‘red state’ values, if you will.
I have no need or desire to see her fired, but it is dis-ingenious to claim that criticism of her is unfounded and driven only by right-wing bigots, and shows that an atheist can never be elected.
I firmly believe an atheist can and will, as long as they aren’t hostile to religion in general, and this appointment does show at the least an insensitivity to religion.
I don’t agree with him at all (the word political albatross comes to mind), but I’ll give Edwards points for balls, for keeping them. We’ll see how it works out. Personally, I think we’ll see something else in the next few months.
Hopefully the blogosphere is put on notice that you can make future career choices improbable by saying things beyond the pale.
Mmmm politics, it’s whats for breakfast.
Good old fashioned right wing nit-picking attack mode folks, nothing new here. Recipe: find something no matter how small like a small comment or remark, whip it to a foaming froth within the furthest reaches of the far right of your bowl. Sling the outraged froth to all corners of the media to see if it sticks, then repeat untill froth recedes hopefully damaging any targets it hits, and hopefully taking a few people down.
Lovely recipe used often when lack of substance is a problem, concoction often prepared for church socials, or cases of warhawking. Also known as outrage fluff, often nothing more than air with little substance, serve cold.
Woohoo! We have uncovered a rabidly anti-mystical biggot. (Er, not anti-mystical…anti-religion. (Er, not anti-religion, anti-religion-assumed-to-be-used-to-justify-mysogyny.))
Look. It’s offensive. I doubt anyone is arguing, “I don’t see how this could be offensive.” Step back and look at what you’re protesting here. You’re protesting offensively, bad taste that pre-dates employment by someone not even publicly running for office.
This is worse than the silly string of nannygates from a decade ago.
(Plus, it is kind of funny.)
For those who don’t get the anti-Catholic angle, it’s because of the Catholic church’s stance on birth control.
For those that think that too much is being made of it, whose response to it are you criticizing? If you say that people shouldn’t have demanded that these people be fired, I agree. But my opinion is that if a candidate hires someone who expresses opinions in this manner, there WILL be offense taken in the sense that this whose communication style is being chosen to represent him.
I’m not asking for them to be fired (nor defending those who did), I’m not advocating violence against them, I’m not taking to the streets demonstrating against them, I’m not saying their speech shouldn’t be allowed.
What I would like though, is for decent people who identify as moderates to respond to that kind of criticism of a religious belief by saying that it is an inappropriate way to criticize. Instead, the consensus is “no big deal”, “these are respected progressive bloggers”, “everybody has lapses”, etc. I’ll repeat what I said earlier, my hopes for rational discussions between people on different ends of the political spectrum are crushed when I see moderates reacting that way.
Chuck,
I don’t know if you follow the Church’s teachings on sexuality or birth control (and don’t really wanna know lOL). For those of us who do, this kind of comment is insulting because it leaves no room to acknowledge that anyone could rationally accept the teaching (and the comment shows ignorance of the real reasons for the teaching, which has nothing to do with oppression of women.)
Well, speaking as a “Recovering Catholic”…I don’t really care what the woman says about Catholicism. She means to provoke…ignore her.
As a conservative, I am VERY VERY pleased that she is still on Edwards’ team. When one is so filled with bile as is Marcotte, it will have to come out sometime. Recall FireDogLake sticking Lieberman in “Blackface” in a Photoshop…and Lamont having to scurry to dissociate himself.
Remember, Edwards’ base in N.Carolina. The Duke case is raging in that state, and Marcotte has made clear she things the white boys should go down for being white boys.
Marcotte will not be able to restrain herself. There will be an eruption at some point…she is a ticking time-bomb at the heart of the Edward’s camp!
Hillary has got to be pretty pleased today.
Yea, I agree with Marlowecan . The smart move is to wait until the Edward’s campaign shows momentum. Then you bring the fact that he has left wing lunatics working for him. Believe me, these two have written much worse.
CS, I can certainly agree with the “inappropriate way to criticize” comment. I also call it intellecually lazy and down right rude.
Also, I haven’t read too much by her, but she would seem a poor match for Edwards’ faith based breed of Democrat, but he’s not my favorite dem either so I don’t much care what blunders he makes. However, I do wish that insead of his ‘she didn’t mean anything by it’ BS Edwards had been more honest and said ‘I don’t agree with some of their comments and sentiments but I don’t think that means we can’t work together towards those goals we share in common such as blah blah blah”
The most interesting part of this story to me is the jarring results of bringing a blogger who seems to be popular partially because of their passionate, sometimes over the top rants, gets brought into our main streem culture with its high levels of scrutiny.
Go read her blog and then comment .I think some of you might change your minds .
Here is a nice bit on her take of the Duke rape fraud :
Published by Amanda Marcotte April 10th, 2006
According to the attorneys for the defense of the Duke gang rape case, there’s no DNA evidence linking any of the lacrosse team to the crime. That seems to be pretty cut and dry, there, though I’m suspicious of defense claims that even if condoms were used, there would be DNA evidence–that’s typical trying-in-the-press lawyerly claims. However it goes, I expect that the lack of DNA evidence alongside the huge privilege gap between alleged rapists and the alleged victim will now result in the termination of this case. This is not to say that I think the alleged victim is lying, though there’s of course the remote chance of that. But there probably isn’t going to be enough evidence now to prove it either way.
Prediction: The people screaming about innocence until guilt is proven in court in defense of the rapists will not hesitate to accuse this woman sans evidence of maliciously filing a fake police report.
or how about this gem:
Amanda Marcotte Apr 10th, 2006 at 10:53 pm That’s because yours is a bullshit question. If they don’t have enough evidence, they won’t prosecute. I find it fascinating as hell that when someone is accused of rape, and only rape, all of a sudden there’s this huge contigency of defenders of holding the highest possible standards of “reasonable doubt�.
The problem here is like Quart said–people are simple minded about justice and assume that “not guilty� is equivalent to “innocent�. If it was, the courts would say “innocent�. They just say they can’t prove guilt. Woman haters want to exploit this misconception in order to strip away what little ability society has to keep rape in check by making it impossible for women to press charges because rape accusations are to be set aside as the only kind of accusation where the victim is expected to have an airtight case in order to call the police. I hardly think that if you were mugged, you’d feel it was right to have to put together a roster of DNA evidence, fingerprints and eyewitnesses together before calling the cops in order to make damn sure that you weren’t sent to jail instead.
Setting aside rape accusations as a punishable offense, even without a shred of evidence, has only one purpose–to make rape legal in any practical sense. Anyone who argues for prosecuting rape victims for being raped in a way insufficient to prove it, even though they could hardly control the situation or else they wouldn’t have been raped, is arguing for the legalization of rape, QED
Or how about her notion regarding defending violence :
The more helpless the victim, the more defensible the violence
Published by Amanda Marcotte April 19th, 2006 in Conservatism
Right now there are two cases of groups of college students acting out of control and possibly violent that are burning up the blogosphere. First you have the students from Santa Cruz that blocked military recruiters from entering their school in a confrontation that seems to have had some violent overtones to it. Then of course you have the Duke rape case, which even with the caveat that there’s a slim chance a rape didn’t happen, it’s clear that the lacrosse team members did something to scare the shit out those women and that shared fantasizing about violence against women was part of the fun.
Suffice it to say, the two cases are being received much differently by the right punditry. The Santa Cruz peace group is being called “seditious� and had Michelle Malkin release their private information on her blog so they could get death threats from her readers. As I mentioned yesterday, Kathleen Parker compared the Duke lacrosse team to lynching victims (missing the much more apt comparison of them to lynchers due to the whites-ganging-up-on-one-black-person aspect) and even vaguely implied they were martyrs like Christ. Charlotte Allen is running a series on the Duke rape case called “Crying Rape�, which she says means “accusing someone of rape�, but for some reason she felt that the phrasing that implies to most of us that the victim is lying worked better. The good news is so far I haven’t seen any right wingers fantazing about another Kent State at UC Santa Cruz, and believe me, I looked.
But what strikes me about the two incidents is that they are both good examples of how violent acting out is derived from feelings of entitlement. The Santa Cruz kids felt entitled to run the recruiters off campus because they feel the campus belongs to them and they should have the right to run people off their property. At bare minimum, the Duke lacrosse team felt entitled to humiliate the strippers they hired because they were women and they were even paid for. At worst, they felt entitled to gang rape a woman for those reasons.
I’m inclined to think that the Santa Cruz students might have a right to do what they did, because I’m convinced that they, as the actual students at the school, are entitled to their claim to the school, and especially that they have a stronger claim to it than the military recruiters. It’s hard for me to quarrel with people in the age group that’s being targeted to fight BushCo’s colonialist adventures when they resist that recruitment, even to the point of violence. Since their motivations are understandable to me, it’s hard for me to be anything less than half-hearted in my condemnation of it.
Which is what makes language like Parker’s or David Brooks’ rape apologies–they argue that it’s quite understandable that boys will go bananas and rape someone if they are exposed to a woman shaking her ass, which makes any condemnation of such things come across as half-assed and shallow. Just as my disinclination to jump all over the Santa Cruz students speaks volumes about my agreement that they’re entitled to claim campus space for the students instead of the military, conservatives who white wash the Duke rape case are speaking volumes about what entitlements they are willing tolerate, in this case, white male entitlement to abuse women and get away with it, especially if they are of the wrong sex class or wrong skin color.
For all those upset about Edwards webmaster I recommend the Rude Pundit, now this is something the Wingnuts can be upset about.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2005/12/rape-david-brooks-to-save-america-let.html
For those with an appreciation of satire there is Jesus General.
http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/
Or Sadly No:
http://www.sadlyno.com/
Or Rush Limbughs favs. Scrappleface
http://www.scrappleface.com/
There is alot worse than these two women.
Rudi said :
There is alot worse than these two women.
Sure, and there are worse things to contract than cancer.
how does cancer relate to bloggs and this thread?
Rudi,
I think the point is, we shouldn’t have to think that something is as bad as it can get in order to feel that it merits some criticism.
Kim,
Thanks for the point of agreement that the type of criticism meted out by Marcotte is inappropriate. Not, of course, that she shouldn’t be allowed to say it, but that she shouldn’t say it, and if she chooses to do so, that reasonable people should then say that her remarks are offensive and not worthy of being taken seriously.
Davebo stated:
You know, I provided a link for a reason. Click on the link and it makes it clear Marcotte’s remarks were part of an anti-Catholic rant.
Although I agree with you that Amanda is probably an equal opportunity bigot.
I have thought Sen Edwards was a joke with regard to this campaign for a long time – he’s run in 3 elections, and two of them he LOST.
Don’t forget, Edwards lost to Kerry, who was the ultimate cypher-candidate in 2004.
I agree with Iconic Midwest at the top: by hiring bloggers who are way outside of the mainstream (and are offensive about it), and then tamely accepting faux-apologies, Sen. Edwards has shown that he does not have the judgement necessary to make decisions about staffing. As that’s one of the primary jobs of the US President, he’s thus shown himself unfit, and he could do us all a favor by dropping out now.