The Edwards-Marcotte Fiasco

[abb]

Enough on the topic of IMHO.  Stop making these  threads about her.  And please don't end posts with "Thar she blows" or it will be deleted."  And no, I'm not deleting IMHO's comment.  It's not profanity or a personal attack or insult to another member of this forum.   If the topic of John Edwards and Amanda has been exhausted, I'll close the thread.

Not just yet.  Here's more.

http://www.townhall.com/blog/g/b3c122e4-459d-4c86-9b25-217c888a9fea

Monday, February 05, 2007
John Edwards Hired Who???
Posted by: Mary Katharine Ham at 10:20 AM
So, John Edwards-- hero of the working class, good-looking charmer, boyish, non-threatening, velvety Southern presidential aspirant-- hired Amanda Marcotte of the mean-spirited, foul-mouthed, bile-spitting blog, Pandagon as his blog master.

Interesting choice, John. The trick for Democrats is they have to appease the Nutroots by picking someone like Amanda to join the team, but do so without alienating all the normal Americans whose votes they'd like to get. This is much harder to do for Dem candidates than Republican candidates because the left side of the blogosphere just has fewer big bloggers who can finish a post without breaking out the f-bomb or calling for violent acts to be performed on the President of the United States.

Marcotte's one of the worst in this regard. This isn't the kind of blogger that's gonna alienate just uptight Christian North Carolinians with her politics. This is someone who has the potential to alienate pretty much the entire state of North Carolina with her personality (well, except Chapel Hill, which is where she'll be living, safely sheltered from real, reasonable voters). Sounds like a great start to a campaign to me.
 

[macd]

On pandagon.net she blogged:

"In [North Carolina], both women and black people are seen as subhuman objects to be used and abused by white men."

If I was a former Senator from North Carolina with further political aspirations, I would not choose my blog spokesperson (my face on the net) to be someone who called my former constituents a bunch or racist and sexist bigots.

[Epublius]

On pandagon.net she blogged:

"In [North Carolina], both women and black people are seen as subhuman objects to be used and abused by white men."

If I was a former Senator from North Carolina with further political aspirations, I would not choose my blog spokesperson (my face on the net) to be someone who called my former constituents a bunch or racist and sexist bigots.

macd,

That one stood out like a sore thumb!

It was also racist and sexist as hell.

Already trailing by quite a bit before the presidential campaign even gets started in high gear, I don't know why Edwards would jeopardize his NC base by hiring a blogger who is clearly on the radical edge of feminism.

[Bessy]

On pandagon.net she blogged:

"In [North Carolina], both women and black people are seen as subhuman objects to be used and abused by white men."

If I was a former Senator from North Carolina with further political aspirations, I would not choose my blog spokesperson (my face on the net) to be someone who called my former constituents a bunch or racist and sexist bigots.

macd,

That one stood out like a sore thumb!

It was also racist and sexist as hell.

Already trailing by quite a bit before the presidential campaign even gets started in high gear, I don't know why Edwards would jeopardize his NC base by hiring a blogger who is clearly on the radical edge of feminism.

And Edwards himself is a white man.

[Bob In Pacifica]

Epublius, KC Johnson had a column sometime over the weekend about possible strategies behind Edwards and hiring Marcotte. The theory is that the strategy that often wins a party's nomination is to move to the extremes during the primaries and then come back to the center once you get the nomination. There is something to be said about it, but I don't think that Marcotte's theoretical barkings represents any significant slice of the Democratic Party's demographics. If I were to guess I'd say some flunky in the campaign hired her and now the flunky above that flunky is trying to figure out a way to get rid of her. I suspect all of this is a little too far down the chain of command for him to have been directly involved. How this mess gets cleaned up will say a lot more about how his organization is functioning.

I find it interesting how the left side of the blogosphere (where I dwell) is trying to ignore it. The recurring theme is that the Duke case is so 2006 so forget about it already. I saw an explanation that Pandagon was having server problems and that's why some posts were disappearing. I have to refrain from laughter, but having watched the censor do her work we know that that's not true. One interesting post I found was a guy who said, "Gee, I didn't know so many other liberals also hated Amanda Marcotte." So maybe Amanda can bring this country together.

[Bessy]

Epublius, KC Johnson had a column sometime over the weekend about possible strategies behind Edwards and hiring Marcotte. The theory is that the strategy that often wins a party's nomination is to move to the extremes during the primaries and then come back to the center once you get the nomination. There is something to be said about it, but I don't think that Marcotte's theoretical barkings represents any significant slice of the Democratic Party's demographics. If I were to guess I'd say some flunky in the campaign hired her and now the flunky above that flunky is trying to figure out a way to get rid of her. I suspect all of this is a little too far down the chain of command for him to have been directly involved. How this mess gets cleaned up will say a lot more about how his organization is functioning.

I find it interesting how the left side of the blogosphere (where I dwell) is trying to ignore it. The recurring theme is that the Duke case is so 2006 so forget about it already. I saw an explanation that Pandagon was having server problems and that's why some posts were disappearing. I have to refrain from laughter, but having watched the censor do her work we know that that's not true. One interesting post I found was a guy who said, "Gee, I didn't know so many other liberals also hated Amanda Marcotte." So maybe Amanda can bring this country together.

It would be really nice to forget about the Duke case. However since the charges haven't been dropped, it's kind of hard to do.

[Gunslinger]

And no, I'm not deleting IMHO's comment.  It's not profanity or a personal attack or insult to another member of this forum.

I'll risk one observation:

IMHO's comment is certainly a personal insult directed at anyone reading here who also frequents LS.  I don't think it should be deleted, however...best to leave it up for all to see.

[MarkRougemont]

 Bob:
Just read your Our Collective Voice:  http://liestoppers.blogspot.com/2007/02/our-collective-voice-limits-of-social.html

Nice article and I agree with you that she made a mistake trying to link this case to her Social Theory. Facts do trump theory. I alos see where you expressed some "political views" and have taken some critisism because of your vies. I hope that does not discourage you from posting on this and other issues in the future. I also appreciate you trying to discourage another Social Theory at LS expressed by some of the posters there-that of feminist=man hating lesbian. I appreciate you voice of caution and care and I applaud you for an excellent article.

[Sarah]

Bob:
Just read your Our Collective Voice:  http://liestoppers.blogspot.com/2007/02/our-collective-voice-limits-of-social.html

Nice article and I agree with you that she made a mistake trying to link this case to her Social Theory. Facts do trump theory. I alos see where you expressed some "political views" and have taken some critisism because of your vies. I hope that does not discourage you from posting on this and other issues in the future. I also appreciate you trying to discourage another Social Theory at LS expressed by some of the posters there-that of feminist=man hating lesbian. I appreciate you voice of caution and care and I applaud you for an excellent article.

It is an excellent article, and Bob makes some very good points.

Anyone who cared about rape victims or race relations would have urged Nifong to drop this case when the facts started to become clear last April. However, those such as Amanda were so blinded by ideology they could not see the damage they were doing.

Post script: As to the discussion on LS, I do think it is disingenuous to highlight a brief incident when a couple of comments were made about Amanda's blog partner, who writes about her sexuality as a political issue, and suggest that the whole debate was an attack on "man hating lesbians".  I happen to have voted in favor of gay marriage, I see it as an issue about equality, however, I know a lot of people oppose it on religious grounds, that does not necessarily make them bigots or even anti-lesbian.

 

 

[Epublius]

Finnerty can hate gay people if he wises.  It's his right to do so, just as it's his right to think the world is flat or believe in global warming.

The problem is when he acts on those notions in a way that can negatively impact other people.

I don't think Finnerty was acting-out based on any prejudice.  Teeangers and college kids throw words like "gay" and "f@g" around all the time.  I DO think he's a little too pugnacious for his own good.  But, hopefully, this fiasco in Durham as afforded some out-of-class learning.

In case you are not familiar with the testimony it revealed that Finnerty wasn't merely throwing around the word gay [e.g. "That's so gay."] or tossing out the word f@g:

Bloxsom told the court that a drunk Finnerty shoved him and stood close to his ear, shouting, "Say you're a f@g! "  He replied, "I'm a f@g," hoping his pursuers would let him go. Finnerty taunted him further by asking if Bloxsom would perform a sex act on another man.

No Sarah, I don't think Finnerty's religious grounds played a part in his behavior that night.

Not having been there, it's difficult to know for sure.  But, my previous reading of these remarks, and your recap above, still lead me to believe this was less about hatred of homosexuals, and more about testosterone and showing off.

As I said above, I believe Finnerty is a little too pugnacious for his own good.  His behavior seems to have confirmed that.  But, there's hope.  I know a respected circuit court judge who was a thug in college.  The Army cured him.  :)

[Bob In Pacifica]

TL: Enough on the topic of IMHO.  Stop making these  threads about her.  And please don't end posts with "Thar she blows" or it will be deleted."  And no, I'm not deleting IMHO's comment.  It's not profanity or a personal attack or insult to another member of this forum.   If the topic of John Edwards and Amanda has been exhausted, I'll close the thread.

How can you presume most of us here want to talk about someone instead of the case? Don't you understand the process of thread-hijacking? People redirect the thread to another issue, or to themselves, in order to end the discussion. And your solution is that if someone hijacks the thread you will end it? You just encourage the hijackers to continue. You do their work for them. Wouldn't it be better when you see too many posts drifting away from the topic because of a hijacking that you simply delete the hijacking posts? I don't understand how someone who writes such an intelligent blog continues to remain clueless as to the dynamics around here.

Please don't use this one response to your post as an excuse for ending this discussion.

[Epublius]

From an email I got this morning, I'd say the Marcotte matter is hardly over.

Apparently, there are highly-placed people in the Edward's campaign who are not happy about her joining their ranks, and for many of the very reasons posted here.

Using profanity-laced posts and man-hating rhetoric, for whatever reasons, is one thing.  But, deleting them as if to revise history is quite another, and not something Democrats/liberals appreciate.

The Edwards staffer appear less afraid of what Republicans will say than they are about what other Democrats will say.

Ms. Marcotte appears to have the ability to be able to write well.  What a shame that she recklessly impeaches her credibility.  

[Bob In Pacifica]

As I've reported, a commenter in another blog not based on this case said, "Gee, I didn't know so many other liberals hated Amanda Marcotte too."

[SixtiesLiberal]

Back to Marcotte---I'm delighted she's catching flak as a result of her misandric and misinformed rhetoric.

[Epublius]

As I've reported, a commenter in another blog not based on this case said, "Gee, I didn't know so many other liberals hated Amanda Marcotte too."

What surprised me a little is that her hiring has, apparently, already poloarized some highly-placed Edwards' staffers.

Maybe there IS "honor" among thieves* -- well, some thieves.  LOL

(* -  See Edwards' Robin Hood healthcare plan for further details.)