Why Amanda Marcotte quit the Edwards campaign: In her own words

Amanda at The Sugar Factory, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

John Edwards' former blogmaster Amanda Marcotte explains why she had to resign after only two weeks.

Looking back, it's interesting to see how many abortive attempts the right made to slime Amanda before they got any traction in the mainstream media.

First they tried a "blogger ethics" angle, but that went nowhere. Turns out, the rest of the world doesn't care whether bloggers delete, rewrite, or accidentally delete their own writing from their personal blogs.

Next, the right wingers tried to paint Amanda as an unhinged radical. Still no dice. Michelle Malkin's video parody of Amanda just made Malkin look crazy and vindictive.

The profanity angle got a little traction, but it wasn't enough to propel the story to the front pages.

The scandal didn't really hit prime time until Bill Donohue and the Catholic League set upon Amanda and Shakes for "anti-Catholic bigotry." Now, that was an angle that the AP, the New York Times, and the right wing noise machine could agree on.

In the end, Amanda and Shakes were hounded out of their jobs by a right wing mob baying for blood. The Edwards campaign agreed to keep them on, but there was nothing they could do.

Bill Donohue had already decided to take down two young feminists and the right wing blogosphere was only too happy to help him do it. The fact that Donohue kept up his campaign against McEwan after Amanda left shows how venal and frivolous Donohue is. Melissa was guilty by association simply for being young feminist blogger who was hired at the same time as Amanda. I'm sure we all look alike to Donohue.

The elite media seemed almost smug at the downfall of bloggers. The general sentiment seemed to be that Amanda, Shakes, and the Edwards camp were just asking for it.

(Salon used this photo of Amanda to illustrate the story.)

Comments

[Geek, Esq.]

This whole things serves as a cold reminder that anything you write on your blog can and will be used against you.

In the end, there is a fundamental inconsistency between being a blogger willing to say whatever you want however you want on one hand and occupying a visible role in political campaigns.

Donohue really needs to have his tax-exemption stripped.

[Thomas]

This is a pyrrhic victory for the right anyway. Before this, Amanda was only famous in the blogosphere. Now, her name has currency in the wider political community, and it could end up raising her profile substantially if she stays visible in the coming weeks. As of today, she's in the short list of bloggers known to people who don't read blogs. It could stay that way.

[TomK]

This isn't about catholicism or feminism, it's about an outspoken atheist participating in politics.

[Bruce/Crablaw]

When Donohue came after Marcotte and McEwen, he came after all of us.

Even if you disagree with the particular writings of Marcotte or McEwenor their rhetorical style or content, or disagree with their hire by Team Edwards, if you blog against the Team Winger, the bell tolls for thee.

Even if you are a devout Roman Catholic and attend Mass daily, if you oppose the right-wing machine and you blog, the bell tolls for thee.

Even if you are not a feminist, or are a man, if you blog in opposition of the goals of this disgraceful right-wing media assassination squad, the bell tolls for thee.

I agree with Driftglass: I, too am Spartacus. We are all Spartacus.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I think the Edwards campaign made some serious miscalculations when they decided to hire high-profile liberal bloggers to run their official campaign blogs.

A campaign blog is supposed to be the campaign's daily blotter. If I had been hiring bloggers, I would have chosen people with good contacts in the blogosphere, but not star bloggers.

There's a structural problem: You don't become a star in the partisan/polemical blog world without saying a lot of controversial stuff. But it's those activists and polemicist bloggers who are going to be willing to take jobs with campaigns. The journalistically oriented bloggers like Ezra and Josh Marshall would never drop their reporting careers to be campaign operatives. They value their independence.

Star bloggers are wasted on campaigns because everything they do has to be on-message. Better to have non-descript bloggers who have the right connections to independent bloggers.

[Eric Jaffa]

Amanda Marcotte wasn't driven out of her job for being a woman or a feminist. It's that she called religous mythology "mythology."

People who believe that there is an invisible man-in-the-sky, or pretend to believe that, are allowed to push around those of us who say that there is no invisible man-in-the-sky.

Atheists need to speak out. If you want to join an atheist group near you, you can find one with:
www.meetup.com

[Dennis Perrin]

Some words of advice from an old hand at this sort of thing. Given in the best spirit (honestly).

[Decnavda]

I am an agnostic married to a nominal catholic and may childeren are or are scheduled to be batised catholic. I whole hartedly agree with those above who attribute her downfall (as a campaign operative, I agree this may actually help her punditry carreer) more to atheism than feminism.

I do not think for a moment that anti-athiest sentiment is a worse problem in our society than sexism. *IN THIS CASE*, however, I think Amada was brought down far more by her atheism than her feminism. We freethinkers view joking about God’s jizz in Mary and cartoons of Mohamud the way we view joking about Zues’s sex life or cartoons of Napoleon. But the faithful believe that viewing these as equivilent is bigotry. Reading Edwards’ statement of “support”, it souded like her veiwed her vulgar languange as immature but unimportant, and he did not even address the many complaints that she is “anti-male”, which suggested to me he did not take that as a serious complaint in the least. He did seem sencerely concerned with the anti-religous tone of her comments: that appears to be the only area he questioned her and the other feminist blogger about. As a religous liberal, he may have been concerned with not allowing what appeared to him to be religous intollerence in his campaign. He is wrong, but we freethinkers need to start shouting about this until the mainstream realizes that it is bigotry not to allow us to treat religous beliefs with the same mixure of tolerence and skepticism with which we treat all beliefs.

Lindsay notes here that the right tried several different attacks on Amanda, incluing some blatently sexist attacks, before the anti-catholic attack "stuck". It may very well be that she was targeted because of her feminism, I think that is debateable, but I think she was vulneable because of her atheism, or more accurately, her atheist outlook. (Treating religious opinions the same as any other.) Of these two, the vulnerability is more important, since the right-wing attack machine will eventually get around to attacking ANYONE on the left who is high-profile and vulnerable, whatever the motive.

[Eric Jaffa]

Lindsay Beyerstein -

John Amato of "Crooks and Liars" is a popular liberal blogger who is religious.

If a campaign hires him, I doubt it could be turned into a controversy like the hiring of Amanda Marcotte, who is an atheist.

[Sven]

Hey look, Melissa's gone transatlantic.

[Bosco]

"The elite media seemed almost smug at the downfall of bloggers. The general sentiment seemed to be that Amanda, Shakes, and the Edwards camp were just asking for it."

Actually, the elite media are scared shit-less of bloggers, or not exactly bloggers, but what bloggers represent - a sea-change in publishing technology.

Craigslist has already destroyed the classified industry, a huge source of income for elite media. Google + independent bloggers are slowly eroding the cachet of editorial columnists.

As such, it gives the elite media a gratifying feeling of comeuppance whenever they can take down any of these uppity bloggers.

[Cass]

I agree with Lindsay that this was probably a bad idea from the start: prominent bloggers don't go well with political campaigns. But while I'm surprised that Amanda could be surprised by the level of nastiness the right wing brought against her, she doesn't deserve to be accused of wimpiness either. Not everyone wants or needs to subject themselves to that kind of thing in order to make a difference. (And, she gets a fair of it at Pandagon already.)

[Fitz]

"I think Amada was brought down far more by her atheism than her feminism. We freethinkers view joking about God’s ……….. "

I would like to use this opportunity to put in a plug for the term "brights". I think this is a fine term and atheists should use it wholesale and often as a self ascribed label for their worldview. While “freethinkers” is nice, “brights” also neatly encompasses their proper intellectual and attitudinal stance.

[Cass]

"Brights" sounds a bit too flapper-esque for me, like the Bright Young Things. And the implication that there's some sort of attitudinal requirement would be bad news for me.

You all can christen yourselves freethinkers, atheists, or agnostics as you prefer; just call me a Daughter of the Enlightenment.

[Chris]

Honestly, all this persecuted atheist stuff is starting to get on my nerves (and I say this as an atheist who's lived most of his life in the bible belt). When atheists start thinking that the social dynamics associated with their religious beliefs outweigh those associated with gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., it's pretty clear that they've have lost all sense of perspective. You ain't bein' persecuted; get over yourselves. Hell, most people couldn't care less what you believe. You've gotta have that adolescent "everyone's looking at me" attitude to believe that they do.

Anyway, you don't have to be a genius to look at Amanda's hate mail and see that this was largely about gender. That she said things about religion made her an easier target, and certainly allowed Donahue to jump in (recall that she was being attacked for other things before Donahue ever showed up, and they had nothing to do with religion, but a lot to do with gender issues), but it wasn't what led the right wing blogosphere to mount an attack campaign on her. That was, almost unmistakably, a combination of the fact that she's a genuinely progressive, outspoken woman. I'd bet a lot of money that the same thing would have happened if she'd been a genuinely progressive, outspoken Episcopalian woman.

[DJA]

Cass, Fitz is being "ironic." He's an anti-atheist.

[Numad]

"When atheists start thinking that the social dynamics associated with their religious beliefs outweigh those associated with gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., it's pretty clear that they've have lost all sense of perspective."

Replace "atheists" with "catholics" in the above and you get my opinion on part of the Amanda Marcotte situation. Some were equating simple blasphemy and criticism of a Church with hate speech and bigotry, which IS somewhat oppressive.

This was partly about religion.

[Numad]

"When atheists start thinking that the social dynamics associated with their religious beliefs outweigh those associated with gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., it's pretty clear that they've have lost all sense of perspective."

Replace "atheists" with "catholics" in the above and you get my opinion on part of the Amanda Marcotte situation. Some were equating simple blasphemy and criticism of a Church with hate speech and bigotry, which IS somewhat oppressive.

This was partly about religion.

[Cass]

DJA: I was being ironic too, for humourous effect. "D.O.E." was intended to sound absurdly grandiose.

I'm not really that much of a rationalist anyway.

[Cass]

"humourous" should read "humorous"

I'm not trying to ape an English "accent", either.

[Decnavda]

When atheists start thinking that the social dynamics associated with their religious beliefs outweigh those associated with gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., it's pretty clear that they've have lost all sense of perspective.

That is NOT the claim being made. Clearly, secular people are not persecuted or oppressed on par with women, racial minorities, or gays, at least not in America. (To a large extent because we were founded as a secular nation.) To a large extent, most secular people are privileged in America, because secularazation is a side effect education, and the educated are needed to advance an ecconomy built on constantly moving forward. But secular people are also supposed to be "roped off" from the commoners, so the commoner can get filled with the religion needed to keep them under control. A result of this arragnement is that we are not supposed to get involved in politics. To deny that her atheism was what brought her down denies the facts. Look again at the attacks and the mainstream response:
"She's a man-hater!" Mainstream: Who cares?
"She's vulgar!" Mainstream: funny, but unimportant.
"She calls mythologies "mythologies"!" Mainsteream: She's a bigot. Get rid of her.

Finally, remember that keeping freethinkers out of the political mainstream is a "meta-issue" with regard to the oppression of women, gays, racial minorities and the poor. The POINT of Amanda's posts for which she was attacked is how these ancient mythologies are used to oppress women. Keeping secular viewpoints out of the mainstream is NECESSARY to maintain "the social dynamics ... associated with gender, race, sexual orientation, etc."

[Chris]

Numad, I'm really not sure to what extent this was about religion. I mean, the Catholics who took offense aren't exactly mainstream, everyday Catholics. They're virulently anti-choice Catholics who are so zealous in pursuing a political agenda that they're willing to let someone as distinctly un-Christian as Donahue be their mouthpiece. And judging by some of Amanda's hate mail, they didn't focus on her comments about religion, but her comments about reproduction and choice. Once again, even when it's about religion, it's still about gender.

And don't get me wrong, I get nauseated every time I hear a born-again Christian in this country say that he or she is persecuted for his or her beliefs. It's absurd. I just hate to see atheists going the way of the born-agains in so many aspects of their public behavior.

[Numad]

"Numad, I'm really not sure to what extent this was about religion."

I agree that it wasn't all or even mainly about religion. The pretext was religion, and the vociferous few that were behind it certainly thought there was leverage to be found there.

And it was, as pointed out above, the approach that stuck most.

[Decnavda]

Chris, I have heard a lot of Christians claiming to be persecuted. I now hear atheists saying that we should not give special deference to religion. When I hear one claiming to be persecuted, I will respond as you have here.

[Chris]

Decnavda, read the first few comments to this post. If you're missing it, I can't help ya.