I have already written that I don’t particularly care, from a personal perspective, whether or not Amanda Marcotte gets canned. Ironically enough, that call will be made by the embodiment of white male privilege whose campaign she chose to back.
I have also written that I don’t begrudge her the fact of her opinions. And I don’t.
What I find loathsome, however, are both the content of the opinions and the means by which she “defends†them: deleting comments, attacking personally those who offer counterarguments (which are generally deleted, leaving only the attacks to stand), and refusing to open herself up to any intellectual scrutinyâ€â€something she manages by turning every debate on substance into a debate over character.
This is her familiar dodge, and itâ€â€moreso than naughty languageâ€â€is what gives bloggers in toto a bad name. If you think the MSM isn’t enjoying the opportunity to broadbrush all bloggers with the distilled and concentrated hatred and intellectual dishonesty of Marcotte and her ilk, you don’t understand the depth of its opportunism.
In the end, Edwards’ hiring of Marcotte not only weakens his candidacy by calling into question his judgment, but it weakens the credibility of bloggers in general.
And no, not because Amanda has a potty mouth or is a rhetorical bomb thrower. But rather because she is a cowardly potty mouth and an ineffective and predictable rhetorical bomb throwerâ€â€her posts always full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Sorry, but there is nothing worse than someone who won’t take responsibility for her own words. If Marcotte believes the Duke 3 guilty of rape, she should say soâ€â€then follow that up with the observation that her views on that case don’t reflect the views of her employer, just as her employer likely doesn’t share her views that women and blacks are treated as subhumans in NC, or that Catholics reproduce like rabbits because they’ve been brainwashed by a Catholic Church that doesn’t believe in its own teachings, but is instead as cynical and small of soul as is Amanda herself, and simply wants to create a perpetual cash cow for the Church.
That she is guilty of confusing the Catholic Church with, say, Jesse Jackson, is an error in assumption and assertion. Whereas trying to cover up her recent Duke post is a mark of desperation.
Which is to say, had she at least stuck to her guns, she could then lay claim to a kind of perverse dignity. But as I’ve noted several times now, Marcotte’s entire schtick is to locate bad faith in every opponent she chooses to tangle with (while bracketing her own), then proceed to craft her arguments from such raw paranoia. The problem with such a strategy being that it only works when you can control the discourse and frame the argument without fear of being pressured—and this story has overflowed those particular floodgates.
This assignation of intent by fiatâ€â€a maneuver that allows her to torch strawmen with the same frequency she tortures English syntaxâ€â€is what has won her admirers in the land of groupthink, where cadres of the likeminded gather en masse to rationalize their views, in the process using sheer numbers and wilful blindness to bully (contingent!) truth and keep logic at bay.
And in the final analysis, this is what is going to sink her: because now there is nowhere to hide, no way she can delete the stories appearing in the mainstream press, and no way she can control the terms of the debate with a few clicks of a mouse from behind the Pandagon control panel.
Her insular world of intellectual dishonesty, propped up as it was by those who were so busy currying her favor they never once stopped to point out their Emperor was naked, is, finally, being pressured from without.
She will blame the rightwing smear machine and the jealousy of her detractors for her inevitable downfall. She will blame godbags, the patriarchy, and evil cockslappers like me. But this will just be more of Marcotte’s signature projection. Because the truth is, had she an ounce of self-awareness, she’d admit that where she should be looking critically, besides within, is at all the commenters who’ve cheered her idiocy over the years—who sniggered at her tendentiousness or at her flimsy arguments built on nothing but hot sand, and never once challenged her, so eager were they for Amanda’s approval, and so fearful were they of being excommunicated and labeled heretics by the Church of St Amanda of the Cloistered Womb.
Let her keep her job, for all I care. She already has a God complex. Why allow her the satisfaction of assuming the role of leftwing martyr, as well?
But make no mistake about it: all the glowing reviews of Marcotte’s intelligence coming from the left side of the blogosphere is utter garbage. And most of them now lionizing her know it, too.
They just stick together better than do those on the right. For good or for ill. Which doesn’t help Marcotte one bit—but it does, they hope, help the “movement” survive an embarrassment of this sort.
****
update: Allah has more.
update 2: Reader relfaux emails me a link I thought I’d share with you. Seems a certain someone “really hate[s] bloggers” who delete inconvenient posts.
Or I should say, used to hate such bloggers. Now, she sticks close to their sides and smoothes their plumage.
astronaut love triangle! Now I wanna hear about that…
time69 But the guy is saying they were just friends….
True enough, but in this instance the broadbrushing will perforce be done without actually reproducing those posts of Amanda which are most illustrative of her distilled and concentrated hatred.
Well, they need to protect us, you see. From the salty language.
But trust them. It’s there.
People will look at the ashes of Westerburg and say, “Now there’s a school that self-destructed, not because society didn’t care, but because the school was society.”
Amanda has been kind enough to provide a textbook example of being hoisted by one’s own petard.
Then again, maybe the Breck Girl will yet decide to keep her! Probably not, though, huh?
Could we disabuse ourselves of the notion that a blogger (or anyone) controls the debate by deleting comments on their own blog? That it is ‘cowardly’ to not allow unfiltered comments?
Whatever debate occured in the past, for example, between you and Amanda could not be controlled by either of you deleting comments. You’d simply post on your own site. Or elsewhere.
Hmmmm….
Memo to John Edwards: Don’t back down
Open Letter to Edwards RE: Feminist Blogger Hullabaloo, Press Release NOW!
Yes, America’s women cheer those who condemn them for having been punished with their children by misogynist godbags. Isn’t that right, ladies? Elizabeth? Hillary?
And whatever you do, don’t have the candidate open his stupid rich white mouth about it.
It is not so much about deleting comments per se—but rather about deleting comments that provide alternative views and further debate.
This is what Marcotte does—all while keeping up the pretense (in allowing comments to begin with) that she is interested at all in the exchange of ideas.
You may not think such selected deletions are an attempt to fashion a narrative of the debate, but I do. And so yes, I find such things dishonest and cowardly.
YMMV.
What’s annak’s post still doing there?
You’ll also notice that Jeff doesn’t delete comments like that. He rebuts them, because he’s willing to argue in good faith, and he believes in what he says.
You’ve also got to work damned hard to get banned around here. You’ve really got to make an ass of yourself. Simply expressing a contrarian viewpoint won’t do it.
Hey Jeff, whynt’cha delete annak’s comments for a bit so that she can see just how it works?
Can you imgaine a conservative-blogger who got busted spewing such hate-filled tripe and then attempting to cover her tracks subsequently being embraced by the right side of the blogosphere? Yet somehow I think this episode will only increase St. Hatemanda’s popularity on the left side of the sphere–hell, she’ll probably wind up being the the chief editor of Time within two months. Oh, and also, she’s a twat.
Really? You honestly don’t think that deleting comments made in good faith and intended to provide a reasoned, contrasting viewpoint, is the very height of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice?
Wow.
Come on Kyle–Annak is a liberal. Don’t ask him to actually THINK–he might hurt himself.
Noted internet bully Jeff Goldstein once again attacks someone by going after their employment. Jeff, why don’t you post her home phone number, car registration and so forth? That will show the castrating feminazi bitch.
The funny thing is how he runs to the law like a little pussy when someone (a woman!) talks tough to him.
Being so nasty nobody on the right will link to you except LGF and Malkin is tough, but you’ll rally. With the help of buttkissers like Pablo and Dan, and another post about a conversation with ramen noodles you’ll pull through. Maybe Kinko’s will call back about that assistant manager’s position.
They may well be attempts at fashioning a narrative or a debate. Lots of people only want to discuss, or host discussions of, certain topics. Lots of people consider certain topics taboo and do not want them on their blogs.
My point is these actions don’t actually fashion a narrative. Don’t actually erase what happens. Not when other people have are big enough to have venues. Now, if one were to get the law to shut others down, then you start to be able to enforce certain topics from being discussed, certain people from speaking.
There’s also another interesting aspect to this whole kerfuffle. The frothing masses continuously accuse their elected representatives of being spineless, unwilling to take a principled position that may expose them to political dangers.
Yet, as soon as one of them percolates to the top they immediately take on the guise of their masters: equivocate and spin.
You don’t always need a law. You might just need fear of violence, say, on campus, to prevent a conservative speaker from delivering. Or, say, speech codes.
A godbag might say:
There ain’t no room
For the hopeless sinner
Who would hurt all Mankind
Just to save his own
Have pity on those
Whose chances grow thinner
For there’s no hiding place
From the Kingdom’s throne
Or a non-godbag neocon else might say it, too. [Impressions, “People Get Ready”]
Once again, the left demonstrates their immaturity and intellectual dishonesty.
They label the right a bunch of brainwashed group-thinkers but I’ve seen myriad angry exchanges between right-wingers while almost none on the left. The left is in lockstep because no one issue or point of fact is worth jeapardizing the movement.
I remember, during kurfuffle surrounding the MCA, my ultra-liberal friend sent a bulletin suggesting that habeus corpus had been completely rescinded and we were about to be in the really real police state.
I called him on it describing it as gross hyperbole. The amazing thing was, he agreed. I’ll never forget what he said: “The side with the best propaganda wins.”
They have no respect for the truth, reason or honor. They ONLY care about winning.
Un-noted idiot Nate-dogg once again posts an inane hate-filled screed in an attempt to boost his flagging self esteem (and maybe finally convince St. Hatemanda to blow him). Nice try pal. Better luck next time.
That she is airbrushing her blog archives—either on her own initiative or at the campaign’s request—is another facet of her intellectual dishonesty (as JG noted a few threads ago and alludes to above). My first guest-post here at PW addressed the phenomenon of lefty bloggers who preen about speaking truth to power sucking up to it at the first opportunity. At least Mandy is getting paid to neuter herself.
And this is yet another reason to question the judgment of the Edwards campaign. Somehow, someone read Pendagon and did not figure out that having a blogatrix who makes every debate nasty and personal would be a net negative.
annak: While that may very well be true, it is undoubtedly more liberal not to filter them.
nate-dogg: Retardo, is that you? Your mom called and wants you to know you left one of your mittens at home.
Yes, nate-dogg. I’m the “pussy” here. Whereas you? STRONG LIKE BULL.
I am certain Amanda will receive a ticker-tape parade down 6th Street on her return to Austin. The Truth to Power confetti will be anemic and half-hearted (but principled!).
Lisa Nowak and Amanda could share the backseat of a Volkswagen Cabriolet as Austin welcomes home two native Texan moonbats. Lisa could wear her space suit and Amanda something pleather as they wave to the hippies and homeless of Austin.
Protein Wisdom is positioned to own the space-love-triangle story. I mean, Lisa Nowak has obviously had a psychic break and needs help.
Protein Wisdom always extends a magniloquent hand to these types of people.
PS: Everyone notices that Mandy’s minions have a tough time distinguishing a blog comment from actual stalking. Granted, we all pretty much assume they have a hard time separating delusion from reality in general, but this instance is particularly loathesome.
If by “going after their employment” you mean “posts HER OWN WORDS so her new boss can see what is sticking to the bottom of his shoe,” then, yes.
Try honesty once, nate, you just may enjoy it.
Speaking of ‘Astronaut love triangles’, does anyone know if Astroglide was invented by NASA? Just curious.
Incidentally, Jeff, I’d batten down the hatches against another DOS if I were you. If she loses the gig, you know it’s coming.
Exchange of ideas, you are correct Jeff. Amanda exchanges the ideas that only agree with the matter of opinion at the time. Poor poor Amanda. Martydom indeed…..
I thought it was invented by Hanna / Barbara.
One can only assume that, since Molly Ivins has recently assumed room temperature, there’s an opening for new distaff, moonbat, BDS-afflicted, hatemongering, bile-spewer down Texas way.
Best of luck Amanda, Molly would be so proud to know that you’ve picked up the torch and are carrying on.
Your mirror knows it well, nate-dogg, but why do you so desperately need to see your sad reflection in print?
I saw pictures. “Woman” is being way too kind.
Yeah, I went after her employment. I contacted John Edwards over in the other America and told him what he should do. We had lunch. And you know something, in his America, my parking was actually validated!
Show a little dignity, nate-dogg. Amanda scrubbed some comments and at least one post so that her new employer wouldn’t see how hateful and dim she truly is.
She did that. Not me.
And I certainly didn’t go running to the Catholic League. Nope—all I did was ask Amanda how she was going to reconcile her attacks on the Bushies over Iran with Edwards’ stated position, and pointed out to those to whom she was introducing herself that the new toast of North Carolina seemed to think that the folks of that state treated women and blacks as subhuman, and that the whites of privilege went around raping poor put upon strippers—if not in actuality, at least with their minds.
Making a distinction is merely nitpicking. Fry the white males of privilege.
And I don’t use phrases like castrating feminazi—though some may see a worldview that agitates for the conviction of the innocent to produce an object lesson in support of their own ideology a bit totalitarian. But the label, that’s your own hangup. Me, I have actually taken the time to write at length on the battles within the feminist movement, and to try to engage feminists of various stripes in the hope of better understanding their positions.
I realize you don’t get much of that on Tbogg—after all, there isn’t much time for extended analysis after a long day of shuffling around cash registers until they’re placed just so in an effort to feed the consumerist machine—but let’s not go confusing his shortcomings with mine.
John Edwards doesn’t care about intellectual honesty and we all know that. He made his millions using disabled children as props and pretends to care about the poor as all the elitist limousine liberals do. What do we expect from this guy? He won’t fire this bitter sad woman.
There are certain standards of behavior and then there is the hope of firing up the far left for his side. He is, of course, choosing the latter.
Make no mistake about it, Amanda does speak for them. In all her filth and bitterness, she is them.
If only Molly wasn’t born with tits. Just saying.
Annak:
The forces of the politically correct use exactly these actions through the academy and the media to launch their toxic memes into the broader society at large. Once established as dominant narratives they are then proclaimed to be the (perceived) truth.
Christopher:
Propaganda is important. Your friend is correct in that the best propaganda wins. However, the best propaganda is white propaganda. Bhite propaganda contains truth in it, it’s much more plausible. Black propaganda is what your friend was engaging in, and it is useful, but nearly as useful as white propaganda. For black propaganda to be truly useful, the target audience has to removed completely from reality and have little, if any, outside information.
In the west that has been proven difficult, and your friend will find that he will have to continuously top the heights of absurdity to have the same effect as an earlier, less irrational, piece of propaganda, whereas white propaganda, because it does pay some homage to the truth, is much easier to do and much easier to believe – having a more realistic narrative at its core.
In short, stick with white popaganda unless your audience is completely captive without any outside information, or your target is simply beyond parody, such as Kim Jong-Il (in which case black propaganda becomes a sort of white propaganda).
I used to disabuse myself, till Mom caught me.
Oh, I forgot. White propaganda is better to use because it tracks reality much closer than black propaganda. Denying reality is a dangerous thing which can be either embarrassing, fatal, or both. For example, the Party may decree that 2+2=5, but I’ll pass on boarding an aircraft built to those mathematical specs.
Reality is an awfully hard wall to run into, Will to Power or Word of Allah notwithstanding.
Anyone have a link to that video of Edwards styling his hair prior to a TV interview? That always cracks me up.
Perhaps Marcotte gets her white washing tendancies from Edwards himself (who himself got lesson in flip-flops from the king himself, Kerry). OpinionJournal had a nice bit on Edwards views on Iran.
I’m really looking forward to THAT guy being my commander and chief.
The New York Times story on the Edwards/blogatrix kerfluffle is the lead ‘Must Read of the Day’ of at Lucianne.com.
Lots and lots of publicity on THAT venue, believe me.
Speaking of fine washables…is Tbogg still selling underwear for a living? Not that there’s anything wrong with that; someone’s got to do it, but a guy of his intellectual stature ought to at least be emptying wastebaskets.
Pablo noted:
…and some try SO hard.
I just did it until I didn’t need glasses anymore.
Uh, I pulled the pin on that grenade here, moron. I did so on an emailed tip, and Jeff had absolutely nothing to do with it as I’m sure he was sleeping peacefully in a time zone far, far away. Not that facts have ever mattered to a leftist.
And why did I do it? Because it’s just so damned funny!
tw: among64 or more blogosphere denizens that find all this hilarious.
It seems to me that there are three possible ways to reconcile Marcotte’s new job and the dreck on Pandagon:
1. She genuinely wishes to join the world of adult liberal politics (such as it is), and wants to make a clean break with her more inflammatory side, but is doing so in an awkward manner (embarrassment?).
2. The Marcotte of we see at Edwards’s blog is the real one. This implies that she doesn’t believe a word of what she wrote on Pandagon, but was merely dancing for the true believers in exchange for approval and site traffic.
3. She believes every damn word on Pandagon with every fiber of her being, but is willing to disavow, delete, and/or deny them in exchange for a paycheck from her rich white patron.
That’s all I could come up with- any others?
Nothing to add regarding the content – after all, what else is there to add? – but I just had to say that that was simply some OUTSTANDING writing.
The sad ignored truth: most bloggers don’t write particularly well. Many are, well, awful. They may be funny, they may have interesting ideas, they may get good info … but writing? Not so much.
This post, on the other hand, is really impressive. The writing, the syntax, the vocabulary, the structure, all of it professional and skillful.
Well done.
rws,
I’d rather he didn’t. More fun that way.
There’s an academic study that shows women like women less than men like women.
I hope Amanda has a dog. Hopefully it’s a living dog. (Damn flashback! Can’t make ‘em stop.)
Jeff, just wanted to say that your comment,
is one of the funniest things that this ex-Catholic ever read.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/micah-sifry/the-marcotteedwards-non_b_40461.html
Jeff, if Marcotte should get all of this scrutiny and possibly fired for her past private blogging, what kind of precedent does that set for any political blogger who may be offered a job on a campaign blog? If you personally were offered a job, there’s a ton of stuff from your archives that could be seen as bad, in different ways (mostly language, sexual imagery), as what Marcotte wrote. I think the same could be said about a lot of political bloggers, who end up writing some embarrassing or dirty things once in awhile.
Should the rule be that only the really calm, temperate guys who never go off a limb, like say Ed Morrissey or Kevin Drum, be considered for such jobs?
I found a band for the Edwards campaign.
“Clitorectomy and the Mutilators”
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=47639893
I don’t know that there should be a rule like that, but there probably will be such a rule after this.
Whether you like it or not, JDA, such things will be done. Intemperate words and behavior can come back to haunt you. Just ask the guy that had a little too much to drink at the office party. It takes a lot of effort to build a good reputation, but only one moment of stupidity or carelessness to destroy one.
Fair or not, that is the way the world works.
Nice piece Jeff. I see the nutroots are out in force, protecting their vanity, not with reasoned debate, but rather, fig leaf attacks on you. Ain’t the innerwebs wonderful?
That’s up to the candidate, JDA.
Allah and I were talking about this very thing yesterday over IM. And I’ll repeat here what I said to him: were I offered some kind of position working for a political candidate that involved my name being associated with his or hers, the first thing I’d do would be to tell the candidate exactly what s/he is getting: that I’ve long claimed I’m no pundit, that I speak my mind, that I don’t follow a particular party line with any fealty, and that—on rare occasions—I offer to beat a guy named Kevin with my pocket gobbler.
Out of context, I can be made to look remarkably crude. But I think were anyone with an open mind to read my site, they’d see that what I do is a lot of pointed satire, some academic analysis, and some truly bizarre stuff involving armadillos, steamed dumplings, John Merrick’s ghost, beets, sea monkeys, and the rest.
Which is why I believe I’d be far better suited for, say, a column in the 1970s version of Reason than I would be as a mouthpiece for Rudy Giuliani.
Beyond that, though, as I’ve said, I don’t think, on an intellectual level, Marcotte should be fired. I make no such demands on Edwards.
The choice, after all, is his. But I think if you are going to hire somebody like her (or me, or Ace), you’d better be prepared to stand behind him or her when all the insipid things they’ve said are dragged out of the closet.
“Retardo Montalban” has already prepared a brief on me, which every lefty blogger in the Hamshersphere has bookmarked at hooked up to a hot key. It is mostly taken from comments rather than posts, and it suffers from the flaw of not providing the full context (for instance, what I was reacting to or what I was answering).
So I’m used to the sliming. But here’s the thing: I have never retracted my offer to Kevin K., who seems to think me a woman. Nor have I scrubbed my posts.
I would like to think there is a politician out there with enough balls to embrace someone who is opinionated and who might not always speak the party line. Instead, what we get are “managed” websites, where debate is frowned upon, and about which it has become fashionable to shrug one’s shoulders and point out that said blog is a mere marketing tool, and so shouldn’t be seen as a place to exchange ideas.
To which I answer, in that case, why not just take out a fucking newspaper ad?
So, to answer your question more directly, only calm, temperate guys are the safe choices for such jobs. But it is up to the individual politician to pick who he chooses to employ.
And again—I don’t begrudge Amanda her opinions. I just think they reflect poorly on Edwards.
Which is no surprise, really, because I’ve ALWAYS noted that they reflect poorly on those who have cheered them on.
If you expect to have a gig in “respectable” politics, don’t be a bomb thrower.
The rule should be that candidates vet the people they hire and see if they’re radioactive or not.
Do you think it should be that bloggers shed their history every time they get a new job?
If you too would like to help Amanda, please sign the petition to the Edwards campaign at the link.
The real action to watch in all this dust up is if Edwards fires not only Marcotte, but the dingbat on his staff that vetted and hired her. I do not believe that Edwards personally hired her. His staff probably worked on a short list (in this case very short list, Amanda may have had an insider) and made a reccommendation to him.
Now that he finds out that his blogmistress doesn’t sell well in fly-over country, he could show us his management skills by terminating the problem and the source of the problem. That would be the way to spin out of this on a positive note. It is a great litmus test for competence. We’ll see.
There are many on the blogroll that shouldn’t be let out to see the day of light. The problem is barriers to entry are low and with so many demographics to serve, many can survive at a subsisitence level with somewhat of a loyal fan base. That doesn;t make them good, competent or worthy. Thats why politicians should tread carefully in this medium.
So far we’ve seen a hamfisted, drunken approach to wooing the net roots by candidates – mostly on the left side of the aisle. Essentially moves to mollify the far left wing of the party – which may work for a local race. But in Nationals you have to sell yourself to the entire spectrum to garner enough of the swing and disaffected vote to make a difference. So it would seem imperative to me to find someone who could project your message into the blogsphere in a cogent and consistent manner. Not try to buy off the rabid loons.
Thats one of the problems democratic candidates have here. They seem to believe or are being advised that the nation is anti-war and sympathetic to the loony left argument. My observation of the midterms indicated otherwise. The blue dog democrats ran on a centrist, anti-corruption, fiscal themed campaigns. The only anti-war candidate was defeated and most of the anti-war rhetoric was spouted by sitting members of congress who weren’t up for re-election. Big difference. Amanda Marcotte’s ilk buys you nothing, in fact it buys you the opposite.
There’s stupid,
then there’s Pandagon-brand Stupid:
Y’ep.
Asshat.
Memo to Edwards: That’s the kind of professional ‘when under intense scrutiny, don’t over react’ response you, and we, can look forward to.
For the love of all that is good and right with both Americas, do NOT allow Amanda Marcotte to leave your campaign.
–
If she had the political savvy required to manage a political communications operation for a presidential candidate she would have known to have tendered her resignation this morning. The hapless little guy released his healthcare plan Monday: Amanda’s healthcare thread, started Monday 2/5, has 48 comments. Today’s “open thread” – dominated by the Amanda kerfuffle, has 49 comments. It’s been up an hour and a half.
Petition – I can’t tell if that’s satire or not.
To Jeff, JDA, et al.
I think the other thing that is worth noting in this dustup is the long-observed truism that it’s not the error that kills you, it’s the spin.
Had Amanda basically acknowledged that her site, when she was purely writing for her own amusement, had a tone that some could find objectionable or harsh, that tone should not be confused or conflated with the more nuanced and sophisticated exploration of issues which is a hallmark of the Edwards campaign, an approach I will uphold to the best of my ability as a professional and as a public face of the campaign.
However, her response to the situation has been sloppy and ham-fisted. As a result, she has hurt the very campaign which she ostensibly supports.
BRD
Nate-dog/TBogg,
First I must thank you for you comment, it was the 2nd funniest thing I have read this morning, the first being Jeff’s line about Jesse Jackson. I found your comment funny, because the post to which you commented was partly about the methods of attack employed by Amanda & sure enough, you come around & attack Jeff. Not one of the points he made, mind you, but deliberate personal attacks against the author. Consequently, making Jeff’s point for him.
I’m sure the irony of this escapes you, much like the point about how Amanda’s views of North Carolina, the men & women’s Duke Lacrosse teams, child birth, Christianity – especially Catholics & males in general could be construed as possibly hateful, bigoted & simply bat-shit crazy. These generally are not the qualities that politicians or most sane people want to have reflected about them or their employees – especially during a Presidential Campaign. Jeff & others have suggested that they might actually harm the candidate or bring about negative PR, which they have. Funny how it’s not Amanda’s words that are offensive to you, but the re-posting of them, in entirety, that has you upset. Notice it is the author here you are defending, but not the author’s words – so you’re consistently obtuse.
Far be it from me to judge Amanda for not making sure her new employer knew what she really brought to the table. Personally, it shows a true lack of professionalism & respect for John Edwards & herself; much like your childish & emotional attacks on the messenger & not the message show your lack of being able to rationally argue, much less comprehend what is being said. To you the words or message don;t count.
Regardless, you’re down right funny & don’t worry, I’m not laughing w/ you… I am laughing at you. I’m just hoping that you or someone like you is hired by Hillary’s Campaign. I might actually bother to read the site in-depth.
Keep up the funnies, lord knows that is all you got.
With all the left-wing stalkers, moonbat-the-rippers and gender studies stranglers roaming the bohemian coffee shops, junior college campuses and highway rest stops it was sort’a scary, but… I signed it.
it
Has it occurred to anyone that this may be Edward’s opportunity to have his own “Sister Souljah” moment? Thereby allowing him to disavow
the moonbat-left in an attempt to appear more centrist and attract the “independents”?
It’s not like the MoveOn.org-Sheehan-Streisand crowd are gonna desert him if he somehow wins the dhimmi nomination over Obama or Mrs. Nixon, er Clinton.
After all, they’d get behind Jeffery Dahmer for POTUS if it meant the defeat of the nasty neo-cons and evangelicals….
Something about Amanda’s rage sounds really familiar.
Salon just reported that they are fired.
Heh…..
I do believe, annak, that everyone is agreeing with you on this point. The real problem is that you should be saying this to Amanda Marcotte, who clearly does not understand this concept.
Jeff Goldstein and crew, on the other hand, clearly do understand the concept. You are preaching to the choir.
just a thought on this discussion regarding the “rules” of hiring a blogger for your campaign- wouldn’t Jon Henke’s work on the Allen campaign serve as a reasonable comparison for discussing this issue? Granted it was a Senate campaign- but it was one that did receive a fair amount of national focus.
It doesn’t seem like i’m preaching to the choir. plenty here think it does fashion the narrative. I don’t think so. Not when there are high profile enoguh people involved.
Besides that, there are plenty of reasons to remove a blog post that DO work, that are besides fashioning a narrative.
So annak, if we are debating, and we both happen to be high profile, and I force you out of the auditorium and into the parking lot while continuing my end of the debate from the stage, then you’d have no problem with that?
We welcome civil, constructive dialogue on this blog.
We do not welcome snark, snideness, cruelty, or any other offensive forms of interaction.
There’s a difference between “fashioning a narrative” and “deleting offensive comments”, annak. Or any of the other perfectly valid reasons for a blogger to manage his/her blog.
It’s also relevant to note that most of the commenters here are looking at Amanda’s actions as an attempt to fashion the narrative. The only way that her actions can be considered successful is by accepting only those responses that agree with her attempts to fashion the narrative.
This is sometimes referred to as “pandering”, but it is not an ethical way to discuss a problem; it’s an illusion. If you tell the leader only what s/he wants to hear, the organization will eventually fail, when reality must be confronted.
That’s what is happening to Amanda right now. The crew here knows that. Amanda may or may not. But you are certainly preaching to the choir.
Ah, yes. And Henke doesn’t have any three headed syphilitic cats hiding in his closet, and so it works! In fact, he’s a competent enough writer and devoid of such baggage so that he’s now on his second paying gig.
sorry – that link should be
That’s a scary link dicentra.
And where have we heard that before?
Ha!
Double Ha!
Does it really have to end?
A different analogy would be that anna and somebody else are having a discussion over the phone, and both have friends in their respective rooms. Both parties know that the friends are there. Anna, being the bright person she’s shown herself to be, hangs up the phone and harangues her guests about the topic at hand. Now, if her interlocutor cares to, he can go find anna’s friends and attempt discuss it with them; he can carry on the conversation with his friends. In anna’s strange world, this constitutes a conversation.
Panderingon?
Glenn Glennis Ellisberg (his book was quoted on the Senate floor) disagrees in the comments here.
Got some tickets for the Rolling Stone fairwell tour. It’s the last chance to see them. Honest!
They said that 20 years ago…
Don’t hold yourself back so much, Mr Goldstein; how do you really feel?
As it happens, I think that there is one, and only one, criterion for judging a writer, and that’s readership. I might not like the lovely Miss Marcotte’s opinions or the way she expresses them, or Pandagon’s habit of banning people they don’t like, but by the criterion of readership, Miss Marcotte is a decent writer; she puts out material that keeps bringing her readers back to her site.
Astronaut Love Triangle?
Jeff, you just outlined the script for Species IV…
As it happens, I think you might not be a valid judge of what is “decent” writing. Go and learn the difference between quality and popularity for starters.
Remind me, someone……how many Pulitzers or Nobel prizes has the National Enquirer won so far? Thank you.
Just for the record, nate-dogg who commented above is not me.
Not that he didn’t have a point about Jeff’s passive-aggressive attempt to get Amanda fired.
If by “passive-aggressive” you mean something like “didn’t give a fuck one way or the other, personally,” you’ve got me pegged, tbogg.
From a blogging perspective, I didn’t want to see her fired—although I’m still curious how she reconciled her own beliefs with the quite divergent beliefs of the rich white man for whom she was prepared to shill.
I’m just curious that way.
But in the end, I had about as much to do with getting her fired as you did—me, because I pointed out her spectacularly illiberal views on the Duke case, you, because you shower with praise an intellectual dwarf who you simply must know to be such, which only serves to make her believe she has the chops to venture outside of her little hermetically sealed world of vagina power.
Were it not for internalizing (poorly) a bit of Helene Cixous and then using it to craft absurd arguments meant to pull the wool over a bunch of eager, wannabe- “progressive” eyes, Marcotte would be wearing an orange apron and silently cursing the “godbags” for making her direct them to the shelf of flood lights at some Home Depot in Austin.
That’s not true, Jeff. She’d be working at Starbucks.
It seems very appealing to throw insults out to others, in the attempt to make them look less intelligent than you are, but the truth is really less evident. Not that I know the truth, I have only a few facts: We are in debt, and that debt is destroying our future. We are at war, and that war is misunderstood by the majority of Americans. We are not united, and that disunity is causing us to prolong a war we could have won. Ok, that is not a fact, but an observation. I find it odd that so many prefer to lose a war, than lose an election. No matter who runs this country, we still must face this enemy. We can of course, do as they request, and become them. That is the choice of every Legal American.
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