The gist of Amanda Marcotte's new article in Salon, 'Why I had to quit the John Edwards campaign' relies heavily on her belief that she and Melissa McEwan of Shakepeare's Sister were harassed without end by the right-wing nutjobs because they were "young feminists" who had dared to express their opinions about religion, reproductive and gay rights.
That's not the way I saw it.
I think that the gender of the bloggers Edwards or any other Dem candidate chooses to hire for their campaigns is mainly irrelevant to the right-wing smear machine. They simply dug through the archives of Pandagon and found posts they could attack them for. I believe the same thing would have happened whether they were female or not. Hillary's campaign hired Peter Daou of the Daou Report as her blogger outreach person but the right-wing has nothing to go after in his archives that would match the quotes pulled from Pandagon. Ergo, Marcotte was an easy target and Daou has been left unscathed - not because he's a man, but because there was no ammo to use against him.
It makes me uncomfortable that this affair has been turned into a new feminist cause celebre. I'm certainly not ignorant to the fact that the right has repressive attitudes towards women in general but I don't think this case ought to be held up on that mantle as an attack on "young feminists" or feminists in general - not when it can be interpreted as a simple smear job based on the political opinions and writings of the bloggers involved, regardless of their gender.
In other meta news: skippy has a new post up about the scourge of "napoleon syndrome by proxy" that's raging through the blogosphere.
Mo meta? Add it in the comments. Thanks.
13 comments:
Note to skippy - the comments on your blog look like this in my Firefox browser...I don't know why:
This
syndrome
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Yep,they're are going to smear the heck our anyone and everyone connected with any of the Dem campaigns, I agree. But I also think it's especially "delicious" to these kinds of jerks when they can take down a woman or two in the process.
It also plays very well with the far right religious whackos who are still pissed off that so many of women have rejected the role of Stepford Wives.
Yes, skippy, your comments look like that to me in plain old Explorer, too.
And Catnip, thanks for the link to skippy. I really needed laughter this morning and he's damn right, too!
And why is ecfs down today?
I'll give that a shot skippy. Thanks.
Hmmm...looks like wordpress is down, sjct. Darn modern technology!
It also plays very well with the far right religious whackos who are still pissed off that so many of women have rejected the role of Stepford Wives.
That's very true too, scribe.
Btw, it's my one year blogiversary today. Stop by for cheesecake! :)
skippy that is the funniest(but truest)thing I have read in ages. Thanks for the link catnip. Hope you all are staying warm. It's 70 here today. As CG would say...neener,neener.
Dan Gerstein, Lieberman's 2006 communications director, lectures lefty bloggers on the Edwards affair.
As one commenter put it:
Conflict of interest much? I mean, seriously: having Dangerstein write about liberal bloggers is like having Cheney write about Joe Wilson.
Conflict aside, anyone who can take ostentatious offense at the writings of Amanda and Melissa while describing Donohue's hateful bigotry as merely 'controversial' clearly has no moral compass whatsoever.
Cheesecake? MMMMMMMMMMMm...be right over. Happy blogiversary Carnip and many, many more.
Thanks leezy! :)
catnip, I don't know how you can say such mean things about the Liebermachine. He marched w/MLK, you know ! That means he and everyone in his stable are above any and all criticism for ever and ever.
Shame on you. :p
Ya well it's obvious that after he marched, he took a sharp turn right. ;)
(Frackin' typos. !@#$%*!)
So sharp he went around in a complete circle. Over and over again. But he still gets to dine out on the dubious cred of one damn march for the rest of his natural life.
Nice work if you can get it. :/
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