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« MAJ Bruce Crandall, the Medal of Honor | Main | That Unpossible! » February 12, 2007Victims"I'll be the victim!" So the Marcotte affair comes to a quick end with Amanda Marcotte resigning from the Edwards campaign rather than tar the campaign with her views. While I think it's unfortunate Marcotte had to go, her attitude towards the affair reminds me a bit too much of Amanda Buckman, quoted above. Yes, Marcotte was clobbered by a guy who is has an extensive track record as a hateful, disturbed man, and a Democratic campaign was nearly derailed by a right wing attack. But Marcotte's inability to even see how what she said was in many ways just as nasty and disgusting as anything Bill Donahue ever uttered strikes me as amazingly obtuse, and to paint herself as naught but a victim in this affair stretches one's credulity to the breaking point. Ms. Marcotte became a significant force in the blogosphere because there is an audience for people willing to express extreme opinions. By making virulently anti-religious comments, she drew a sizeable audience and earned herself some credibility among certain portions of the left blogosphere. For her to expect that to come at no cost was either foolish or naive. By entering the blogosphere, we choose to put our opinions in print where anyone can see what we have to say. In so doing, most of us look forward to drawing some attention to our ideas. We cannot then turn around and expect to have those ideas overlooked when they become inconvenient. If Ms. Marcotte truly believes otherwise, then she's deluding herself. If she was a victim of anything, it was of her own intemperate words. And she is likely to be of far greater use to the Edwards campaign from her post at Pandagon than she ever would have been as a campaign blogger. Campaign blogs produce little more than pabulum, and while I'm sure Ms. Marcotte could have produced effective mush for the Edwards campaign blog, her strengths clearly lie more in the area of whipping up support for Edwards via her real writings. The Edwards campaign may still reap some benefits from hiring Ms. Marcotte. Posted at February 12, 2007 08:23 PM
Comment policyI apologize for only allowing authenticated commenters, but comment spam overwhelms the site if I don't use those measures to prevent it. I reserve the right to delete any comment, although generally comments will only be deleted due to use of profanity or personal attacks on people. I have no objection to vigorous argument, but when name-calling begins, I'm putting a stop to it. In the immortal words of Eugene Levy, "People, people, let's stop this before somebody says something untrue!" If you want to call people names, I recommend you get your own blog. Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsUnfortunately, Pandagon is still down (though there's an interesting post by Amanda about the hate mail she's been getting from "Christians" [sic]), so I still can't see exactly how Amanda herself depicted her resignation. One thing strikes me strongly, however. Amanda's "style" - both her strength and, in the event, her point of vulnerability - was openly on display long before she was selected in the first place. This is not like the Thomas Eagleton case, where the "relevant" facts were generally concealed from the public. Under these circumstances, I feel that she had a genuine right to anticipate that (1) Edwards et al. already knew what she was like; (2) they selected her anyway; and therefore (3) Edwards would back her to the hilt if the only criticism of her was based on "old stuff" (i.e., no new indiscretion while she was on staff). Clearly she was wrong about at least one of these assumptions, but I would not hold that against her much. I mean I can think of a number of reasons why a national political campaign might be unwise to take me on board, but if they had vetted me anyway, and chose to proceed, I might reasonably feel "Well, I guess my past is not all that bad [in this context, which presumably they know better than I]." IOW, I think you've gone for the wrong target here. Posted by: dr ngo Perhaps so, although I think that Ms. Marcotte's complaints that she was attacked because she is a woman smacks of abject foolishness and undermines the very cause she is working to advance. I concur that the decision points to a potentially serious problem with the Edwards campaign, but I found Ms. Marcotte's decision to play the victim card offputting at best. In other words, perhaps she did assume that the Edwards campaign had thoroughly vetted her and that her style was acceptable, which indicates to me a rather impressive separation from reality, but her claims for why she was attacked are simply not credible. Posted by: Andrew no new indiscretion while she was on staff Some righties (e.g. Patterico, in one of the updates) are suggesting that she might've done herself in with the following statement from this post two days ago: The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels. Posted by: kenb Post a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out) (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) |
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