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Edwards' Campaign Blogger Resigns

Amanda Marcotte has resigned as the blogger for the presidential campaign of Democrat John Edwards. She blamed her decision on Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League who last week demanded that Edwards fire her for anti-Catholic statements at the blog Pandagon.

Marcotte announced her resignation there. Here is an excerpt:

[The campaign by Donohue] was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can’t do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won’t do it. I resigned my position today and they accepted.

Unencumbered by her work for Edwards, she vowed to strike back. "The main good news," Marcotte wrote, "is that I don’t have a conflict of interest issue anymore that was preventing me from defending myself against these baseless accusations. So it’s on."

UPDATE: Here's a telling insight from Matt Stoller of MyDD about what it means for bloggers to work on campaigns (and he should know because he did a blogging stint for now-New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., in 2005):

Amanda feels encumbered by the campaign and unable to effectively defend herself from the right-wing. As such, it's the correct decision to make because a presidential campaign is the wrong place to be if you want to hit back at the right on your own behalf. Aspiring bloggers for campaigns should take note of the restrictions placed on your freedom when you go to work for a campaign. The personal cost can be quite high.

Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, meanwhile, are compiling links in reaction to Marcotte's resignation.

Posted by Danny | 10:14 PM

Comments

Yes, Amanda was felled by a vast, right-wing conspiracy that had the unmitigated temerity to smear her using her own words.

Robert O'Brien | 02.12.07 09:06 PM

"It's on" she says. By that, I assume she means that she no longer feels restrained from writing ugly smears against Christianity in general and Catholicism specifically.

I guess what she really meant to say is "It's on...again", since such hatefulness appears to have been her pre-Edwards specialty.

How sad it all is.

Charlie Eklund | 02.12.07 09:15 PM

Oh yeah, the only thing missing is a statement that she wants to spend more time with her family, or return to the private sector to explore her many lucrative opportunities.

Tonight O'Reilly, of whom I am no big fan, was on her and that other "lady" that Edwards hired like a dirty shirt. Somebody at the Edwards campaign failed to do proper due diligence on these hires. That person should be sacked, too.

Letalis | 02.12.07 09:28 PM

Uhh, yeah, it's Bill Donohue's fault. Way to take responsibility there, Amanda...

Brian | 02.12.07 09:36 PM

"So it's on."???

Ma'am, you were nothing before this, and now you are nothing again. Not one non-pathetic soul will pay the slightest attention to your defenses.

buzz harsher | 02.12.07 09:45 PM

"I don’t have a conflict of interest issue anymore that was preventing me from defending myself against these baseless accusations. So it’s on."

Bring it on.

Hogarth | 02.12.07 09:46 PM

Indeed, Mr. O'Brien. Of course, the right must now flee from the wrath of someone they'd never heard of, and now, could not care less about.

She's so busy scapegoating Donohue, that the truth almost certainly lies elsewhere. Most likely, Edwards' advisers simply asked her to resign, rather than force them to fire her (with the negative publicity and breastbeating from the left that this would have entailed). Her words would have (rightly) trailed her forever, and be used against the campaign. Besides which, she was a loose cannon - who knows what she would have said or done in the future?

You just can't run a high-profile campaign and have people like Marcotte around. It's bad business. The press always picks up on the sensational, and Marcotte would have handed them (negative) headlines on a platter. They'd spend all their resources on damage control.

But if her leaving really IS Donohue's doing, Edwards owes him a big thank you.

Mister Snitch! | 02.12.07 09:47 PM

You have two options:

You can grow up and come to terms with the fact that you are a close-minded, bigot who has been projecting your hate on people you know virtually nothing about.(men, southerns, and christians)

Or
You can live out your life filled with hate toward people who you do not know, fighting imaginary battles against your perceptions of what people believe and generally being miserable.

This could be a life changing episode in your young life but you are not off to a good start.

LogicalSC | 02.12.07 09:53 PM

A classic case of Swiftboating. Telling the truth about someone is *so* vicious. I'm absolutely sure Marcotte will now proceed to demonstrate that she wasn't really trying to be nasty about Christians, right?

JorgXMcKie | 02.12.07 09:54 PM

Amanda Marcotte calls them baseless accusations lol? So blatant a lie lol. Her writings are well documented. The only thing baseless is her integrity.

Dennis | 02.12.07 10:00 PM

I agree with Mr. O'Brien. It's time for a full-scale purge of atheists in politics. Only then can we restore civility to public discourse. With Rush Limbaugh's help, God willing.

Michael Bérubé | 02.12.07 10:03 PM

The woman is an infantile bigot and a fool. She spewed all sorts of blasphemous obscenities over her blog and then was surprised when people took notice of her and held her accountable for what she had said. Either she is an utterly frivolous individual or she has no concept of reality. Perhaps both.

Ted Joy | 02.12.07 10:05 PM

Sounds like Ms. Marcotte unplugged is going to go out and demonstrate with a vengeance why she was such a poor choice for a presidential campaign to begin with.

charles austin | 02.12.07 10:17 PM

Marcotte wrote - "It's on."

Like, what - she's going to fall back on her incivility to prove who was wrong?? Again?

How gauche.

Daniel McAndrew | 02.12.07 10:20 PM

She might have simply covered her mouth when coughing, if she wasn't such a free spirit.

John F. | 02.12.07 10:43 PM

I agree with Michael Bérubé. Sarcastic posts that make an extremely outrageous point totally discredit the other side in any argument.

You can't argue with logic like that!

(apologies to Mr. Bérubé if some idiot troll is making fake posts under his name)

Daryl Herbert | 02.12.07 10:53 PM

Michael, How in the world do you get any of that from O'Brien's comment? Or are you refering to a different O'Brien?
Would you have felt better if she was a buddist? Or when we then be purging buddist from politics? Or a hindu? Muslim? Jew? At what point do you feel it is allowable to "smear" someone with their own words. In context. I would assume when the shoe is on the other foot, like when someone quotes this Donahue guy, that you are equally outraged about trying to remove Christians from politics. Or are you able to see the person rather than paint with the broad brush of religion?

buzz | 02.12.07 10:54 PM

I've got a better idea, Mr. Bérubé. Let's have a full-scale purge of foulmouthed, hate-spewing bigots.

Pat | 02.12.07 11:05 PM

Thank God! for the Berubes in this world who so laughably rise to the stereotype of the deranged left.

Instead of addressing the point in o'Brien's comment he conflates the arguement to one of 'she isn't religious so the rightwingnuts forced her out' so that it conforms with his bigoted and narrow-minded views. Look up 'projection' as a neuroses and get help. Marcotte is an anti-religion zealot with a foul-mouth and, wait for it, a holier than thou atitude. Look up 'petard, self-hoisting' as well.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean you aren't responsible for what you say. And, btw, wasn't it actually the religious left that (yes, some democrats are actually christians I guess) that really started pushing the dialpad to Mr. Edwards?
You are the problem with America. Your religion is YOU!

Agnostic | 02.13.07 01:53 AM

Loyalty to nutty friends is a virtue, but spare us, Prof. Bérubé. Do you disagree with O’Brien’s point, that the “smears” of Amanda Marcotte mostly involved quotations of her own words? And does criticism of those words, or the subset devoted to the higher criticism of religion, really entail a full-scale purge of atheists in politics? Either you know better & are arguing in bad faith, or your thinking is clouded. Pointing out that there are equally nasty rightwing creeps in the woodpile, however true & interesting, falls under the category of informal fallacies.

I may have better cause than you to despise the Donohues & the Malkins, & am all with you on the larger Kulturkampf, but you pick your battles badly.

Innocenti Illjes | 02.13.07 05:09 AM

All the lefties commenting on this blame the right, while conveniently not mentioning the religious left was unhappy as well. I personally think her post yesterday slamming all religious people did her in. She was 'talked to' by the Edwards campaign and she got her panties in a twist because she couldn't 'defend' herself, as in posting hate at anyone who dares disagree with her, so she quit in a snit. Nice way to pay Edwards back for standing behind you.

And this says loads about his judgement, which is all anyone should really care about, Marcotte is beneath even dignifying with anymore attention.

darcy_lane | 02.13.07 05:58 AM

I actually feel sorry for Ms. Marcotte because I believe she is not only a "foul-mouthed bigot" but a seriously deranged, paranoid person as well. The Edwards campaign, on the other hand, deserves no sympathy for such gross negligence in vetting a potential employee and then the truly cowardly way they handled it when the fit-hit-the-shan.

John Casteel | 02.13.07 09:23 AM

Well, I don't write in Ms. Marcotte's idiom, of course, and the Edwards campaign certainly should have handled every aspect of this better. But let's get a grip, shall we? McCain has Terry Nelson and Patrick Hynes on staff, both of whom are far more obscene than anything Amanda Marcotte has written. And now Marcotte is being called a bigot by William Donohue, who complains about secular Jews running Hollywood and inveighs against the anti-Catholic bias in ads for onion dip, and denounced as vile by Bill O'Reilly, who charmingly suggested that al-Qaeda should take out San Francisco. I know, O'Reilly was kidding. It was very funny, too. I laughed til I stopped.

Michael Bérubé | 02.14.07 11:24 AM

Oh, well, if McCain has hate-spewing, foul-mouthed, bigoted campaign workers on his staff, then it should be perfectly acceptable for Edwards to also. I mean, fair's fair, right? And besides, if Bill Donohue is a bigot, then it simply must be completely illegitimate for him to call Marcotte to account for her obvious bigotry. And Bill O'Reilly... Well, enough said. But even granting all that, let me ask this of you, Mr. Berube: Have you ever heard of the fallacy of the tu quoque argument?

David Yates | 02.15.07 03:12 AM

I've heard of the tu quoque, Mr. Yates, having been familiarized with the major fallacies by my Jesuit teachers. I've also heard of the IOKIYAR fallacy, in which media investigate only the Democrats targeted by the right-wing noise machine, and give free passes to people like Nelson and Hynes.

For the record, folks, Amanda Marcotte is not a hate-spewing, foul-mouthed bigot. She curses like a sailor, this is true. But she is not anti-Catholic or anti-Christian, as she has made clear time and again; she is merely strongly anti-misogynist, and that has caused any number of men to revile her. More important (and I should have made this clear from the outset -- I apologize for that), the fact that Donohue also came after Melissa McEwen, demanding her firing even though she was not hired as an Edwards campaign blogger and even though she has made no provocative statements about Catholicism whatsoever, demonstrates that Donohue's little jihad had nothing to do with piety or with civility in public discourse. Those of you who jumped on the faux-outrage train in re Marcotte were simply played for chumps.

Michael Bérubé | 02.15.07 07:41 AM

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