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The First Blog Scandal Of Campaign 2008

We're only one month into 2007 and the first blog scandal of the 2008 campaign already has erupted.

The central character: Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, who this week accepted a job as "blogmaster" to the presidential campaign of Democrat John Edwards. Part of her job is to write at the campaign blog.

The scandalous storyline: Like all bloggers, Marcotte is fast and loose with her opinions, and her opinion of the infamous rape allegations against lacrosse players at Duke University didn't sit well with some folks. When Marcotte started catching flak for that opinion, she apparently deleted it and started altering other comments at Pandagon.

Marcotte's move to the Edwards campaign and the subsequent hiring of another blogger, Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister, as netroots coordinator won praise from her netroots friends.

"What this move symbolizes in the blogosphere is that Edwards team understands how to move to the left on the issues," wrote Jerome Armstrong of MyDD. "The early move by Edwards to consolidate the liberal wing of the Democratic party at the beginning is very smart."

But now Marcotte's attempts to airbrush her past are fast becoming a black-eye for Edwards, even as he earned raves yesterday for a speech at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting in Washington. "Edwards should demand Marcotte’s immediate resignation from the campaign," wrote K.C. Johnson of Durham-In-Wonderland, who blogs about the Duke case and acknowledged being a supporter of Barack Obama, an Edwards presidential rival.

Some commeters in a forum at TalkLeft called Marcotte a "political liability" to Edwards, and one said that "if she feels this man should be our next president, it might be wise [to] make herself politically correct immediately or resign from the position."

As often is the case in politics (and blogging) -- and as a prominent blogger like Marcotte should have known -- the cover-up is worse than the crime. And it doesn't help that Marcotte has been both dismissive and defiant in response to her critics.

"[I]f I see the words 'Duke' or 'lacrosse' in an e-mail that has the whiff of accusatory tone, I'm deleting it and simply not going to reply to it," she wrote at Pandagon. "I have never, ever stated that I think that anyone should go to jail without a proper trial. Those comments will also be deleted from this thread."

That thread eventually was closed, but the controversy surrounding both Marcotte's thoughts on the Duke case and her subsequent attempts to alter the historical record is continuing.

Patrick Ruffini, now the e-campaign director for Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, said Marcotte crossed a "bright red line" into bad taste. And this insight from Betsy's Page, gets to the heart of the issue:

Hiring a campaign blogger is now necessary for each campaign. But this episode shows how treacherous the waters can be when a candidate just dives in and picks someone. For now Edwards and his campaign will be in the position of having to defend what this woman has written in the past and explaining why he found her particular writing style so suitable for his campaign.

Other blogs covering the story include Brainster, Hit & Run, Outside the Beltway, Overlawyered and South of Heaven. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit also has called attention to Marcotte's woes.

Some people think the controversy is ridiculous. "You're opposing Edwards' candidacy by criticizing his blog manager, for her opinions posted on a different blog, about a state-level criminal case?" one commenter wrote at Overlawyered. "'Foul language' -- that's what you base your decisions on in the most important political race in the democractic world? And that's what it took to distract you from an issue in any way related to the actual candidate: 'comic joshing' about the house he lives in?"

But whether it should have or not, this story now seems to have generated the kind of feeding frenzy that ensued among liberal bloggers when conservative Ben Domenech of RedState was accused of, at first denied and later admitted to plagiarism, costing him a high-profile blogging job at The Washington Post. Marcotte eventually may face the same professional fate.

One other footnote: Marcotte's behavior the past couple of days reminded me of something I discovered at Pandagon late last year when researching my New York Times article on bloggers who had gone to work for campaigns. One of those bloggers, Jesse Taylor, got his start at Pandagon before joining the campaign of now-Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat.

I reported Taylor's move when it happened in October 2005 and linked to his announcement at Pandagon. When I clicked back to Taylor's post in November 2006, it was gone and there was no sign of it in Pandagon's archives. I had to search the Wayback Machine to find Taylor's post again.

Did Marcotte, who claimed ownership of Pandagon upon Taylor's departure, scrub the site of his disclosure, and if so, why? Those questions came to my mind last fall but didn't seem worth asking then. They were just a curiousity.

Now that Marcotte has shown a penchant for deleting Pandagon content that causes her grief, maybe the questions are worth asking -- though I gather that my "whiff of accusatory tone" would just land any query I sent to her in the electronic trash.

UPDATE: Marcotte still has her fans in the liberal blogosphere, as evidenced by this love-her-lively-writing praise at EzraKlein.com:

I hardly ever read campaign blogs, even for campaigns I really like. They're not usually written very well, and the people who write them sometimes don't really seem to understand how the blogosphere works. They don't link to other people, and they're so predictable that you don't have to do much more than look at the post title to figure out what the post will say. To summarize all that I've just said, campaign blogs aren't usually written by Amanda Marcotte.

He's right about the quality of campaign blogs; most of them are pitiful. But embracing the unpredictability offered by the Marcottes of the world may not be the best move for candidates.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein and other bloggers are rightly taking me to task for mentioning the missing announcement about Jesse Taylor at Pandagon. I thought twice about adding that footnote to my coverage of the brewing Marcotte controversy; I should have thought three times and not included it. It sounds like the missing post and others from the fall of 2005 were just the result of technology problems at Pandagon.

I also should have contacted Marcotte rather than assuming, based on her comment about her critics, that she wouldn't respond to a query from me.

Posted by Danny | 09:01 AM

Comments

No worries, if there is any more embarrassing material that Ms. Marcotte has buried, just ask John Edwards to "channel" it back, just like he "channeled" the words of an unborn baby girl in one of his lawsuits against the medical industry.

Brian | 02.04.07 12:37 AM

Does anyone in the real world care about any of this?

JeremyR | 02.04.07 02:10 AM

I've laid out some of Amanda's more...interesting views at the link.

Robert | 02.04.07 02:44 AM

You can add Power and Control to the blogs covering this.

Valerie Solanas

M. Simon | 02.04.07 07:42 AM

A commenter at Overlawyered wrote: "'Foul language' -- that's what you base your decisions on in the most important political race in the democractic world? And that's what it took to distract you from an issue in any way related to the actual candidate: 'comic joshing' about the house he lives in?"

Obviously this was written by someone who had never bothered to actually read the comments initially posted by Amanda...or the commenter is merely a sock puppet Amanda, although admittedly the absence of profanity suggests otherwise. Clearly from her post of late January, she was still accusing the Duke students of crimes that virtually every thinking American could tell at that point were totally bogus.

J. Cole | 02.04.07 08:48 AM

As to "You're opposing Edwards' candidacy by criticizing his blog manager, for her opinions posted on a different blog, about a state-level criminal case?" from Overlawyered, naturally the criticism is, at root, of Edwards's judgment. "Politics makes strange bedfellows" is not supposed to refer to people in your own campaign.

Jamie | 02.04.07 09:04 AM

Perhaps this is a tempest in a teapot, as some people are trying to say. However, it gives me the willies-this makes it look like Edwards has his own Orwellian "Ministry of Information" cooking in a publicly scrutinized part of his campaign, repairing history. It hardly matters that she isn't whitewashing his history- in politics, at least half of your problems are guilt by association.

So, he should can her and quck, otherwise the questions arise: is Edwards not aware of this (or are his advisors not aware)? Or does he think this kind of stuff is OK? Claiming ignorance makes him look stupid and out of touch, and having a campaign blogger an insincere attempt to seem connected; an affirmative to the second question makes him look dishonest.

Dave Eaton | 02.04.07 09:07 AM

I for one hope that Marcotte hasn't unpacked too many of her bags in North Carolina yet. Her hard left opinions are what make her an interesting blogger, but those same hard left opinions can only hurt someone who is running a 50 state presidential campaign. That, and the fact that Marcotte seems rather crude and simplistic in most of her postings. Nice for the netroots, bad for John Edwards. My guess is that she'll be put back on a bus to Texas by March.

C40 | 02.04.07 09:15 AM

Utter nonsense. Reyonolds et al bitch when they find a liberal doing something they oppose but then never note when "their" guys do something similar. Example: what despised (by the guy last time around) ad folks did McCain just hire? When will this be noted by the morally outraged folks commenting on this stuff?

fred lapides | 02.04.07 09:18 AM

This is the silliest ... faux-scandal I've read on a conservative blog since, well, yesterday. Mark my words: nobody will care about this in one week.

db | 02.04.07 09:57 AM

db,

Drip, drip, drip. Just another example of Edwards weird, (and bad) judgement. We are gonna ride this ambulance chaser out of town on a rail like we did in '04.

nuJose Narof | 02.04.07 10:26 AM

Mark my words: You hope.

JHoward | 02.04.07 10:32 AM

"Mark my words: nobody will care about this in one week."

Are you kidding? Marcotte has political Tourette's. She's not going to be able to help herself, and the results are sure to be hilarious.

You can also be sure that people will be comparing and contrasting her positions relative to Edwards from here to the end of the line, much like Marcotte's position on Iran vs. Edwards, which has been noted recently. For instance, Edwards just said on Meet the Press that he does not support gay marriage. Then there's Amanda, about 3 months ago:

"It looks like, as I would have predicted from my entry, that none of the participants of any intellectual honesty at all had any substantially different opinion than mine. The debate is kind of maddening for this reason, because there’s just no arguments against same-sex marriage that make any sense at all."

See how easy that is? See how it infers her candidate doesn't make any sense on the issue?

Pablo | 02.04.07 11:43 AM

Pablo,

I'm sure it has escaped you, but a large majority of your fellow citizens have more important things on their minds than whether "the queers get married."

But I understand why you don't.

Take care, and always remember: liberals understand your pain, and hope that one day you will understand why you were rejected and abandoned.

anonymous | 02.04.07 12:42 PM

I participated in Mandy's "Duke players = OJ Simpson thread" where she would brook no dissent. It is interesting to note that she deleted comments that dissented, but left off topic comments that slammed the Duke players. The most egregious being by Elizabeth

Amanda,
Don’t let the bastards get you down, girl. And Robert I don’t know what you been smoking. Those boys did something. But all those high-priced lawyers going up against one guy standing up for that sister and what do you expect? They should be sitting in jail for what they did. And even if it wasn’t them, they should sit in jail for not coming forward and saying who the real attackers were. You can’t tell me that all those rich white boys in that house were just there for the crackers and dip. They were there to get some and they figured they could just do there thing and violate that poor girl and everybody just look the other way. Well, some people ain’t gonna be stopped from speaking up and Pandagon is speaking truth to power and if that bothers some MFs out there, well that’s too bad.

And Darleen, they *say* they didn’t find no DNA, but remember where they took her after the rape. That’s right, Duke Hospital. DUKE hospital. Do I need to spell it out?Mandy adds a comment that Elizabeth should stay on-topic, but never criticizes the assertions.

My challenge about Elizabeth was not just deleted, but disappeared (it was comment #33..)

This is not new for Mandy. She hates to be challenged and she believes her narrow views make her superior to all others. I don't know what the Edwards' camp was thinking when they hired her ... did they not vet her writings or do they not see anything wrong with them? Forget just the foul language and the vagina-centric POV of almost every post. This is a female supremacist who refers to Christians as "godbags" and any woman that disagrees with her as a dupe of The Patriarchy (tm).

The judgement of the Edwards' campaign is sorely compromised.

Darleen | 02.04.07 01:02 PM

Remember Occam's Razor:

I've lost several days worth of posts due to a database problem on my back end. I think that anyone who has run a blog for a couple of years is likely to have experienced something along those lines at some point or another.

Even Powerline crashed recently - an act initially blamed on liberal hackers but later revealed to have been accidentally caused by Mirengoff's hand.

Which scenario do you think is more likely to be true? That Amanda deleted a post or posts that might be deemed offensive while leaving literally scores of other posts equally as conversial and profane if not more so - or that there may have been a software or hardware problem causing the loss of some old posts?

The Liberal Avenger | 02.04.07 02:18 PM

That Amanda deleted a post or posts that might be deemed offensive while leaving literally scores of other posts equally as conversial and profane if not more so - or that there may have been a software or hardware problem causing the loss of some old posts?

Given that she explains her reasons for her "Update" in the spot at the neck of the memory hole, and given that there is an explanation for the deletion of every comment, I'd have to say that it's the former.

Nice of you to jump to her defense without bothering to even look at the post, though.

Pablo | 02.04.07 02:31 PM

anonymous,
"I'm sure it has escaped you, but a large majority of your fellow citizens have more important things on their minds than whether "the queers get married."

I think you need to take that up with Ms. Marcotte's new employer, who actually opined on the subject, and not me. Some reading comprehension exercises might also be helpful.

Pablo | 02.04.07 02:34 PM

Here's a lengthy Januart 12 post I did at the Jawa Report on Marcotte's...ahem..."deep thoughts" on the Duke Lacrosse scandal.

Its a tad older than one of the posts you linked above.

Enjoy.

Good Lt | 02.04.07 02:52 PM

If the so-called 'issue' was not important to you, Pablo, you wouldn't have chosen to mention it, (to the exclusion of all other issues.)

I could be polite and say I thought you were being disingenuous, but that's too kind a word for you.

However, I do understand the roots of your rage against women. Seek help.

anonymous | 02.04.07 05:30 PM

"It looks like, as I would have predicted from my entry, that none of the participants of any intellectual honesty at all had any substantially different opinion than mine. The debate is kind of maddening for this reason, because there’s just no arguments against same-sex marriage that make any sense at all."

See how easy that is? See how it infers her candidate doesn't make any sense on the issue?

Pablo | 02.04.07 11:43 AM

What a shocking scandal! A worker on Edward's campaign disagrees with him over one issue! You know, usually staff members of campaigns agree with the candidates on 100% of everything. Obviously.

db | 02.04.07 05:36 PM

You are known by the company you keep. Edwards will learn this. If someone posts their opinions and then deletes or edits them, it shows me they do not want to accept any heat for it. You have to accept the criticizm and the challenges, as well as the praise.

Will she be deleting posts at the Edwards blog as well?

Mike | 02.04.07 11:03 PM

And, of course, Random WingNut Sycophants of Some Neo-Con Blog believe they can and should dictate personnel choices for a candidate (whom they despise) from a political party they would prefer to see outlawed and its leaders imprisoned for treason.

anonymous | 02.05.07 12:10 AM

Sycophants of Some Neo-Con Blog believe they can and should dictate personnel choices for a candidate

Well, "anonymous" (real courage there, eh?), I certainly don't want to dictate to Edwards or any Presidential candidate who are they should hire.

I'll just judge their own powers of reasonable judgement on whether they eagerly employ bigots or not.

St. Amanda of the Holy Ovaries is a bigot. If Edwards' wishes to continue having her as in charge of his blog and in charge of the message it communicates, I will judge him accordingly.

Darleen | 02.05.07 01:36 AM

Aren't you a little embarressed that you're actually promoting this manufactured controversy?

Tell me. Why do you think that this of all things is something we should consider when choosing our next president? Aren't Edward's statements on Irag and Iran--and lack of such concering equality for gays--a little more worthy of your focus. For that matter, couldn't you stay busy by simply reporting Sen. McCain's constantly evolving views on everything?

patriotboy | 02.05.07 02:34 AM

anonymous, you brave soul,
If the so-called 'issue' was not important to you, Pablo, you wouldn't have chosen to mention it, (to the exclusion of all other issues.)

I mentioned it because I had just seen Edwards address it on MTP, and Marcotte's opposite position was an easy find. There's going to be many such situations, which was clearly my point if you chose to actually read what I wrote. As for exclusion of all other issues, I also mentioned Iran, which, if I'm not mistaken, is another issue. If you're going to comment, do try to pay attention to what has been said.

Or, you could just draw the cartoons in your mind and keep repeating the captions as though they're Delivered Wisdom, like in that 12:10 post of yours.

Pablo | 02.05.07 05:42 AM

Why do you think that this of all things is something we should consider when choosing our next president?

Does the phrase "Heckuva job, Brownie!" ring a bell?

That's why. Why do you think we shouldn't consider it, patriotboy?

Pablo | 02.05.07 07:26 AM

Why do you think we shouldn't consider it, patriotboy?

It's a silly, manufactured controversy. You're comparison of Amanda to FEMA Director Brown shows just how far you have to stretch the issue to make it work. Do you really think the appointment of a very competent blogger to a blogging job is the same thing as the appointment of an incompetant horse show judge to FEMA? Do you expect people to take you seriously? Are you the man behind our Iraq policy?

patriotboy | 02.05.07 09:09 AM

Danny,

Great job on your update. I still think the whole thing is a manufactured "scandal," but you are keeping things focused on the real issue, insofar as there is one.

Stephen | 02.05.07 09:29 AM

This is fairly meaningless stuff to the average person, although as someone who is rooting for Edwards, it think it would have made sense for him to hire someone a little more stable than Marcotte. Her blog is entertaining, but her own posts were screeds that sometimes are right on and other times nonsensical and illogical. Hopefully, Edwards won't say the word patriarchal in every sentence for the next two years.

bondboy | 02.05.07 10:06 AM

Darleen:

You and Amanda need to get a room and leave the rest of us out of it.

Roxanne | 02.05.07 10:08 AM

Ben Domenech=plagiarist, Amanda Marcotte=cusser. Both are moral equivalents according to your framing. Cute. I'll tell my kids that.
[when does Ben start writing for you guys anyways?]

flounder | 02.05.07 10:10 AM

Do you really think the appointment of a very competent blogger to a blogging job is the same thing as the appointment of an incompetant horse show judge to FEMA?

Since when are we talking about a competent blogger? I though we were taking about a living bucket of unhinged, bilious, boiling rage.

I can assure you, JC. Amanda gets it. She's prophetic, even!

The point is that who you hire and how you make such decisions matters if you're going to be POTUS, and of course you recognize that, but your ideological shields prevent you from acknowledging it.

If this is such an absolute nothing, why do you keep talking about it, JC?

Heh.

Pablo | 02.05.07 10:21 AM

Mr. Glover's revision would work better if it it were at the top of the article. As it is, few readers are likely to read down to see it.

It would also be appropriate if Mr. Glover were to state that he committed precisely the sin he accused Ms. Marcotte of: making allegations without looking at the facts. In the case of Ms. Marcotte, she was at least relying on the statements of a District Attorney. Mr. Glover was relying on his imagination.

Charles | 02.05.07 10:33 AM

I don't understand - what is Amanda supposed to have done? And who cares?

And why does someone who signs himself "Pablo" think this is really much braver than signing himself "Anonymous"?

But Pablo is right - Edwards hiring a competent and experienced blogger to run his blog does tell us something about Edwards.

Republicans hired Bush. And "Brownie".

And Dick Cheney used foul language on the Senate floor.

And people who voted for these people think they are in a position to pass judgment on Amanda.

Really, this is some kind of a joke, isn't it?

Avedon | 02.05.07 10:34 AM

After having viewed the mindless drivel Darleen and "Pablo" [post] into the comments threads at Protein Wisdom on a regular basis, I think it's safe to say that if they think the Edwards campaign made a horrendous mistake by hiring Marcotte, then it is automatically a fantastic idea.

Let's break this down to what their quibble really is all bout: Not something unethical Amanda may or may not have done, the proof of which is minimal at best, but a smelly ol' girl daring to have liberal smelly ol' girl opinions.

Doug | 02.05.07 10:48 AM

But Pablo is right - Edwards hiring a competent and experienced blogger to run his blog does tell us something about Edwards.

Hey, don't put words in my mouth, Avedon! Especially not wrong ones!

Heh, heh, heh. BTW, I'm Pablo all over the innernut. Granted, it's not quite as stylish as "anonymous" but it does leave a trail.

Pablo | 02.05.07 10:51 AM

"But whether it should have or not, this story now seems to have generated the kind of feeding frenzy that ensued among liberal bloggers when conservative Ben Domenech of RedState was accused of, at first denied and later admitted to plagiarism, costing him a high-profile blogging job at The Washington Post. Marcotte eventually may face the same professional fate."

No - Marcotte may not "face the same professional fate" as Domenech unless she is somehow proven to be a plagiarist. Ben Domenech's "professional fate" is that he is unemployable as a writer because he habitually stole other people's text wholesale and passed it off as his own. Yes, Amanda could conceivably get fired from this particular job, who knows, for her opinions. But obviously she would still be a legitimate and employable writer.

You are conflating opinion and professional credibility. Both Domenech and Marcotte have strong, potentially alienating opinions. But only one no longer has any professional credibility. That's Domenech.

mas tarde | 02.05.07 10:56 AM

The comment by "Brian" at the top of this chain is such a distilled example of fundy right-winger stupidity that it should be bottled and stored at the Smithsonian for future generations to regard in abject wonder that their forbears could be such cretins.

It relies on a false story - that Edwards"channeled" a baby during a trial. And then apples it to something entirely inapposite to its original context - the Marcotte "scandal" (itself a kerfluffle wrapped in trivia inside a nullity).

Edwards unrolled an EKG tape of a baby during a difficult birth. The baby ended up with severe brain damage. He started from the beginning of the EKG tape and, with the rhetorical flourish required of a good closing argument, walked the jury through what was happening to the baby at each stage.

"Here, she is saying "I'm ok." At 21:15 she is saying "having a little trouble here." At 21:22, she is saying "a little worse now, I'd like to get out." By 21:30, she is saying "Get me out now! And nothing was done."

Now, moronic right wingers with an axe to grind against trial lawyers and, well, truth, might believe that is "channeling" a "spirit." If they do, they reveal themselves to be what I have always considered them to be - the intellectual, scientific and rhetorical equals of the Puritan leaders who burned women at the stake for hot flashes.

DrFrankLives | 02.05.07 11:40 AM

Wow. It took less than a week for my prediction to come true. It took a day. You guys are so silly.

db | 02.05.07 12:01 PM

You really get paid as a journalist to emit these nauseous effluences? You might have just managed to break the record for most ethical rules of journalism violated in a single piece. And your sort-of-apology, or 'mea culpa' as you called it ... makes you look even more pitiable. All hail the cynically willing echo chamber of the right-wing noise machine.

http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/danny_glover_co.html

mz | 02.05.07 12:07 PM

Well, "anonymous" (real courage there, eh?), I certainly don't want to dictate to Edwards or any Presidential candidate who are they should hire.

Darleen | 02.05.07 01:36 AM

Well, "darleen" (real command of the language there,eh?)

anonymous | 02.05.07 12:18 PM

When Marcotte started catching flak for that opinion, she apparently deleted it and started altering other comments at Pandagon.

Now wait a sec. The entirety of substantive criticism of Marcotte is that she deleted posts about the Duke rape case (*the* cheval de bataille of the right-wing blogosphere; man those kids just *can't* get enough of that story.)

Now it turns out that the very peg that you use to hang your argument turns out to have fallen out of the wall (Marcotte turns out *not* to have deleted posts).

In an attempt to muddy the waters you say, "Some people think the controversy is ridiculous. 'You're opposing Edwards' candidacy by criticizing his blog manager, for her opinions posted on a different blog, about a state-level criminal case?'"

But clearly your post was not about criticizing Marcotte for her opinions about the Duke case. It was an accusation of Domenech-esque impropriety that turns out to be unfounded. But you know, that doesn't change the fact that she was insufficiently supportive of the Duke boys. I mean, we all know that's the bellwether issue of the last decade. These were white prep-school graduates, after all! Why should they possibly be subjected to scrutiny by the criminal justice system?

Perhaps you could reboot, start from the beginning, and tell us again why this is a controversy to anyone but the most partisan of right-wing hacks. Thanks!

ibc | 02.05.07 12:21 PM

As for exclusion of all other issues, I also mentioned Iran, which, if I'm not mistaken, is another issue. If you're going to comment, do try to pay attention to what has been said.

Pablo | 02.05.07 05:42 AM

Yes, I noticed you glossed over Iran as you hurtled toward Teh Gay. That doesn't change the simple fact that you expose yourself as a misogynist every time time you comment on this non-issue.

anonymous | 02.05.07 12:24 PM

And why does someone who signs himself "Pablo" think this is really much braver than signing himself "Anonymous"?

Avedon | 02.05.07 10:34 AM

Judging by his (or her) comments here, perhaps s/he thinks his or her name really is "Pablo."

anonymous | 02.05.07 12:30 PM

Heh, heh, heh. BTW, I'm Pablo all over the innernut. Granted, it's not quite as stylish as "anonymous" but it does leave a trail.

Pablo | 02.05.07 10:51 AM

So does a slug.

anonymous | 02.05.07 12:31 PM

Can anyone explain why Ms. Marcotte would want to delete Jesse Taylor's announcement that he was leaving to work on the Strickland campaign? He never posted to Pandagon again so he wasn't running a secret pro-Strickland agenda. Anyone who would believe this was some sort of conspiracy lacks the intelligence to run the fry station at McDonalds let alone be a reporter.

Col Bat Guano | 02.05.07 12:43 PM

Wow, it's like a really stupid little puppy following me around! Can I keep it, Danny? Huh, can I?

On second thought...

Pablo | 02.05.07 01:13 PM

When Marcotte runs for president I'll give a hoot about her political opinions. As long as the Edwards blog works I could care less.

Hey Mr. Glover, what do you think of McCain hiring a campaing staff he has called "dishonorable" and "over the line".

To me McCain hiring people he's despised seems like a bigger story

MSMluvsHillary | 02.05.07 01:22 PM

MSMluvsHillary, do a candidate's staff hiring practices matter or do they not? You can't have it both ways.

Also, do you think that continuing to accuse the Duke 3 of rape when the facts make it clear that they're not guilty, solely because of their skin color, gender and economic position is a political position? Is sexism a valid political position? Racism? Classism?

Pablo | 02.05.07 01:45 PM

I'll make it easy for you to understand Pablo.

When a politician, like McCain sells his soul and hires a professional campaign staff who McCain himself said run "dishonorable" and "over the line" campaigns it is much more relevant and troubling than a politician who hires someone to make sure the blog works so nuts like us can post comments, but has no impact on the candidates policies.

If Edwards was hiring Marcotte to write up his policy on the Duke alleged rape case I'd be very concerned.

I may disagree with my doctors political positions but if s/he can do the surgery it's not relevant. The logical extension of this is that we must know the political positions of our police, doctors, teachers etc.. or else we are implicitly endorsing all their views which even a winger would admit is nonsense.

MSMluvsHillary | 02.05.07 01:57 PM

Is sexism a valid political position? Racism? Classism?

Pablo | 02.05.07 01:45 PM

In your case, "Pablo," it may be more interesting to know if you are familiar with the concept of Unconscious Irony. Every comment you make on this non-issue is so obviously motivated by "sexism." And, of course, in the sleazy neighborhoods you haunt, "Racism" and "Classism" are always in the air.

By the way, did you know there is someone who regularly comments at Pandagon who calls himself/herself 'Pablo?' and that no one there has any trouble telling his/her comments from yours? Are you telling us that we should assume that any comment signed "Pablo" on any blog at any time is yours?

http://www.weeuniverse.com/patrioticanchors.html

anonymous | 02.05.07 02:05 PM

You made a series of really stupid mistakes. Hey, it happens.

But the National Journal should still demand your immediate resignation.

zota | 02.05.07 02:06 PM

The logical extension of this is that we must know the political positions of our police, doctors, teachers etc.. or else we are implicitly endorsing all their views which even a winger would admit is nonsense.

MSMluvsHillary | 02.05.07 01:57 PM

I wouldn't be so sure about that, M.

anonymous | 02.05.07 02:08 PM

Glover, you and I haven't met, and I have had rather bad days at the keyboard too, but this is an embarrassment and a slander. Your apology may have arrived soon enough to repair the damage to Marcotte's reputation, but your own rep is another matter. Frankly, it's the lameness rather than the calumny that is most disappointing. As if this non-story - even if it were both true and relevant - could possibly have been the best focus of your talent on behalf of your employer for your daily pay.

I did not go to J-School but I work 6 blocks from your office (as do 10,000 other Gucci Gulch lawyers). Am half tempted to send in a resume.

Bruce/Crablaw | 02.05.07 02:40 PM

anonymous, saying it doesn't make it so. Care to quote me saying anything that reflects your assertions?

How about if I quote me blowing them up?

I'm a racist? I'm a sexist? Any you're defending she who despises white men? Please.

Feel free to counter, but please bring something to the table other than your empty charges, won't you? That may work at Pandagon, but I don't think it will here.

Pablo | 02.05.07 03:17 PM

Wow talk about who NOT to vote for!! This *is* the male hating, white male bashing, female supremacist Amanda Marcotte? To bad female supremacy is the winning issue for the lefts campaign strategy.

I know Amanda places women first and hates men. Why vote for a person that would admire "qualities" like that?

Hujo | 02.05.07 03:30 PM

There goes that Unconscious Irony again.

Will you provide a quote from Miss Marcotte where she states: 'I hate white men?'

No, of course you can't, because that is not her position; that is the conclusion you leap to based on your twisted
misinterpretation of what she writes.

Now, in your case, I come to the reasonable conclusion that you are a troubled and confused man, always trying to mask your bigotry, based on my reasonable interpretation of your angry commments.

And speaking of Pandagon, was this one of yours ?

pablo Feb 5th, 2007 at 1:46 pm

It’s always bothered me that a charge of attempted murder carries a lesser sentence than a murder charge. IT’s like rewarding incompetence.

anonymous | 02.05.07 03:41 PM

"Will you provide a quote from Miss Marcotte where she states: 'I hate white men?"

I am not talking about an emotion like anger; I am talking about feminist misandry, avery big topic. Like many feminists she routinely uses men as a scapegoat, just read pandagon. Her stance on the duke trial was as racist and hypocritical as most feminists the OLD theory/hate tactic, White males behavior is branded evil as a result of being branded entitlement and privileged people, sorta thing. I think examples have been provided, check out her flickr account, Creepy, she invents 50's propaganda like some weird Ensleresqe oppression fantasy.

I was also banned on her blog after two posts because I challenged feminisms benefit to society.

I am sure I would have more concrete examples but there is the whole deleting posts/"technical problems" issue. Anyway simply because I have read hers and her friends hate propaganda for the last year. I heavily question anyone hiring people of that group to represent them politically. Campaign blog’s might be lame but it’s a portal of communication to the people for this man and it is now run by a female supremacist, gender feminist, whatever you call it. Is she monitoring e-mails? I am sure mail along the lines of “what will be done for mens education” might just hit that trash can? Its how she runs her blog. Bad idea.

hujo | 02.05.07 04:29 PM

Wait, let me get this straight. Now that the "Amanda deletes or edits embarrassing posts" canard has gone the way of the canary in the mineshaft, the best you guys can do is that she cusses??? Really??

... It's good to smell roasting wingnuts in the morning!

Dominion | 02.05.07 04:39 PM

I don't know if she deletes her own posts, I know for a fact she censors heavily. I worry about that.

hujo | 02.05.07 04:52 PM

No, if I've ever commented at Pandagon, I haven't done so in recent memory, and I certainly haven't done so today. I think I might have long ago, but I can't recall what about. Are you going to back up your accusation that I'm a racist and a sexist, or retract it, or just run away from the subject like a typical lying leftist? I'm waiting for one of the three, Amanda.

As for you, you need only look at your Stuck at the Airport post that you deleted to see your venom toward white men on full display.

Pablo | 02.05.07 05:12 PM

A woman had a strong opinion about a reported case of gang rape?

This is a scandal??!!!

The Republicans are filibustering on Iraq, Bush's budget is out in all it's fantasyland glory and this is the "scandal" you choose to write about?

Pinhead...

A Hermit | 02.05.07 05:13 PM

Oh this is interesting; Glover thinks someone messing with comments on a blog is behaving "scandalously", but look what popped on when I first tried to post a comment here:

"Your comment has been received. To protect against malicious comments, I have enabled a feature that allows your comments to be held for approval the first time you post a comment. I'll approve your comment when convenient; there is no need to re-post your comment."

Hypocrite.

A Hermit | 02.05.07 05:15 PM

This is a blog about blogging, should you care to bother noticing that.

Pablo | 02.05.07 05:19 PM

The appointment of Miss Marcotte is so delicious to the right-wing blogosphere not because Miss Marcotte is opinionated and strident, but because she is utterly illogical and truly incapable of seeing the validity in any view not her own.

Duke rape case? There's a lot of valid reasons for people to have believed the woman's story in the beginning. There's a lot of valid reasons to defend that decision now, in light of the DNA evidence which exonerated the Duke players. Instead of justifying her defence of the stripper, Miss Marcotte decided to bury her head in the sand and declare the guilt of the lacrosse players. She is not making it any easier for future rape victims to come forward, but makes it easier for alleged perpetrators to degrade their victims. That insanity is why the right-wing blogosphere is having fun with this.

Miss Marcotte is more than pro-choice; she is actually pro-abortion. She sees adoption as an inferiour choice to aborting, does not believe that fetuses are human, and resents restrictions on pregnant women that prevent fetal deformity. She mocks Feminists for Life, who work to ensure that pregnant women have resources, such as prenatal care, maternity leave, support from universities, modified tenure requirements to enable professors to be parents, and child care. That agenda is about as non-partisan and woman-friendly as you can get, but Miss Marcotte goes out of her way to attack it.

For her own political ends, she throws women under the bus. She might be a feminist, but she is not pro-woman. Coupled with her new boss's notorious contempt for OB-GYNs, the Edwards-Marcotte team is comically offensive to Americans.

theobromophile | 02.05.07 05:40 PM

Nice to see an apology and retraction.

Buzzcook | 02.05.07 08:21 PM

You guys are so adorable when you get your panties in a twist. If all that Amanda has done is re-awaken your interest in objectivity and/or journalistic truth, she'll have earned an extra-cushy place in the heavens.

Nancy in NYC | 02.05.07 09:34 PM

"You guys are so adorable when you get your panties in a twist."

Anonymous that knows me, more of that feminist misandry, if men speak their mind they are sissies, so much for challenging rigid masculinity, more like using it against men in hypocritical, tiered, oh-so-predictable feminist shaming tactics.

Hujo | 02.06.07 11:24 AM

Hee hee. "Misandry." Projection, the last refuge of the woman-hater.

I'm also interested by the sublimated misogyny apparent in the refusal of several commenters here to use Amanda's given name. "Mandy" is a good example, and "Miss Marcotte" has a certain level of condescension, too. Is the intention to pointedly avoid using Ms.?

But what I've learned on this thread is that Amanda Marcotte is an unbalanced, woman-hating, man-hating, racist, classist scoundrel. I've read Pandagon for two years now and never noticed that; she sure hides it well. Man, someone better tell Marc Faletti.

Djur | 02.06.07 12:04 PM

Djur,

I do my best to add honourifics to the names of people I do not know and certainly do not refer to them by their first names. As Amanda Marcotte has never been married, she is a "Miss." I personally intend to live out my years as "Miss Theobromophile," finding "Ms." to be just what it is: a title for women who like their marital status to be ambiguous.

I'm sorry that you cannot distinguish between old-fashioned civility and condescension.

theobromophile | 02.06.07 03:52 PM

Wow. Republicans. Telling Democrats how to run their campaigns. Wow. The same dipsticks who've been wrong on virtually *everything* over the past six years -- wrong on how to catch Osama, wrong on Iraq, wrong on the deficit, wrong on Social Security, wrong on the economy (over 2,000,000 industrial jobs lost over the past six years!) -- are giving advice. Any Democrat with the [guts] could only respond by pointing and laughing and stating the Edwards campaign theme, which can be summed up as "Republicans: Wrong on everything." If he doesn't respond by giving those gals a raise while issuing a press notice about how dumb it is that Republicans, the folks who've been wrong on everything for the past six years, are giving him campaign advice, he's an idiot.

Badtux | 02.07.07 05:54 PM

I also should have contacted Marcotte rather than assuming, based on her comment about her critics, that she wouldn't respond to a query from me.

duuuhhh... ya think?

I can't believe that there is somebody stupid enough to cut you a paycheck for this alleged "writing" that you do.

sohei | 02.08.07 10:12 AM

I find this all incredibly ironic. I probably agree with almost all her positions except for her incredibly incorrect statements about the Duke case, about which she apparently remains willfully ignorant, but her style of writing is in no way going to be welcoming to those who aren't already true believers in her church.

I was one of the ones whose comments were removed from Pandagon a little less than a week ago (no 2005, and no glitch, folks, she was selective in who got deleted).

Should she work for Edwards? I really don't know what she's supposed to do for him, but if it involves writing and opinion then doesn't that suggest that she will at least be in conflict with her own way of doing things? Ah, but that's Edwards' problem.

As a liberal, I have found it depressing that various self-appointed spokespeople claiming to be in front of the parade on social issues seem to speak about the Duke case without knowing anything about it. If you're going to speak out about something, why not be informed? If you are going to represent the political face of the Dems why give ammunition to the right-wing by saying stupid, incorrect things?

Facts over theory in criminal cases. Get behind the idea.

Bob In Pacifica | 02.08.07 05:13 PM

Count me as one woman who finds Amanda's brand of man-hating, Catholic-hating, baby-hating ideology completely and totally revolting. If she is an example of a model woman is supposed to be I'd like to resign my membership.

Judith M. | 02.16.07 05:30 PM

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