Other than to say, perhaps, “You go, Girls!” to Pandagon‘s Amanda Marcotte and Shakespeare’s Sister‘s Melissa McEwan, I was going to try to avoid the whole issue of the John Edwards campaign hiring those two big-time lefty feminist bloggers as part of his campaign’s web operation.
But alas, the non-controversy controversy (the always polite, civil and courteous Michelle Malkin says that Amanda is potty-mouthed… the unbiased and non-partisan Mr. William A. Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, says she is “anti-Catholic”… I hear she might even be some kind of feminist or something… and take some kind of umbrage at the Catholic Church’s stance on birth control, a position held by a great many Catholics… but I digress)… the New York Times front page has picked up the story, proving that blogs have finally become important for generating controversy, if nothing else.
I was reading something extremely intelligent by Mary Beth at Wampum on this very subject, indeed, very presciently directed specifically at Senator Edwards, pointing out that the very over-the-top flame-throwing red-meat tossing style that big-time bloggers do in order to generate their big-time traffic numbers might well be wholly inconsistent with a Presidential campaign, where something far more cautious was called for… Alas, Senator Edwards apparently didn’t read the extremely intelligent Mary Beth Williams (herself a candidate for state office in a recent cycle)… at his own peril. Because that is precisely the issue that just came up to bite him on the tuches.
In some sense, Edwards has just generated a great deal of free publicity for himself, and he has also demonstrated that he can display some backbone and some personal loyalty, as Amanda and Melissa, for the time being, are still employed by his campaign. He has also demonstrated with this silly incident that the right is ever-shameless about finding things to attack (perhaps a not-so subtle message directed at Al Gore if he jumps in?)
OTOH, turnabout is fair play: John McCain, for example, has gone out of his way to hire Terry Nelson one of the very dirty tricksters who helped undermine his own campaign in 2000, and most recently, helped undermine Harold Ford’s with some ads that many people considered racist. Feel free to call the [formerly sainted until he sold us all out on torture… and other things] John McCain on it, if you want. It’s all fair, and Nelson appears far more integral to McCain’s operation than Marcotte and McEwan are to Edwards… It’s also quite clear that the press considers these bulls**t sideshow and inside baseball campaign stories to be far more important than actual news… so what else is new?
So… for example… how about the fact that the Senate Republicans have just used the same kind of procedural gamesmanship to block a non-binding war resolution that they have long railed against Democrats for doing (so ineffectively!) and yet, why do I not now hear Harry Reid (and Chuck Schumer… sorry, but I always wonder just what it is that my State’s senior senator does in the Senate, let alone does in some kind of leadership position) rail for “an up or down vote”? “UP OR DOWN VOTE.” “UP OR DOWN VOTE.” Why are we not hearing about it? IT’S FREE. And yet… it’s left on the table. (“UP OR DOWN VOTE!”)
Well, there you have it. Lesson learned. For the moment, John Edwards (who, barring catastrophic missteps by (1) Hillary Clinton, AND (2) Al Gore, AND (3) Barack Obama… has virtually no chance whatsoever at the Democratic nomination… there, I said it… ) has at least showed us some backbone. Though I must say that if he didn’t see this sort of thing coming… that really does not bode well for his judgement, and hence, his candidacy: it reminds us that Kerry didn’t expect to be Swift-boated.
Politics is no longer for the squeamish, especially for Democrats. Because it’s open season on Democrats– especially the more visible ones… and it has been for… ever. Nothing, of course, stops Dems from firing back, of course… but the donkey party seems to have a unilateral disarmament thing going. Of course, as bloggers, Amanda and Melissa were unafraid to fire back… and that’s apparently exactly what they are now being called on the carpet for. Of course, I’m not so sure that sort of thing will be permitted much, or at all, as members of a campaign team… I can’t see why it would…
Well, they’ll stone you when you walk all alone.
They’ll stone you when you are walking home.
They’ll stone you and then say you are brave.
They’ll stone you when you are set down in your grave.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.
tdog
qwdqwdqwe
NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak Charged With Attempted Murder in Bizarre Love Triangle
By coincidence I landed on Pandagon while visiting new blogs about a day before all the wailing and gnashing of teeth began. Knew nothing of these people until they mentioned Melissa McEwan. A few earlier trips to Shakes’ Sister left me with the impression they were pretty rabid. But nothing like Pam Spaulding.
Historically US politics have often devolved into gutter tactics, aimed at de-legitimizing and destroying the opposing party/ideology, rather than in furthering constructive debate. But the take-no-prisoner aggressions of the Federalist/Jeffersonian era seem, to me at least, to have circled around the great unspoken problem of slavery, assertively uspoken by agreement at the constitutional convention, disfiguring political discourse (as they say), until it metastasized into the realm of the unable-not-speak-of problem of a half-century later. Likewise, the late 19th century yellow journalism crap doubtless served to distract folks from having to come to grips with the widening class chasms of the industrial revolution, until the progessive era. I do believe that something similar has been happening for the past two decades, beginning in the Reagan years. Unfortunately, the mud-slinging has been mainly a one way affair, with many in the democratic middle accepting the mud as if it were a spa treatment. But as we know, at least under the agricultural maladministration of ADM, I mean the Bushivite junta, if there’s mud, there’s fecal matter. And e-coli. Texas tea… (excuse me). These aren’t traditional partisan attacks. Instead, the right has made it increasingly acceptable discursively to disenfranchise wide swathes of the citizenry, and to focus their attacks not merely on liberal positions, but on the very existence of liberals and the democratic party. So what are the great unspokens otherwise obscured by the vicious chatter of the Republican sound machine? My best guess: a drastic change in the structure of our economy, of the sort that our own estimable TD has been signalling in so many fine posts. We have lost not only our manufacturing jobs, but our manufacturing capacity. And if we have only a service economy left, how come I can’t even get good service? Across the border, in Ontario, I have an in-law who now works at a call center outsourced from India by an Indian company which has discovered that unemployed midwesterners cost little more to employ than Indians — and some of them even speak better English to boot. If one day my underwear bears the made in USA label, will it be because our Chinese masters (oops, I mean creditors) have outsourced the labor back to us? In California, Schwarzie has been agitating to move prisoners from the overcrowed state system into private prisons out of state. Is this yet another way we will eventually turn our urban underclass into the new american slave labor? After-all, they’ll learn some useful job skills in a private prison. Can’t one of the candidates, maybe one on the margins with nothing to lose (ahem), stop worrying about accusations of class conflict and actually embrace them, then fucking throw them back at the true inst-i-gators? No need for recondite economics-jargon: simply ask how it feels to know that the CEO makes more in an hour than you, dear voter, will make this year. On a petty level, the Edwards campaign should take a page from the Rovian play book, ignore the recent attacks, and turn them around by trashing the thrashers, as so many bloggers already have. How hard can it be to swift boat such a ripe target as Donahue, especially when we don’t even have to lie? And people shouldn’t wuss out that we shouldn’t descend to their level of political tawdriness. We will never be like them. We believe in justice and will humbly accept losing to our oppostion if we know them to have followed due procedure. We’re sorta squishy that way. However, as you rightly note, what could be more just and fair-play than turnabout? And while I’m on the subject, can’t any candidate answer impugnations of anti-religiosity by exercising a little brain-power? Elementary anthropology: primitive (all) religion helps explain the world, providing and sanctifying the meanings, moods and motivations for people to think they understand the world and to get out of bed and deal with it. Well the reality for a huge segment of americans (particularly in the rural red states) is well nigh hopeless. If the democrats would stop tip toeing around religion and substitute some astute sociological analysis, maybe they can ween the downtrodden from dependency on the Lord (Who didn’t care about Caesar’s economy any more than H/She cares about our’s) and get them to recognize their post-industrial lords (can’t help getting a little medieval on you, TD). Imagine if we could succeed in defusing fundamentalism by recentering debate. Pounding away like they do, but replacing their cynical manipulations with some truth. I know it’s hard to get people to deal with reality, but it can be done, not by attacking religion, but by putting it back into the realm of the sacred. Senator X could say: “You’re afraid your kid is gonna get an abortion and you think it’s all the fault of us godless elite liberals? Like them actors in Hollywood? (brought to you, by the way, by the Republican dominated military-entertainment complex that owns the actors and would merchandise your air if they could stop polluting it). Well, I’m tellin’ ya, don’t go shutting down clinics, don’t be tellin’ women what to do with their bodies. Just look around you instead: could it be that your kids are bored, they don’t see a future, their dads are unemployed, drink a little bit too much every now and then, scare the shit out of you and the young’uns… and did I mention there’s no jobs in town, (except down at the chicken plucking plant, which hires swarthy brown folk, etc.) Nothin’ left to do but drive out past the end of town, have sex (unprotected since you’re afraid to talk about it and won’t let anyone else educate ’em), and pray.” Instead of demonizing these good americans, we liberals can reclaim our role as defenders of the common man and woman. We need to protect these good people who end up thinking that their predicaments are their own fault because the preachers at the pulpit and on TV, the gasbags on talk radio and the cynical right wing leadership tell them again and again that it’s a moral problem, caused by their own sinful natures led on by the sinful temptations of our corrupt culture. Shouldn’t our best candidates be counteracting this by telling them God will sort out his/her own (as at Carcassonne?) but in the meantime, talk like honest folk about reality in the here and now. When you-know-who said that religion was the opiate of the massess, he meant it in the 19th century sense; not that it is delusional or hallucinatory, but that it is an anasthetic, it numbs the pain (ok, I’ve read some Patrick O’Brian novels for 19th century surgical technique). And it isn’t only about the globalization of industry that’s fucking up their small town or faceless exurb. Financial thievery, media monopolization, cronyism, oil and Irag all figure into the equation. There’s many dots to connect.
A fan of both for quite some time now, I have to say I was disappointed in their “apologies”. I wouldn’t have – because i stand by what I say – and I’m not sure they did their credibility any favors.