Bloggers on the out

SIGH.

This is one of those sad bits of business. Today, over the day, the bloggers who Edwards was using have resigned.

Their troubles have persisted since they started work. In the past, and possibly still, they were making critical statements, via blogging, about conservatives and religious leaders who they were in disagreement with, both personally and ideologically.

While pressure, from people who would never vote for him, didn't dissuade him from using their services...

they are OUT now.

Amanda Marcotte was first, with her announcement at Pandagon.

I was hired by the Edwards campaign for the skills and talents I bring to the table, and my willingness to work hard for what’s right. Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills, and pretended that John Edwards had to be held accountable for some of my personal, non-mainstream views on religious influence on politics (I’m anti-theocracy, for those who were keeping track). Bill Donohue—anti-Semite, right wing lackey whose entire job is to create non-controversies in order to derail liberal politics—has been running a scorched earth campaign to get me fired for my personal beliefs and my writings on this blog.

In fact, he’s made no bones about the fact that his intent is to “silence” me, as if he—a perfect stranger—should have a right to curtail my freedom of speech. Why? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m pro-choice? Because I’m not religious? All of the above, it seems.

Regardless, it 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.

There is good news. The main good news 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. The other good news is that the blogosphere has risen as one and protested, loudly, the influence a handful of well-financed right wing shills have on the public discourse.

Bill Donohue doesn’t speak for Catholics, he speaks for the right wing noise machine. You guys pointed this out, you made a stink, you refused to walk into the same stupid trap that is laid out for liberals and Democrats by the right wing noise machine and I think you made a difference. While loyalty played into the pushback some, the real story is that we liberals are not taking this crap any longer and we’re pushing back. And now that I’m attached to only myself again, I’m ready and eager to join in the pushing back with you. Like Lorraine say, Jesus did not say to shut your piehole...

Then later another resignation:

I regret to say that I have also resigned from the Edwards campaign. In spite of what was widely reported, I was not hired as a blogger, but a part-time technical advisor, which is the role I am vacating.

I would like to make very clear that the campaign did not push me out, nor was my resignation the back-end of some arrangement made last week. This was a decision I made, with the campaign's reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign, and making me increasingly uncomfortable with my and my family's level of exposure.

I understand that there will be progressive bloggers who feel I am making the wrong decision, and I offer my sincerest apologies to them. One of the hardest parts of this decision was feeling as though I'm letting down my peers, who have been so supportive.

There will be some who clamor to claim victory for my resignation, but I caution them that in doing so, they are tacitly accepting responsibility for those who have deluged my blog and my inbox with vitriol and veiled threats. It is not right-wing bloggers, nor people like Bill Donohue or Bill O'Reilly, who prompted nor deserve credit for my resignation, no matter how much they want it, but individuals who used public criticisms of me as an excuse to unleash frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation.

This is a win for no one.

This is all very sad news. They were doing good work.

Some want to lay all the blame on Edwards. But, really, none of us have a reason or evidence to say he shoved them out in an evil plan. What we have a re two talented and opinionated women with unpopular opinions.

This out a bit of added pressure on the campaign, and in this arena they could not go a defend themselves properly. Not without bringing more fire on the campaign, in a fight that had nothing to do with the main part of the campaign. Sure the campaign could make it its business. But that would be an EXCELLENT way to derail it. It isn't the idealism I would love to espouse and live by. But it is the reality of political strategizing.

So they stay, take hit after hit, and cause the campaign take more and more hits, Or, they leave, they fight the good fight.

As I am, I would love to have the candidate that would fight the likes of Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, O’Reilly, and Donohue. Someone who fights these smaller, but grander battles. And their is such a candidate. Dennis Kucinich. And he ain't winning.

I would rather have Edwards fight this out. But that is career suicide. And as such, someone in the campaign could have taken an hour, researched the bloggers' writing.

So I hope they do well. And we don't have to worry about them fighting the good fight. They already are.

No, I would need for more information to hold Edwards at fault.


No I look at the real killjoy here, and blame him. Bill Donohue (Pictured here...No, wait, that is Marvel's Hate Monger...man, hard to tell the difference.).

This guy will curse Muslims, Jews, Protestants, Atheists, Secularists, and then take offense at being called on it. Declare it anti-Catholicism. Don't except the bible as literal truth, your a bigot and going to Hell.

This guy is truly a Class-A schmuck. A mean, cruel, crude, vain, bigot, who gets on the news whenever he wants, and gets to speak for an entire religion.

This man deserves no respect, as he has earned none. How can anyone find fault with their criticism of him?


He and his ilk cause too many troubles in this country. These zealots inflict so much pain.


When do we start standing up to them already.