As usual, guess who’s getting blamed. More blame-the-messenger hysterics and hyperbole at–where else?–HuffPo.

Bryan Preston responds to McEwan’s claims of hate mail and death threats:

Blogs in general have a collective new dent thanks to the promotion of two of its worst to positions where they would attract mainstream coverage and attention. The credibility of better, more reasonable bloggers on both sides will suffer for this episode. And to the extent that the two actually received threats, it’s deplorable and unacceptable. Around here at Hot Air, we know that feeling all too well.

Once again, the Associated Press plays spin doctor for the nutroots–blaming conservatives for turning “Christofascist”-basher Melissa McEwan into a victim while ignoring increasing criticism from religious liberals and Democrats:

A second blogger working for Democratic presidential prospect John Edwards quit Tuesday under pressure from conservative critics who said her previous online messages were anti-Catholic.

Melissa McEwan wrote on her personal blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, that she left the campaign because she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the level of attention focused on her and her family.

“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,” she said Tuesday night.

McEwan’s resignation comes just one day after another blogger, Amanda Marcotte, left the Edwards staff for similar reasons.

Maybe the gals can work for AP. They obviously have fans and sympathizers there.

Danny Glover: And then there were none.

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.

The Associated Press has a typically fair and balanced–not–headline:

Targeted Blogger Quits Edwards Campaign

Here, let me rewrite that headline for you, AP:

“Godbag“-spewing Blogger Quits Edwards Campaign

(11:15pm Eastern update) – WaPo’s Howard Kurtz has a story in Tuesday’s paper, now up on the Web.

Marcotte vows revenge, Danny Glover points out:

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.”

So much for that sincere apology. Good news for the nutroots: She’s free, free again to yell “Jeebus” all she wants!

As for this being all the fault of conservative bloggers and Catholics, here is a liberal blogger named “Faithful Progressive” at the Christian Alliance for Progress blog, responding to MyDD blogger Matt Stoller’s attack on religious lefties who criticized Edwards’ initial decision to hire and stand by Marcotte and McEwan:

…what I find most disturbing is the absolute unwillingness of people like Mr. Stoller to admit that people on the left can engage in hate speech and can needlessly offend both allies and potential ones just as easily as extremists on the right. Edwards said the quotes offended him, and the bloggers in question have apologized. They have accepted responsibility for their posts. But people like Matt Stoller can only see that the source of the quotes was a bigot himself, so whatever he says should be dismissed–even when there is no dispute that his claims this time were true. There will always be right wingers who will make charges against those on the left–if it’s not Bill Donahue, it will be Karl Rove or Michelle Malkin, or Ann Althouse, or–do I need to go on? The press will report their charges and will ignore their bias and past track record. It is naive to think otherwise. What matters is whether or not there is any substance when the mud has been thrown by the designated attack dogs. In this case, there was substance to the charges made.

To deny that is a staggering and disturbing level of moral blindness that, fortunately, appears to be very much a minority and marginal point of view even among the most strident liberal blogs.

Donahue, Rove, Althouse, and Malkin–that’s a bizarre group to be lumping together under the banner of united right wingers. But still, Faithful Progressive makes the right point about the nutroots being so blinded by their hatred of their political opponents that they can’t see the gobsmackingly obvious substance of the charges against Edwards’ unhinged bloggers.

And here was another lefty Democrat critic of Marcotte’s, quoted at Ben Smith’s blog in response to her latest diatribe attacking the Virgin Birth:

Brian O’Dwyer, a New York lawyer and Irish-American leader, who attacked Edwards the first time round, just came out with a statement:

“The blogger’s continuing hostility to Catholics and other Christians, especially in the centrality of the Virgin birth, is both morally wrong and, for Senator Edwards, politically stupid. Senator Edwards was horribly flawed in refusing to see the importance of how offensive the blogger’s earlier comments were to people of faith. This latest so-called review, published after Edwards refused to fire her for earlier anti-Catholic writings, should now wake him up and lead him to finally do the right thing as his campaign tries to move forward. Bigotry of any kind should have no role in the Democratic Party, or in any presidential campaign.”

O’Dwyer, also, is hard to cast as a GOP hitman. He’s the chairman of the National Democratic Ethnic Leadership Council, the Democratic Party’s official white-ethnic grouping; close to some labor union leaders; and a leading member of a prominent New York democratic family.

Via Ben Smith, another religious liberal who raised his voice:

“We’re completely invisible to this debate,” said Eduardo Penalver, a Cornell University law professor who writes for the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal. He said he was dissatisfied with the Edwards campaign’s response. “As a constituency, the Christian left isn’t taken all that seriously,” Penalver said.

Democrats — and Edwards in particular — have embraced the language of faith and the imperative of competing with Republicans for the support of religious voters. His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, even sits on the board of the leading organization of the religious left, Call to Renewal. But in private conversations and careful public statements today, religious Democrats said they felt sidelined by Edwards’ decision to stand by his aides.

Glenn Reynolds: “She will be missed.”

Oh, she’ll be back.

Or someone like her.

At Slate, John Dickerson reports that “a top adviser to a rival campaign took a shot [at Edwards]: ‘Apparently they’re more afraid of the bloggers than they are the Catholics’” and concludes that “all campaigns are likely to face a version of his troubles this week.”

I wouldn’t say all, but I’d say all the major Democrat candidates have a major nutroots headache to deal with as 2008 draws nigh.

The Daily Kos is demanding to know which Democrat campaign dissed Edwards’ bloggers.

***

It’s not clear what the fate of Marcotte’s blog soul sister and fellow Edwards campaign staffer, Melissa McEwan, is. Nothing at her personal blog. No recent posts from her at Edwards’ blog.

There’s a live chat going on right now at Edwards’ site (10:11pm Eastern), but there’s no discussion of Marcotte’s resignation.

I did find one commenter at the Edwards’ blog ready to take her place, though:

This saddens me to no end

I’ve been kinda wondering where she was, why I was spending so much time defending JRE for keeping her, but not a peep from the blogmaster herself.

Hey Senator. Where do I send the application?

Mark Adams

Well, give him points for demonstrating the ability to write a sentence without dropping the F-bomb and trashing Christians.

***

More reax:

Jeff Goldstein:

Sadly, it seems, Marcotte hasn’t learned anything from this experience. Instead, she continues to see conspiracies rather than geniune outrage—and in so doing, she continues to lean on the crutch of her collective rather than taking a good hard look at her method of discourse.

Patterico:

Yes, I’ve said the f-word myself. Many, many times. And plenty of other profane words to boot. I’m not a Puritan and don’t pretend to be.

And if a presidential candidate ever hired me (ha!), and he was seeking the vote of the crucial long-haired-stoner-resembling-Shaggy’s-unkempt-cousin constituency, or the dishonest-self-righteous-innuendo-spreading-sock-puppet-lefty-lawyer constituency . . . well, I’d sit him down before he hired me, and warn him about a few things.

Marcotte alienated constituencies a little wider than this. Just to take one example, she bagged on every anti-abortion Christian in the country, branding them all as misogynists. If Edwards didn’t know about this, she should have been savvy enough to tell him. It’s not all about the f-word, it’s about how it’s employed.

Jim Treacher:

Marcotte didn’t mention the Catholic Democratics who are unhappy with her, presumably because they’re just dupes of the right-wing spin machine (which really tones the thighs, glutes, and calves).

Ed Morrissey:

Contrary to her assertion that we “right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills,” we Catholics drew attention to the fact that she engages in vituperative and demeaning attacks on religion and that Edwards appeared to have endorsed that by hiring her. Along the exact same lines, I would have criticized a Republican dumb enough to hire Fred Phelps* as a spokesperson, as would Marcotte herself. She simply refuses to accept the fact that she wrote incendiary and bigoted essays about Christians and embarrassed Edwards by agreeing to work for him after doing so.

(*Re. Phelps: Bryan Preston notes the thug was a Gore delegate and Democrat fund-raiser.)

Charles Johnson at LGF:

Looks like we won’t have Amanda Marcotte to f****** kick around any more. She’s bailing out of the Edwards campaign, nobly crushed under the massive, well-financed pressure of the “right-wing noise machine” who just can’t stand to see a woman be successful, g****** it.

Walter Olson was one of the first to notice Marcotte’s Duke lacrosse team diatribe. Links to his posts are here. See also Jon Ham; his reax here.

Mark Coffey:

…[T]hree things strike me as particularly hilarious about this: one, that Marcotte apparently is giving us fair warning that she intends to become even more foul-mouthed and unpleasant now that she is no longer ‘held back’ by her employment with Edwards.

Two, we can obviously see now the complete and utter insincerity of her ‘apology’.

Three, she actually thinks anyone is going to give a damn about her now! It’s over, babe…now you’re just another foul-mouthed lefty, and I can’t swing a cat without hitting three of those…

Interesting: There’s mixed reaction at The Daily Kos.

One of the MyDD bloggers has a muted, sober response to the resignation–and it suggests the obvious conclusion that it was Marcotte’s latest screed maligning religious people on her personal blog (written after she had promised Edwards it was never her intention to malign religious people) that did her in:

Amanda Marcotte resigned from the Edwards campaign. It was her decision. Amanda feels encumbered by the campaign and unable to effectively defend herself from the right-wing.

McEwan, by contrast, is apparently behaving herself post-apology. And so the woman who wrote all this (language warning):

What don’t you lousy motherfuckers understand about keeping your noses out of our britches, our beds, and our families?

…The unmitigated temerity of calling themselves the “Pro-Family” Network while they try to undermine gay families is just about enough to send me permanently around the bend. And what’s this bullshit about children deserving to be “in that relationship”? If you’re so bloody passionate about making sure kids have a mom and a dad, then surely you’re spending at least as much time and effort on deadbeat parents and trying to criminalize divorce for couples with children, right? No? Pretty much just focused on preventing gays from giving homes to unwanted children? What a fucking surprise.

Oh, and I see on your shitbag website that “Hate Crimes Bills” are one of your priorities. What does that have to do with families? Or did you get that bug up your ass, Greg, when you went through your “conversion” and got out of the “gay lifestyle” you lived for the first half of your life? Just because you were “miserable” as a gay man and were “ashamed of being gay,” doesn’t give you the right to try to ungay-by-law all the other people who don’t feel ashamed of themselves, you useless, self-loathing turd…

…Aww, what a disappointment that this year’s hate-mongering doesn’t have a catchy phrase that will play to the Bible-bashing pseudo-Christians. That’s a damn shame.

Seriously, these wankers need to fuck off.

…will remain on the John Edwards for President staff as blogger and Internet liaison. For how long? Until the hinges come off again or nutroots peer pressure pushes her over the edge. In other words: not long.

Betsy Newmark slams the woman card-playing.

Cassandra at Villanous Company offer her withering takedown of the fem-victim whining:

The truth is simple. No one cares what Marcotte or any of her ilk have to say: in America they are perfectly free to spout their ill-considered opinions day and night, and she had – and has – a large and admiring audience for her opinions. The only “penalty” for speaking freely in America is the same one we all face: that others may disagree, disapprove, counter your ideas with opposing speech, or God forbid, exercise their right to feel offended by what you say.

To clarify, no one is trying to “silence” Ms. Marcotte. Her site has not been shut down. Stop patronizing her and treating her like a little girl.

She made a choice.

She chose to self-edit her own speech to quiet the furor her own intolerant and intemperate speech generated. Moreover, she did so to try and save her position within the Edwards campaign rather than freely choosing to state that she stood by her expressed sentiments. That, also, would have been a choice.

But the logic of those who wish to turn Ms. Marcotte into a hapless victym is compelling. After all, as so many of our left-wing brethren have hastened to inform us, it is possible to find intolerant remarks on the reich side of the blogosphere as well. Everyone has made an intolerant remark at some point in their lifetime after all, and the presence of even one insensitive joke or off-color remark justifies literally reams of similar “satire” from Ms. Marcotte.

And the fact that none of the bloggers making these intolerant remarks have been hired by Republican candidates to represent their campaigns is hardly a persuasive argument either. It is a considerable relief to know that John Edwards’ staff, apparently, did NOT choose Ms. Marcotte because of the quality of her writing or her ideas, nor because he thought his reputation would be enhanced by association with her politics. After all, what she wrote on a personal site should never have been taken… well, seriously. Let that be a lesson to those narrow-minded ‘wingers on the reich: Womyn Power is not a thing to be trifled with.

And if any of this makes sense to you, we highly recommend a few sessions in our decompression chamber…

***

Previous:

The Pandagonization of John Edwards is complete
When Angry German Boy met Angry Edwards’ Blogger (Updated)
Read-along with John Edwards’ blogger
How to become a leading Democrat’s blogmaster Updated/Correction
–and more wit and wisdom of Amanda Marcotte
Exposed: The Pandagon Papers

***

Related: CNN covers the Pandagonization of the Edwards campaign.

Bryan has an IMPORTANT ACTION ALERT about the leftosphere’s IMPORTANT ACTION ALERT.

Danny Glover notes that it is not at all clear whether Edwards has fired his pair of BDS-suffering bloggerettes.

Blogger Jason Clarke:

Something else beyond Ms. Marcotte’s comments really bothers me here, and that is the way in which many liberal bloggers have chosen to defend Ms. Marcotte.

Without addressing her comments directly, Glenn Greenwald chose to talk about the rude comments of a conservative blogger.

Without addressing her comments directly, Daily Kos diarist Kagro X suggested that other Democratic candidates circle the wagons around Edwards.

Without addressing her comments directly, Shakespeare’s Sister blogger Waveflux commented on one of Ms. Marcotte’s critics.

And most disturbing of all in my opinion are the comments from Chris Bowers, writer at the popular liberal blog MyDD. Short of addressing the particulars of Ms. Marcotte’s comments– should we then assume he supports them?–Bowers instead launches a pretty bold threat directly at the Edwards campaign:

I have a pretty vicious rant and an important action alert lined up, but I am waiting to hear from the Edwards camp about the fate of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan before doing anything…But like I said, I am waiting before letting loose.

Bowers goes on to reference a straw poll at liberal blog DailyKos, commenting that “Either way, [Edwards] won’t be tied with Barack Obama in Dailykos straw polls anymore. It will be hard in one direction or the other” (emphasis mine).

In a later post, Bowers continue to actively threaten the Edwards camp, writing that “If someone is willing to stand with us, that should mean something big, and should not go unrewarded.”

Bowers’ message here is loud and clear: We don’t care what she said, whether or not it’s offensive, or any effect it might have on “our” candidate- we only care that one of “our own” is being threatened.

Could Bowers be any more direct? Fire Ms. Marcotte, and he will “let loose” on the Edwards campaign with a “vicious rant” (the same kind that Marcotte writes, I wonder?). However, if Edwards does what Bowers wants, then that “should not go unrewarded”.

These are pretty direct, and audaciously arrogant, threats for a liberal blog to make at a presidential candidate. Particularly when they are accompanied by a deafening lack of comment about exactly what Ms. Marcotte has written and its potential effects on the electorate.

A Support Amanda campaign…from the right!

Instapundit: “other Presidential candidates would be well advised to spend a bit more time poking through the archives of any bloggers they think about hiring…”***

—
Hot Air Theater presents a second dramatic interpretation of official John Edwards’ blogmaster Amanda Marcotte’s wit and wisdom:

The script straight from Marcotte’s blog (language warning):

Rehnquist died. He was no crusader for decency or anything, but nor was he a person whose ideology overruled his decisions. Those days for the Supreme Court are over. BushCo has a new appointment and can also choose the new Chief Justice.

Summary: We are fucked.

Choice is gone. And as soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned, states will start outlawing contraception, and eventually the ideologically run court will find that there’s no right to privacy, period, and contraception protection will be gone.

The only thing I can say now is that people who have enough children or don’t want any at all–get sterilized while you still can. As for those who want children, just not now….well, I don’t know. If you use condoms, stock up on EC now. If you use the pill, start exploring Canadian options.

One thing I vow here and now–you motherfuckers who want to ban birth control will never sleep. I will fuck without making children day in and out and you will know it and you won’t be able to stop it. Toss and turn, you mean, jealous motherfuckers. I’m not going to be “punished” with babies. Which makes all your efforts a failure. Some non-procreating women escaped. So give up now. You’ll never catch all of us. Give up now.

The New York Times reports this morning:

Two bloggers hired by John Edwards to reach out to liberals in the online world have landed his presidential campaign in hot water for doing what bloggers do — expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language.

The Catholic League, a conservative religious group, is demanding that Mr. Edwards dismiss the two, Amanda Marcotte of the Pandagon blog site and Melissa McEwan, who writes on her blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, for expressing anti-Catholic opinions.

Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, is among the leading Democratic presidential candidates.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said in a statement on Tuesday, “John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots.”

Mr. Edwards’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, said Tuesday night that the campaign was weighing the fate of the two bloggers.

The two women brought to the Edwards campaign long cyber trails in the incendiary language of the blogosphere. Other campaigns are likely to face similar controversies as they try to court voters using the latest techniques of online communication.

Ms. Marcotte wrote in December that the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to the use of contraception forced women “to bear more tithing Catholics.” In another posting last year, she used vulgar language to describe the church doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

She has also written sarcastically about the news media coverage of the three Duke lacrosse players accused of sexual assault, saying: “Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.”

Ms. Marcotte joined the Edwards campaign at the end of January in the new post of blogmaster. She has lived in Austin, Tex., for the past 11 years and wrote on her blog that she was planning to move to Chapel Hill, N.C., in February to work full-time on the campaign.

Lesson for Democrat politicians: If you lay down with nutroots, it will be hard to get back up.

***

Dean Barnett starts a betting pool and looks at the L’affaire Marcotte denouement:

I had thought the denouement of L’Affaire Marcotte would be Marcotte resigning and the nutroots exploding with one of its characteristically dignified paroxysms of indignation. Now I’m predicting that Edwards will use this as an opportunity to tack rightward, trodding on the freshly expired political corpse of Amanda Marcotte to do so. He will explain how her over-eager blog postings offended his simple Southern sensibilities. Where Edwards comes from, they still say “Ma’am” and “Yessir,” not “F**k Bushco!!!!”

This will anger the Nutroots. The Nutroots feel that Democrats should always fight, even if they’re completely in the wrong. The sorry spectacle of the Edwards campaign caving in to the likes of me will not please the left half of the blogosphere.

As L’Affaire Marcotte nears its inevitable conclusion, I can’t decide who was dumber, Marcotte or the Edwards campaign. On the one hand I can’t believe that Marcotte had become so comfortable in the left wing echo chamber that she actually believed her past didn’t preclude her from publicly entering a mainstream presidential campaign. On the other hand, I really can’t believe that the Edwards campaign apparently didn’t vet a high profile hire.

ABC’s Terry Moran asks, ““Does John Edwards condone hate speech:”

Questions: What, if anything, does it tell us about Edwards that he’s joined up with this blogger? Is Edwards’ association with a person who has written these things a legitimate issue for voters, as they wonder–among other things–whom he might appoint to high office if he’s elected? If a Republican candidate teamed up with a right-wing blogger who spewed this kind of venom, how would people react?

Rick Moran (Terry’s excellent blogging brother!) takes the NYTimes to task for trying to Marcotte-ize the whole blogosphere:

The New York Times tries to excuse Marcotte’s ravings as a consequence of being a member of the blogosphere:

The two women brought to the Edwards campaign long cyber trails in the incendiary language of the blogosphere. Other campaigns are likely to face similar controversies as they try to court voters using the latest techniques of online communication.

This is absurd. Marcotte is not being taken to task for “incendiary” writing. Holy Smokes! Anyone peruse the DNC or RNC sites lately? “Incendiary” language is hardly frowned upon and is, indeed, a prerequisite for latching on to any political campaign.

Marcotte’s will lose her job because despite the fact that she believes herself to be well meaning and, probably according to her lights incapable of hatred directed against any group, she is a rank bigot, a nauseating, die hard dogmatist whose sickening screeds against people she disagrees with (including most non-emasculated men) have sullied the debate between right and left for far too long.

Unfortunately, Marcotte’s type will always have a home on the left. She will be welcomed back with open arms and continue her unbalanced rants, raging against people whose only transgression is that they fail to fit their beliefs into her own narrow, warped, and cockeyed worldview.

Perhaps there will be an opening soon in some other campaign, a job that she will be eminently qualified to perform as only she is capable.

I hear Ahmadinejad will be running for President again. Those two see eye to eye on more issues than either is likely to admit. Not to mention both being a couple of draughts short of a full keg.

Sounds like a match made in heaven…

Rand Simberg also notes the NYTimes’ attempt to Marcotte-ize the entire blogosphere:

Two bloggers hired by John Edwards to reach out to liberals in the online world have landed his presidential campaign in hot water for doing what bloggers do — expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language.

All this sentence needs to make it fair is a simple modifier–”some.” But they can’t be bothered. Apparently all bloggers express their opinions in “provocative and often crude language.”

Actually, I think it is largely (though even there, not completely) true of the types of lefty bloggers that a Democrat would choose as his campaign bloggers, and perhaps that’s the only kind that the reporter reads. He should get out in the blogosphere more.

Charles at LGF chronicles dealings with Pandagon.

James Joyner:

Bloggers have a “paper” trail. The longer someone has been blogging, the more of their sometimes-developed thoughts are out there for public consumption. Not only have they likely written things uncomplimentary to their now-boss, but they have almost certainly written things that could embarrass him. At the very least, as Marcotte and McEwan are demonstrating, the bloggers can wind up taking the attention away from the candidate’s message.

That goes for candidates of either major political party.

Danny Glover rounds up more reax.

Uncle Jimbo is blogging at the John Edwards site! (Or was.)

Media Matters begins the tit for tat.

***

Previous:

The Pandagonization of John Edwards
Read along with John Edwards’ blogger
How to become a leading Democrat’s blogmaster Updated/Correction
–and more wit and wisdom of Amanda Marcotte

Meanwhile, Kathryn Lopez looks at the anti-Catholic hatred of John Edwards’ blogmaster.

At least one feminst law professor is happy.

The nutroots are not so happy about our Masterpiece Theater spoof of Marcotte. Check out their comments at YouTube.

They really are a humorless bunch, aren’t they?

Walter Olson follows up:

Part of what lends the Marcotte episode such a comic aspect, however, is the timing and nature of her post and later revision. Her vitriolic rant asserting the lacrosse players’ guilt was posted a mere two weeks ago, almost certainly at a point after (as the Atlanta airport reference indicates) she had already entered talks with the Edwards campaign and thus had reason to know that she might soon come under the heightened scrutiny accorded to an official spokesperson. These were not the impulsive utterances of a Net Newbie. Moreover, the temperate-sounding new “official stance” with which she replaced the scrubbed post is ludicrously different in both tone and content from the rant it replaced; at a quick reading, one might even take it for a defense of the lacrosse players. A closer examination of its dodgy language, however, reveals that she does not actually take anything back; there is no indication that she has reconsidered her view of Jan. 21 or sees it as being in need of actual correction.

As for whether Marcotte was just having a bad day and slipped into an abusiveness that is unrepresentative of her usual tone, even a cursory glance through her output at Pandagon makes clear that there is much more embarrassment for the Edwards campaign to come

And Patterico shares his experience and insights into the warped mind of John Edwards’ blogmaster (language warning):

Marcotte has made it onto my own radar screen before, and I thought I’d remind you of the highlights.

Amanda once accused me of wanting to punish women for having sex. In an Ezra Klein comment thread, Amanda misquoted a comment of mine, twisted my words, and refused to accept my explanation of what I had obviously meant. Sample comment of hers from a related Ezra Klein thread, directed at me: “You anti-choicers need to take lessons in pretending a little better you don’t hate women.”

I think it’s safe to say I’m not a fan.

Then there was her post about how it was terrible that William Rehnquist had died, because now Roe v. Wade would be overruled. I’m not kidding about this. She appeared to be unfamiliar with the fact that Rehnquist dissented in Roe, and tried to have it overturned ever since.

In that post, she continued the “conservatives just want to punish women for having sex” theme, saying:

One thing I vow here and now–you motherfuckers who want to ban birth control will never sleep. I will fuck without making children day in and out and you will know it and you won’t be able to stop it. Toss and turn, you mean, jealous motherfuckers. I’m not going to be “punished” with babies. Which makes all your efforts a failure. Some non-procreating women escaped. So give up now. You’ll never catch all of us. Give up now.

This is the new public face of John Edwards’s campaign blog.

Tip of the iceberg.

***

Frank J. takes a humorous look at liberal blogs and vulgarity. G-rated!

Dan Riehl takes a closer look at “Pandagon.”

***

Previous:

How to become a leading Democrat’s blogmaster Updated/Correction
–and more wit and wisdom of Amanda Marcotte

Last week, far left-wing blogger Amanda Marcotte began her stint as Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards’ “blogmaster:”

This is both my first post to the Edwards blog and my announcement that I’m joining the presidential campaign for John Edwards for 2008. I’ll be taking over the job of Blogmaster (mistress?) over the course of the month of February.

The main two questions this brings up are: Why me? And why John Edwards?

As for me, I run and write for a blog called Pandagon, which is one of the top liberal political blogs on the internet and known mostly for insightful and often humorous political blogging. We pride ourselves on being an issues-oriented blog, instead of a blog that mimics the “horse race” coverage of politics that dominates so much of the mainstream media. Prior to my stint at Pandagon, I was the sole blogger at a blog called Mouse Words, which won the 2004 Koufax award for Best New Blog. My obsessions in politics include women’s rights, ending the war in Iraq, environmentalism, and restoring the American dream where climbing out of poverty and having a middle class lifestyle is an option available to everyone.

Why John Edwards? Well, look again at that list of political obsessions and you have your answer. John Edwards is the only Democrat in the field of potential nominees who is interested in pursuing the right policies in all these areas. Especially important to me is that he is interested in fighting poverty in America and putting that middle class dream in the hands of all Americans.

This campaign also excited my interests, because we have the goal of making the most out of the untapped resource that is the internet. Already this blog has more interactivity and genuinely interesting and issues-oriented content than any other campaign site I’ve seen thus far, and with the new staff we’re bringing together, we will be able to take it much further in that direction. Internet organizing is still in its infancy as far as I’m concerned and I expect that the presidential election of 2008 will be a major factor in taking internet political organizing to the next level. Of course I want to be a part of that!

The question is: How long will the Edwards campaign want the “insightful” and “issues-oriented” Marcotte to be a part of them?

Seems that everyone but the Edwards campaign has tracked Marcotte’s foul-mouthed nutroots diatribes. Or perhaps the Edwards team is well aware of her lunatic blogging and can’t wait for her to unleash her unbridled anger on their spiffy website to give him a gritty, “progressive” edge.

Whatever the case, Walter Olson, K.C. Johnson, LieStoppers, and Jon Ham all caught Marcotte trying to cover the unhinged tracks at her old blog. At some point before she started her new job, she deleted a screed about the Duke lacrosse players that she had posted at Pandagon on Jan. 21. Jon Ham captured the cached screenshot:

Guess what? It’s not the only completely off-the-wall, profanity-choked post she’s trying to hide.* Updated/correction below

Look at this:

Now, here’s the Google cached page of that missing post that someone doesn’t want the Edwards campaign to see:

Just a small taste of the “insightful” and “issues-oriented” writing that apparently makes one qualified to be the blogmaster of a Democrat presidential campaign.

And there’s plenty more where that came from, if the Edwards campaign only bothers to look.

***Updated/Correction. Looks like Marcotte’s Katrina post is actually still available to the public here under a different URL. My bad. Or rather, John Edwards’ bad. Because it’s even worse for the Edwards campaign that its blogmaster left crackpot posts like that one up and hired her anyway.

***

Contact info for the John Edwards campaign here.

Oh, don’t worry about Marcotte. If the Edwards campaign cans her, she can always apply for a job at Time.com. They adore sassy, spewing liberal bloggers who have incoherently cursed their way to the top.

***

Danny Glover notes a Pandagon habit (hat tip – Instapundit):

…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…

…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.

***

More:

A reader sends Marcotte’s defense of Cynthia McKinney’s abuse of the Capitol police, titled “Even if Cynthia McKinney did what they say, it wouldn’t matter:”

Back when Cynthia McKinney was stopped by the cops, Pandagon (Amanda) wrote this:

“One of the tools of male dominance and white supremacy is to create reasonable rules and then only hold non-white people or women
accountable for breaking them. I notice that the cop putting his hands
on a woman isn’t being held up an example of violence. I often flip shit
when a man puts his hands on me against my will, because it often puts a
stop to the aggressive behavior immediately–I know that public gropers,
for instance, rely on the social expectation of female submmissiveness
to get away with what they do and you can generally scare the shit out
of them just by screaming, but I’ve punched when I have to. Mostly
people admire this in me.

But then again, I’m white.”

And Dan Riehl plumbs the depths of Marcotte’s mind and posts more of her uncensored blog rants. A sample:

Too Sensitive For Their Own Good

I can’t wait until Nigger Jenkins and The Flying Kike-Boy fight over the Cruiserweight Championship next week! Oh, you’re offended? It’s just a discussion about racial tensions between blacks and jews, and the ending will promote racial reconciliation, at least until the Zionist Conspiracy gets involved.

Don’t believe the hype

While the media runs around jerking Bush off about Zarqawi’s reported death, it’s important to remember that BushCo and Zarqawi had a symbiotic relationship to play up his “membership” in al Qaeda.

Today’s “Jesus cries when women fuck” update by Amanda Marcotte

Well, the Texas House of Representatives got Republican Jesus and he reminded them that out of of all the things he hates, which are multitude, nothing incurs his wrath more than women’s sexuality.

Don’t relegate yourself to the used cunt lot

Of course, if you’re a perverted religious nut, the blood and the pain of “cherry”-breaking is probably a de riguer part of a woman’s life, both to give the man a cheap thrill of actual blood while enacting the sex-as-violent-possession construction that is part of virginity fetishization and to remind the woman of her religious teaching that womanhood is suffering (see: Genesis).