The right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps -- John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach, Salon has learned.
The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare's Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan "anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots," and an accompanying article on the controversy in the New York Times this morning, put extra pressure on the campaign.
Speculation from sources that the two bloggers might be rehired was bolstered by Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, who said in an e-mail that she would "caution [Salon] against reporting that they have been fired. We will have something to say later."
This isn't the first Internet-related misstep for the Edwards campaign, which had been making an effort to reach out to the "netroots" but has found its popularity dropping in a straw poll done on the landmark liberal blog Daily Kos. Though he still leads the poll by one point over Sen. Barack Obama, Edwards' support has dropped nine points in the past three weeks. He has also come under fire in the liberal blogosphere for his statements on Iran and his campaign's failure to return the calls of supporters and press, and was embarrassed when his Web site mistakenly revealed his candidacy a day before his official announcement in New Orleans.
Leading the charge against Marcotte -- and to a lesser extent McEwan -- have been bloggers like the National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez and Michelle Malkin. Malkin originally accused Marcotte of trying to scrub Pandagon's archives of material that could be embarrassing to the Edwards campaign. When that proved untrue, Malkin posted a correction, but said that the fact that she had been wrong was "even worse for the Edwards campaign" because "its blogmaster left crackpot posts like that one up and hired her anyway."
Malkin, it should be noted, is hardly innocent of being involved with what ABC News' Terry Moran termed "hate speech" when applied to Marcotte. Malkin has long maintained ties to VDARE, a Web site tagged as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center that has published works by people like Jared Taylor, one of America's leading white supremacists, and Sam Francis, who was fired by the conservative Washington Times for his own white supremacist remarks, given at a conference held by Taylor's organization. The liberal press watchdog Media Matters has also noted Donohue's long list of controversial statements.
So the Edwards campaign hires two prominent bloggers as a means to reach out to the netroots community, but then ends up firing them after the right wing-nuts cry foul.
And to top it off, The New York Times picks up this story:
WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — 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 Edwards campaign is making a huge mistake in caving in to these Religious right wing-nut extremists by firing these two bloggers. Political campaigns have become the equivelant of total warfare, and the winning political candidates will use every tool at their disposal to destroy their opponent. There is no playing "nice" or "fair" in political campaigns. You can bet that the Republicans are not going to play nice or fair. Consider that Arizona Senator John McCain hired political blogger Patrick Hynes as his blog outreach adviser. Hynes writes for a blog Ankle Biting Pundits, and yet Hynes refused to reveal that he was on McCain's staff as he attacking presidential candidate Mitt Romney. A February 4, 2007 New York Times story reported that McCain is hiring campaign advisors who were involved in some of the most negative campaign work in the past two elections--including the Swift Boat ads against the John Kerry campaign, and the racist ads televised against Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford. Not only that, but you can bet that the Republican media establishment of Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, and the GOP propaganda channel Fox News will be out in force attacking any Democratic candidate, espewing lies, rumors, and innuendo. There is a serious hypocrisy here within the right wing media and blogging establishment, complaining that the Edwards campaign has hired two bloggers that has angered some constituent or another, while the entire right wing blogosphere has spewed its own filth and excrement. Both Marcotte and McEwan disclosed on their blogs that they've accepted positions on the Edwards campaign. How many conservative bloggers have done the same?
In one sense, it doesn't matter who the Edwards campaign hires for their political bloggers--the Religious Right and hard-lined wing-nuts are going to complain anyways. And the language of blogs will not be the most civil--yes, both Marcotte and McEwan have used strong language in their blogs to promote political thought and debate. Such writings and opinions are what have made their blogs very popular. The key thing to remember here is that both Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister are personal blogsfor both Marcotte and McEwan. They are not a part of the mainstream media organizations, nor should their postings be a complete representation of the professional written work for either of these two strong women. If the Edwards campaign caves in to the right wing-nuts and fires these two women bloggers, while failing to note the same right wing hypocrisy that is taking place on the McCain campaign, then the Edwards campaign has pretty much destroyed their credibility among the liberal and progressive wing of the Democratic Party. The Edwards campaign needs to fight back on this, and expose the right wing hypocrisy on this issue. This is just an opening salvo from the right-wing extremists--we haven't even gotten to what will happen when the GOP campaign advisors start targeting John Edwards in 2008. This controversy has shown just how weak the Edwards campaign is in facing criticism and attacks from the right. The problem here isn't that the Edwards campaign cannot pick talented people for their campaign staff. The problem here is that the Edwards campaign is unwilling to defend the staff they have hired from the right-wing criticism. This will only destroy Edwards campaign, since I would imagine that there are plenty of liberal and netroots bloggers may be willing to work for a 2008 presidential campaign in order to undo the six-year disaster of the Bush administration. Those bloggers will not join the Edwards campaign if Edwards decides to fire Marcotte and McEwan. Those bloggers will end up moving to either Hillary Clinton's campaign, or Barrack Obama's campaign, or even Bill Richardson's campaign. John Edwards is toast.
There are a number of links I would also like to include here regarding this story. Glen Greenwald has a great post on this story. So does Pam's House Blend,
Media Matters,
Daily Kos, Memeorandum, Outside the Beltway, and Mahablog.
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