Why? We've read her dishonest apology. We've read her whine at Pandagon. We've read her whine at Salon. Is this some sort of traveling road show whine?

Do you think she'll be able to make it through her tpmcafe session without blaming everything on godbags and misogynists?

Will she discuss her ignorant and woefully unfactual Duke post that she took down?

Will she take any responsibility for her actions or still claim she was only being satirical?

Will she discuss how she bans and deletes most commentary at her blog that disagrees with her and that keeps her in an insulated cocoon?

Will she discuss why she wasn't able to predict what was going to happen when so many others predicted exactly this?

I thought TPM was to discuss the right's bogus talking points and not to spread our own bogus talking points.

I would just say no thank you to Amanda.

I will not be resubscribing to the Cafe.

---- Just say no to 0 ratings. Especially from petey, the ratings abuser.

There's no subscription to the Cafe, so I don't know how you will not resubscribe.

You seem to want to challenge her, so I would think you would be glad that she was coming here to discuss the issues. If you think Andrew is letting her off easy in the introduction, I would tend to agree with you, but that's a different topic.

yet another illustration of the thoughtful discourse from the right.

Sir--Outraged, I cancel my subscription.

Is this stuff coordinated? Who are these people? Why can't they write a coherent sentence? I mean, look, it sounds condescending and all, but jeez. Is it a pre-requisite that you not be able to construct a coherent argument to be a wingnut?

There are, of course, thoughtful bloggers on the right, like The Belgravia Dispatch. The trouble is that thoughtfulness leads you to jettison Bush, and leaves you with supporters like this.

If jerry wants to take his ball and go home, I say buh-bye.

Dissent Protects Democracy.

In some ways, I think this is like candidates admitting they smoked pot.

Clinton expected us to believe he never inhaled. Completely ridiculous, but he weathered that storm. And he opened the door for someone like Obama, who said he smoked pot and did blow.

(Good for Obama, by the way. Finally, a politician who I can relate to. Not that, just like he said on 60 Min., I'm especially proud of whatever reckless and not-so-reckless behavior I displayed in my younger days, but just being human, and *not* saying something like he didn't inhale...no one doesn't inhale.)

Anyway, my point is, maybe in the (near?) future, what bloggers say on their blogs won't matter so much. And more importantly, candidates who hire bloggers will be better prepared to strike back quickly, and dismiss the ravings of a bigoted right-wing shill with the contempt it deserves.

I do put this up to Edwards more than anything else. He hesitated, and they drew blood.

Finally, I'm continually amazed when Democrats continue to be amazed at what the Right can do. This returns us to the age old question, and Marcotte noted something about this in her Salon piece -- do we need to fight dirty like they do?

Dissent Protects Democracy.

There's no subscription to the Cafe, so I don't know how you will not resubscribe.

Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?

---- Just say no to 0 ratings. Especially from petey, the ratings abuser.

It is ironic that with a sig of "Dissent Protects Democracy", you would suggest I find a different forum....

I am not sure the word Democracy means what you think it means.

---- Just say no to 0 ratings. Especially from petey, the ratings abuser.

I didn't suggest you find a different forum.

You're the one who huffed and puffed out of here, turning in your subscription and all. 

I did say that people who take their ball and go home when TPM brings in someone they don't like, I'm happy to see them leave.

There's no crying in blogging.

I really do like your sig, though. I was serious about that, lest you think I was being sarcastic. Cracks me up...I guess that's kind of mean to petey, but he was a terrible rater.

Dissent Protects Democracy.

I've just begun reading another master work by Chris Hedges called "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. He was on Thom Hartmann's radio show last week talking about the so-called "Christian right". He called them Christofascists and heretics. We must remember this when speaking of the people that attacked the Edwards Campaign. They are not Christians. They are hate mongers and war mongers. Because our government is completely controled by corporatists now, it makes a perfect incubator for the breeding of these "larval fascists".

The Bush administration has continued to feed these growing larvae. Permanent war feeds the "cult of masculinity". War is for men. A weapon makes you virile. Attacking women is seen as just.

But the really big question is why the main stream media aids and abetts this movement. And why did they start with John Edwards?

John Edwards and anyone who joins with him will be smeared over and above any of the other Democratic candidates. In David Korten's book "The Great Turning" he states that "No ruling class in 5000 years has delivered on a promise to eliminate poverty or slavery and its equivalents, because to do so would mean the elimination of elite privilege."
John Edwards speaks of the Two Americas and ending poverty in 30 years.

A system based on dominance demands violence to keep a class division. And this "authoritarianism" as John Dean calls it or the "dominator power of Empire" as Korten calls it must fight violently back at a campaign that is committing the worst sin of all; The sin of nonconformity. The elite fear the rise of people power in all its wild and glorious embrace of the "maybe" and the "possible". This is a campaign of the possible which is the opposite of despair. The elite need despair and its cousin, rage. They fear that the people are finally pushing back. And they are pushing back with a winner this time. Edwards is courageous to take on the powerful, he has conviction, but he is also very cagey. You have to be cagey to try and win as a populist. I think there is plenty of room for all kinds of folks in the Edwards camp. But you have to have some streets smarts and you have to understand what being in the resistance is all about to speak truth to power and actually win.
Link arms, my brothers and sisters and jin the resistance.

"Loyalty to your country always; Loyalty to your government when it deserves it." Mark Twain

Wow, look at all the people ripping apart Jerry's post.

Weren't these the same people whining when Donahue and Malkin picked apart the thing's Amanda wrote?

It seems hypocrisy is bipartisan.

"In the meantime it is clear which of us has a better sense of irony".

To quote Teal'c of Stargate: "Indeed".

"Ripping apart"?

It really doesn't even take much effort. jerry repeats, for example, the right wing claims that she deleted blog posts, and she explained what happened, that the posts were there, just the URLs got screwed.

So, a more accurate argument from jerry would have been to simply accuse Marcotte of being a liar. That's what his brilliant post essentially comes down to.

Dissent Protects Democracy.

jerry repeats, for example, the right wing claims that she deleted blog posts, and she explained what happened, that the posts were there, just the URLs got screwed.

Untrue. Your reading comprehension is for shit. What I said was:

Will she discuss her ignorant and woefully unfactual Duke post that she took down?

In fact, she admits she took down the Duke post, she just claims she had a good reason for that. Are you sure you know everything that YOU are talking about and can back up YOUR claims? (Cause you're wrong!)

---- Just say no to 0 ratings. Especially from petey, the ratings abuser.

Asking Marcotte "Must every writer tamp down the free flow of thoughts and ideas to have a future in politics? Or maybe our politics can be more accepting of the occasional controversial idea" is like asking Mark Fuhrman if after his testimony in the OJ Trial, police testimony will have a future in legal proceedings.

---- Just say no to 0 ratings. Especially from petey, the ratings abuser.

You seem to be saying that the people "ripping apart Jerry's post" somehow were arguing earlier that no post by any person should ever be rebutted.

That is what you mean by hypocrisy, right?

How utterly silly.

(And by the way, the post you link to doesn't "generalize all Christians, painting them to be as guilty as the fundies".)

Will she tell us more about godbags?

The sons of the prophet are noble and bold,
and quite unaccustomed to fear.
But the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah
was Abdul Abulbul Amir

Jeez, did some of these bloggers just fall off the turnip truck? Are there certain things that no viable American political candidate can say in public, whther true or not? Yes. Are there likewise statements that candidates cannot even indirectly associate themselves and their campaigns with? Yes, obviously.

If you choose to be a free-wheeling, let-it-all-hang-out, shoot-from-the-hip type of blogger, then your options for moving into the establishment political mainstream are going to be limited in the near term, get it? Do these people honestly think that their blogging is a key to a career in American electoral politics? Maybe at some point in the future enough time will have passed for them to disavow their "youthful indiscretions and misjudgments". But it's ts going to take many years.

The blogosphere comes in all sorts of layers. Some bloggers revel in various forms of totally blunt political and cultural blasphemy and sacrilege, enjoying the freedom of the format to thumb their noses at orthodoxy and say what they really think about whatever occurs to them. Bravo - we need lots of that. But it's not exactly a speedy career track to the inner sanctum. John Edwards is running for President of the US, not the editorship of a student newspaper. As such, it will be his job to serve as guardian and protector of America's sacred cows, and his influence over what's permissible discourse at the presidential level and what's not - though not insignificant - is limited.

But there are many intermediate levels in the blogosphere, with varying degrees of separation from the political center. If you want to be close enough to the center that you are invited to participate in it openly, you are going to have to speak and write in very guarded, circumspect tones. If you want to speak your mind, on the bother hand, then you are going to have to hammer away from the outside, and respectable political society is going to keep its distance from you.

Bloggers can offer advice and make arguments of all kinds in their blogs. If the language is too controversial, candidates or their staff might read it and even be influenced by it, and maybe find some way translate it into something that is more acceptable to over 50% of the American public. But you aren't going to get credit, or be invited to to take a seat at The Club.

My maxim is: do not be rude, be snide.

If the goal is to convince some people, rudeness is not a good tool. If the goal is to make some people feel bad, snide comments do as well as rude ones.

To be perfectly balanced, it seems to me that right wing flame throwers are regularly invited to social functions, but they are not getting political appointments. Their flames are quite a bit worse as a rule, but this kind of gradation holds.

Did I accuse her of scrubbing her posting history?

Is history singular or plural?

What I wrote was: "Will she discuss her ignorant and woefully unfactual Duke post that she took down?"

She says she mockingly rewrote it. Have you compared the two versions? The new one is not a rewrite of the first one, and the new one is in no way a mocking version of the first one.

Here's another liberal discussing her fundamental Duke dishonesty and bigotry: http://liestoppers.blogspot.com/search/label/Mad%20Mandy I am sure he's really a conservative too.

Let's also not forget the conservatives at TalkLeft (which was purposefully named that so you wouldn't recognize that they were conservatives.)

The guy who works for McCain seems to be doing just fine.

Dissent Protects Democracy.

I would gather that yeah, in the blogosphere, taking down a post is considered a crime. You can update, correct, clarify, retract, and apologize, but removal is a no-no.

I don't make the rulz.

---- Just say no to 0 ratings. Especially from petey, the ratings abuser.

Yes, Marcotte does generalize all christians. Occasionally she does reference "fundies", but then continues on with the term "christians". Someone seeking to take on the hypocrisy of the groups and organizations she references would have actually spent the time to make a valid case and the focus would have been to highlight and attack the hypocritical practices.. instead, she basically was hypocritically exploit the very real wrongdoings to blame religion as a whole, and paint all religious people as being guilty of this.

She, like her right wing peers tends to avoid actually researching the validity of the points she attempts to use. For example, she cites a study that claims that religious societies have higher rates of crime, STD's and assorted other ills. Yet anyone who pays attention to global news knows this to be patently untrue. Societies like the former Soviet Union, communist China just to name a few, that actually outlawed religion have even higher rates of crime, exploitation, STDs.

Again, ignorance and cruelty are human flaws, but Marcotte wasn't taking a stand against ignorance and cruelty.. neither are you Rick, you are in actuallity seeking to promote more of the same.

Do you even remember why you originally called yourself a liberal? I'd truly like to read an answer to that question.

sphealey keeps censoring my post by rating it zero, so I'm reposting it. I guess this is a prime example of the "wide open debate culture of the blogosphere"??? I've reported his abuse of the karma system, let's see how democratic minded  Josh's tpm mods actually are.

As to "wide open debate culture of the emerging blogosphere", ummm, I don't know how "wide open" the blogosphere really is. During the '04 presidential campaign, the Dean campaign blogforamerica didn't allow wide open discussion, in fact if you dared to ask a question, no matter how polite you were and how your question was backed up with source material, you were either attacked as being a troll and shouted down, or censored by being banned. On the DailyKos, if you dare to counter any of his spin, or even questioned his bias because of the scandal surrounding him and his payola pal, Jerome Armstrong (Mr. Securities Fraud), you are banned.

The HuffPo won't allow postings that counter Arianna's spin, and the list could go on.

Getting back on track though, the political blogosphere, which touted itself as a solution to deal with corporate controlled media, has morphed into something little different. It's more often than not elitist, it views itself as a grassroots unto itself. Some of the Joe Trippi inspired members of the blogosphere write about their right to buy elections for themselves. Apparently, they don't get it anymore than their right wing counterparts.

It's become an exercise in social segregation.. and it doesn't achieve anything worthy of it's initial pretentions.

Now, I am not against Amanda Marcotte, but she did generalize all christians, paintng them all as being as guilty as the fundies. I read the blog post in question http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:SLJbczpwwmoJ: pandagon.net/2006/11/15/good-christians-shun-the-poor-and- the-downtrodden-declare-that-the-meek-are-for-crushing- under-the-heel/+amanda+marcotte+christian&hl=en&ct=clnk& cd=2&gl=us If women were generalized in such a way in a blog post, or any other group, I'm sure she would feel offended, but it's become an acceptable practice to marginalize and demean christians. She's not alone, alot of her peers trashed Barack Obama last year for attending a progressive christian conference.. there were quite a lot of examples of that posted here on tpmcafe.com as I recall.

I was born and raised catholic, and goodness knows I have my problems with the organized church, but that doesn't render the many, many good and decent catholics out there, as deserving of scorn and the same can be said for other christian denominations. I've volunteered at soup kitchens and homeless shelters with christians who were the epitome of people attempting to follow Christ's example, in a loving and caring way. When my husband was dying in hospital last June, and the oncologist in charge couldn't care less that he wasn't getting the treatment he needed, one of my staunchest allies in helping me to fight to get humane treatment for him was a catholic priest who volunteered as a chaplain at the hospital.

Frankly, if we're going to discuss treatment of the poor, let's please include the neo-left who rationalized imposing Bush as a punishment against the most powerless to force them into sacrificing themselves for a "movement". Or the leftists who talk a good game, but never walk the walk. Who are condescending and snobbish towards the poor.

In '97, I was up in Brattleboro, Vt. and decided to volunteer at a local woman's shelter. The women who ran the shelter, as crunchy wholewheat as they come, segregated themselves away at all times from the women who stayed there. They spent their time in the basement room that they'd made comfortable for themselves, drank herbal tea and spoke rather judgementally and condescendingly about the women who sought refuge there. They never ran the support group meetings that they were supposed to. They accepted donations of food that was past it's expiration date from a local whole foods store.. and when I brought this to their attention, they argued that the women were lucky to get the food.

Ignorance and cruelty is unfortunately a human flaw, it has nothing to do with religion. Also, the last time I looked, any rigid dogma shares the flaws that are most criticized in religions. Elitism is a rigid dogma, yet that's just not on the menu for discussion anywhere on the blogoshere. Nor is there discussion about the impact of Bush's economy. While there was a brief focus on what hurricane Katrina revealed, the attention was for the most part exploitative and short lived. No follow up or discussion of how that dire poverty is reflected all across this nation, and growing all the time.

If Marcotte and/or any blogger wishes to affect change, they should be attacking the bad behaviors and hypocrisies, not the religion, and they should be examining the hypocrisies within their own community and dealing with those as well.

.> sphealey keeps censoring my post
> by rating it zero, so I'm reposting
> it. I guess this is a prime example
> of the "wide open debate culture of
> the blogosphere"???

I normally do not reply to posts that I rate, but I will make an exception here.

1) Your first post contained statements that are (a) at best misleading in a way meant to question the integrity of people who are not here to defend themselve (b) have been extensively discussed here and in other forums and been shown to be at least unfair and most likely incorrect descriptions of events (c) could be construed as libel.

2) This has been pointed out to you extensively every time you have posted these statements over the last 12 months

3) Having received a zero rating, you then reposted the exact same (proven false) material twice more. I very seldom give a zero rating, and I often bring posts back to visibility if I think the zero is unfair. But when the a post is zero'd and the poster puts it back up multiple times, I will almost certainly zero the subsequent posts. If you disagree with the community here, you are welcome to found your own. Note that I currently live in a Republican neighborhood: I stand my liberal ground, but I behave respectfully toward my neighbors and I am prepared to move elsewhere if I feel oppressed. You might consider the same approach.

sPh

All I can say then is that this is a fairly novel position that I had not heard of before.

In most walks of life, it is considered entirely reasonable to issue a clarification or summation statement in lieu of a prior statement that had confused people and/or led to controversy.

I suspect that you are conflating a few different issues here, though.

In any case, if the Donohue attacks were about Amanda's apparent rush to judgment in the Duke case, it would have been a stronger argument. It wasn't.

Dan K,
I respect and enjoy your posts here, even if I don't always agree with them.

Would you mind posting links to some solid, definitive evidence that there is (or was) some sort of grand liberal blogger conspiracy, which is now also said to have included violations of federal elections and security laws and which had as its goal some sort of nefarious control of, well, something I guess?

Because when MfRI started posting these allegations here about 12 months ago (and other nyms started posting them on other liberal sites), I looked at what source material was available. The only credible information I could find indicated that _at worst_ (a) some liberal bloggers are fallible human beings (b) confirmation of Matt Stoller and Steve Gilliard's point that liberal bloggers and activists need to earn money to eat (c) the not-exactly-a-secret fact that M. Mousalitis (i) wants to be a new media/new politics kingpin (ii) correponds with like-minded people. And that is the absolute worst construction I could put on it. But perhaps I missed something?

And even if all the false allegations _were_ true, at worst that would have been an amount of "corruption" that wouldn't even register on the College Republican level much less the real Radical Right spin machine (of which Armstrong Willims was just a sample). So I have a hard time understanding why we should be bombarded with this junk month after month.

sPh

Geez, Mary, do you really have to post the same long-winded post three separate times? You're not impressing anybody with this silliness.

I'll leave the first one untouched, but the reposts are getting troll-rated. Once is enough, thank you very much.

cscs, you never change.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

And I indeed do have a "deep commitment to the underlying meaning of my question to you" -- why are you here, blogging among us fascist, Marxist leftists?

Why don't you, just like kos and Armstrong did, take the initiative, and start your own blog? A blog free from the elitism that exists today in the liberal blogosphere?

I am sure there is a nascent movement just waiting to be unleashed by your vision and initiative.

Or is it just so much easier to rant all over the coattails of those who came before you?

Dissent Protects Democracy.

I believe the irony of the fact that you achieve nothing is lost upon you.. or perhaps that is all you seek to achieve.

Amanda rocks. I am a huge fan. She speaks truth to patriarchal power in ways that few others dare to.

But lets face reality. Putting the search string "Bruce Webb Buck Fush" into Google returns 191 results. I am not expecting a lot of calls from politicians wanting to make me their policy analyst on Social Security issues. Ten minutes of research on Google would make me toxic to any mainstream campaign.

You can be edgy. Because edgy is cool. You can be freaking angry. Because if you have not been angry over the last six years you just were not paying attention. But edgy anger has it costs.

Back in the 2004 election I got a very nice e-mail from the Dean campaign. I mean a real one from a real person. She wanted to know if I would be interested in volunteering in some capacity. I e-mailed back that the polite rah-rah, people powered Bruce Webb type that posted on DFA was the same as the foul mouthed Buck Fusher that was posting on dKos and that maybe she really would not want me associated with the campaign.

I don't regret a bit of the rhetoric I deployed. Bush did lie and 3000+ GIs now have died. To the extent that I helped move the debate in the direction it has moved, well then great.

But the fact is that your resume now comes accompanied by every thing you have ever posted on the web. I am fifty. Nobody remembers or cares what stupid things I did or said back in the seventies. But if you are twenty-something and want to say something really edgy you need to realize that your audience 20 years down the road may not be quite as understanding as your friends today. The internet is forever. You are so cached.

I love Amanda. But the fact is that she pushed rhetoric in ways that made her effectively unemployable by a political campaign. Its kind of like piercing and tattoos. It's a free world, if you want to tattoo "love" between the knuckles of your right hand and "hate" between the knuckles of your left because you are the baddest 16 year old on your block, well fine. Good luck landing that internship with the Supreme Court after Law School.

Is that fair? Well who issued you a fairness card to start with? Life isn't fair. Actions, and even or especially verbal actions have consequences.

If I can humbly suggest for those of us who aren't familiar with what goes on in the comments section of her blog, that you offer up more than just accusations at her like you did in your first post here, that you substantiate what you say with specifics (in the blog sense of the word, ie, links with blockquotes), so that we all can read what you've read and come to some kind of conclusion either way.

I complain about Amanda when I see a post at some blog that links to her. There haven't been many (any?) links to her from here before now, probably because she really has nothing of value to add to a liberal progressive agenda and hence no links.

I have a life and it is busy and it is really not my job to explicitly drag out for people what lots of people have said over and over.

Participate (or try to) at Pandagon. Observe and learn what goes on for yourself.

Use google.

You insist it does not generalize all christians because you wish to excuse her statements just as the right wing make excuses like George Allen did about his racist statements in the last campaign

Sweeping dirt under the carpet is not anything new and no one falls for it

I don't think there is any grand blogger conspiracy. But I really don't pay attention to blogs lke Daily Kos and My DD and have little knowledge of what goes on in them. And as far as I can remember, I have never read the blogs by the two people involved in the Edwards flap.

Mary,

if you want to argue my point, you have to read it first.

I listed several acts that offend my feeling of common decency (and I hope, yours as well) and I claimed that Bible is of little help here u_n_l_e_s_s you know that those things are wrong to begin with. One could argue that ethically challenged gain little from reading the Bible in the same way as reading sheet music does not help a person who was born deaf.

My list started from making cruel jokes about teenage girls, and included insider trading and torture. Acts committed by folks prefessing deep piety. You replied that stealing, murdering and warshiping false Gods is forbidden. But joking in public that Chelsea Clinton is "so ugly that etc." is none of that. Is it OK? I understand that joking about Holy Ghost is enjoined, but how about girls?

Now, if you want to conflate "Christian fascists" with regular folk who happen to hold religious values, that is certainly yours, Amanda's and Melissa's perogative.

You know, I found it really bizarre watching Brownback on This Week last Sunday talking, first, about IslamoaFascists and then, immediately afterwards, talking about the need to make abortion illegal.

XYZist means the desire to impose the religious practices espoused by faith XYZ as a matter of civil law. Islamist means imposing Muslim rules of behavior (followed voluntarily by a minority of Muslims) by the state, as in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan under the Taliban. Christianist, as coined by Andrew Sullivan, means the imposition of Christian practices (followed voluntarily by a minority of Christians) as a matter of law, as with the banning of abortion, restrictions on contraception availability, making homosexuality illegal or teaching creationism in public schools.

XYZFascism is a pejorative way of saying the same thing--the desire of a minority of a religious group to impose their beliefs on the general population by enforcement by the state. I dislike the term, and don't use it myself, because it's less accurate than the 'ist' construction. But that's what it means.

If it is acceptable to refer to IslamoFascists (as has the president, Brownback and many other republicans), then it has to be acceptable to refer to ChristoFascists.

As for the satirical, over the top remarks on Catholic teachings on women's reproductive behavior, it's important to note that 1) the remarks were not an attack on Catholicism. It was an attack on their outdated teachings. 2) Their views on contraception are widely shared among American Catholics. 3) The remarks were targeted at a self-selected audience.

Finally, even the most over the top remarks that were made on Pandagon do not come close in degree of offensiveness to remarks made by elected officials and other influential republicans. There is nothing Amanda has said that comes close to calling people "murderers" or "baby killers."

Amanda was not writing about "regular folk who happen to hold religious values." She was writing about a minority of a minority who want to pass laws that force everyone to follow their religious practices. And she was trying to be funny while doing so. What's being conflated here is a small group of radicals with a larger group of believers, a group that was never the subject of Amanda's posts.

Rick, wrote:
"I've yet to hear a coherent argument as to why anything Melissa published was "anti-Catholic" or "bigotry"."
------------------------------------
You're not looking for a "coherent argument". You're permanently residing in a state of denial.

What they wrote about Catholicism has already been laid bare. If you can't see how others might find their remarks bigoted or anti-Catholic, then no one can help you. It is not beyond my level of understanding to see how some religious folk would be.

Whether I agree with their criticism of the church's birth control policy is beside the point. They aren't the first two people to ever criticize the Catholic Church's birth control policy. Give me a break!

They went beyond just criticizing a church policy. And you damn well know it.

Amanda and Melissa are free to criticize church policies, call religious people names, and satire away to their heart's content. They can be as crass and crude as they'd like.

But they have no business working for a presidential candidate. Period.

The post she cites does use the "word" disclude, though, which is, on its own, more than enough of a reason to not want her at TPM Cafe.

I don't have a problem with your Islamofascist and Christofascist naming conventions. I agree we you. I believe we do have a Taliban-like Christian movement in this country.

As to the second part of your post, if your "important to note" numbers 1,2 and 3 are accurate, then why would the Edward's campaign ever need to go into "bunker mode" before he had Amanda and Melissa issue half-hearted, insincere, and patronizing apologies before letting them resign a week later?

Nevermind. I already know the answer.

I suppose it is possible Amanda and Melissa only have a problem with the one church policy over birth control. But that exactly doesn't come through clearly in their writings.

It is utter nonsense to compare the "degree of offensiveness" between rightwingers and leftwingers. Yes, some elected and influential Republicans are jerks. So what? It doesn't mean I have to try and compete. By using this silly argument, I could say Senator Allen calling someone "******" is not as high on the thermometer as Senator Allen calling someone a "******".

In your last paragraph, please don't insult my intelligence and tell me Amanda's "Mary and the sticky white stuff" was reserved for a "minority of a minority". She went after a religious figure central to the faith of all Catholics. She showed little or no respect for the Catholic religion in her writings. And she certainly did not clarify that her remarks were not intended for all Catholics.

As a result, she was, and may possibly still be, a liability for the Edward's campaign.

And that is a damned shame.

I love the trolls. Jerry denies that I was attacked by misogynist godbags. Which means there is no such thing as a misogynist godbag. If William Donohue, misogynist godbag extraordinaire is not a misogynist godbag, there is no such thing. Easy-peasy.

Also, the evidence for global warming is inconclusive.

I'm looking forward to the real discussion come Monday!

I read your point piotr, just now in response you claimed that I'd missed your point because in your words, the bible is of little help unless you know that those things are wrong.. in your previous posting you asked:

Accidentally, this is my major beef with "Biblically based morality". There are no commandments against verbal cruelty against innocents, or against insider trading, or against torture, and without a sense of common decency, no way to interpret the Bible in that way. And if you do have such a sense, you can do fine without the Bible.

so I responded, mentioning some of the commandments and what they referred to. Including Christ's statement from the new testament as to what he believed were the two most important commandments a christian needs to follow. Perhaps you need to read my post before inferring I wasn't paying attention... or perhaps you find it inconvenient?

Why would you presume that a commandment that states that people should not steal is not understandable? Even a child knows that what insider trading, etc.. is stealing. In fact any intelligent and thoughtful person would realize that holding Bush's hypocrisy up against his pretense as a christian is far more effective than the lazy, idiotic tactics of attacking all christians for the hypocrisy of a few. Face it, as a strategy it does nothing to actually achieve anything. It actually helps the hypocrites and liars.

Christ's statements, which are well known to any christian does take a stand against cruelty.. I can only assume that the intelligence of the average reader was presumed to be high enough that it would be plainly understood. Loving ones neighbor does cover the fact that one should not be  cruel to others. Again, I'l repeat this.. an effective stand against Bush and those who exploit religious beliefs is to hold their hyporcisies against them, for all to hear. Again though, that is if one is actually seeking to reveal the hypocrisies.. what is most apprent from Marcotte's writing is that her intent is just attacking the christian religion, and that got even progressive christians upset. What I think is that this was Marcotte wanted, more than taking on the hypocrisies of the right wing.

Do us all a favor, please elaborate on the moral beliefs, the understanding of rights and freedoms as recognized by the leftist extremists of the blogosphere. Explain why it's acceptable to tell others what they don't have a right to believe in, or that they don't have the right to be offended by.. especilly given that you seem to be aware that those rights are important for yourself. Kind of hypocritical of you to see rights and protections as a one way street.

The blogging community claims it was inspired to make up for the lacking of real journalistic ethics, but due in part to hacks like Daily Kos, all it's become known for is a standard that even makes the MSM look good by comparison.

There is no blogging community. There are a bunch of people who have blogs, and those people are all different and make no single, collective assertions about why they blog, or what inspires them to do it. The world of people who have blogs does, however, divide up into a huge assortment of genuine and overlapping communities, some strongly networked and other loosely networked. Some of those communities do make certain collective assertions. But insofar as the whole blog world makes any single, common assertion about what is wrong with the MSM, it is just the claim that there are certain views that are not represented in the mainstream media as much as that blogger would personally like to see, and which the blogger chooses to represent. Some might claim they are trying to be more "ethical" than certain mainstream media sources. But others just claim they are saying something they strongly want to say, and which others aren't saying.

I say the more positions the merrier. Let every person in America have a blog, say whatever they want, and let all those crazy feelings out. Some of what comes out is true, and worth hearing. Some of it is junk. Bloggers are free to link to and discuss the people they like and ignore and avoid the people they don't like. And politicians are always going to have to be very careful, and keep their distance from controversial positions which - while possibly true - make alientate large portions of the electoral coalition they are trying to build. The existence of blogs like The Rude Pundit on the left, or similar frenzied and hate-filled screeds on the right does absolutely nothing to hurt any mainstream movement, so long as that movement doesn't publicly associate itself with those words.

Before there were blogs, there were pamphlets, broadsheets and other independent, unorthodox, local, minority-opinion publications that existed on the fringes of mainstream publishing and media. Some of them quoted and discussed the words in other pamphlets, broadsheets, magazines and newspapers. Revolutionary America was built on this kind of stuff, so viva la revolucion. There is nothing really different in kind here, just in quantity and technological means.

Bloggers like Marcotte and her cronies share Bush's belief that there ought to be limits to freedom (everyones but their own), that's why they'll attempt to censor you by impuning your credibility by labeling you a troll.

Here is a response to Susan Nunes. We don't know the sex of this poster. Is this poster a troll?
Marcotte is no better than David Duke in her bigotry. Bigots exist on the left, unfortunately. Edwards didn't need that on his campaign.

Good riddance to both of those bloggers.

So true. And any true liberal would never tolerate Marcotte's hate speech. Of course I admit I'm not a true liberal, at least as today's "liberals" define themselves, but rather am merely a true-blue Democrat tired of losing elections while the middle-class is steadily dismantled.

And leaving the bigotry aside, alienating the Catholic vote is about as smart as tieing lead to your ankle and jumping into the ocean from a helicopter. For anyone serious about winning an election of course.

Unfortunately that wouldn't include a good segment of the one-note Johnny special interest left who clearly prefer whining about their pet issue and reveling in defeat as a GOP majority rolls over them.

-- No One Note Johnny

There are lots of self-identified liberals and Democrats at Salon calling your speech, hate speech. Saying that there is nothing liberal about you.

There are self-identified women there that say they fought for womens liberation before you were born and saying that you know little about feminism. Saying that your anger and bitterness and hate speech are ridiculous.

Are all of these people lying to make you look bad? Are all of these people trolls to?

What is your take on the letters at Salon?

Here's a dose of reality:

According to the information available here ... the traffic for the Cafe has dropped a whopping 47% over the past three months.

What better way to bring new blood and additional web traffic to this site than by bringing in a commentator that has a track record of attracting the purveyors of shit-storms ...

So get ready for an influx of the wild an' wooly from across the web showing up here in the next few days.

Cynical? Naw... Business!

~OGD~

You said right wing flame throwers don't get political appointments.

I pointed out, they do. 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

What I said, and what you know I said, is this:

"Do you think she'll be able to make it through her tpmcafe session without blaming everything on godbags and misogynists?"

There is no way to twist that into "I love the trolls. Jerry denies that I was attacked by misogynist godbags" unless you are an intellectually bankrupt manipulating smear artist.

I don't understand your reasoning here.

Do you agree Donohue is a "misogynist godbag," but you just don't like the fact she "blames" Donohue and his likes for what happened?

The fact that you think she "blames everything" on the hypocritical right seems to at least imply you think they (the hypocritical right) have a point.

Maybe she's being a bit hyperbolic, but you should get what she's saying. You seem to be taking a very literal reading of her words, rather than stepping back and taking in what she's saying.

And, yes, word parsing like that is a common troll tactic, so you can understand where the confusion arises. 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

"Completely ridiculous"

Maybe yes, maybe no. The comment has made it into urban folklore because the anti-Clinton people thought they could tie it back into their overall narrative.

Clinton's claim is that he had asthma but didn't want to look like a dork from Arkansas in front of a bunch of Oxford students so he took a puff and blew it out without inhaling.

Which is pretty much exactly what any insecure person would do in a similar social situation. You take the canape with a smile and discretely discard it later. It is like the Al Gore and the Internet or Al Gore and Love Canal, by the time the Right got through puffing the whole thing up you ended up with the 1992 version of this whole Amanda thing. Faux outrage and all.

I don't know whether Clinton inhaled. (I know I did). But I would not be so quick to simply accept a piece of typical Right narrative. I mean it is like "It depnds on what the meaning of "is" is". Well there are different meanings, and distinguishing them is important. I spent whole graduate seminar sessions exploring similar topics, it is amazing how much depth you can find in the English language. People laugh when they hear that the Council of Trent debated "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin". But there was really a serious philosophical point being argued.

Everything is pretty simple once you reduce it to cariacature.

I addressed your point by pointing out that accusations don't have to be valid to do damage -- throwing out the examples I gave you.

The problem is the examples you used were valid....thus the damage.

Sorry about the site link ... and thanks for fixing that.

Yes, I agree with your point of the Nov elections having affected the traffic. And that just goes to show me that many fine folks think the battle is over... When in fact the engagement has really just begun...

If you return to the site ... the key indicator to keep an eye on in the next week or so will be the Daily Traffic Rank.

~

I'm still in limbo mode awaiting the 'Fast Freddies' of the world to slowly wake up out there and creep into the registration queue... There's a couple of posts over there in Amanda's first thread that already have some fingerprints, unnoticeable by most here... Whether those will be 'returns' ... or 'one post bomb-droppers' ... remains to be seen.

~OGD~

"Let one of those guys get involved in an ugly custody case and I bet they will change their tune."

What's that supposed to mean? They are supposed to start hating all women and feminists if they ever get involved in a custody dispute? Really?