When the mainstream media quits putting Donohue's hater diatribes on teevee, as "representing Catholics" no less, then we can talk about whether someone's blog post has a dirty word or not.

oh please.

Believe it or not, it is IMPORTANT that we WIN the next election. And I certainly don't want to lose just to score some metaphysical points against the media.

I think this is a great post from Ms. Pollitt. She's right for the most part. If we're going to lose votes, let's make sure we lose them for the right reason: that they disagree with our policies. Let's not give people a single excuse to vote against us that is as simple as "They're vulgar." It's just plain stupid.

Good point, Katha! But it also cuts both ways. I don't understand why A and M would be willing to jeopardize their editorial independence by working for Edwards. They work so hard to build credibility and jettison it all for the thrill of a campaign.

I think highly of Edwards but that's not the point.

I just have no interest in hearing what a blogger has to say the minute they work for a campaign.

And yet it doesn't seem to matter at all how offensive the staffers are on the right, does it?

In fact, Republican hacks can go on tv and suggest that San Francisco or New Orleans be bombed and face no outcry.

If we on the left had organized media coverage in San Francisco and gotten various groups from San Francisco and other places to express their outrage and insist that the person who said it be penalized...wouldn't that be a good thing? Yet, we didn't, did we.

O'Reilly is allowed to say disturbing things on the air every day, and we never make any attempt to get him removed from his position after one of these outrages.

We haven't tried to get Donoghue removed from his position based on his outrageous hate speech.

We haven't tried to get McCain's new smear machine staff fired.

Why not?

They have been far more outrageous and mean and hate-filled and instigated terrorist writing campaigns against Americans.

Why do we let these bullies get away with it? Don't we have a moral obligation to fight them? If you see someone taking lunch money from a weaker opponent, do you turn away? Or do you do something about it?

Yes, they're bullies, but we'll never defeat them by whining, and decrying, and letting them do it again and again.

Being a bystander to a crime may not make you as bad as the criminal, but it doesn't show you in a very good light either.

It's time we stood up.

Why would they want to go to work for Edwards? How about blogging is hard work for low pay.

Ron Byers

I was surprised Edwards went with these two hires, instead of people who've been more focused on Dem activism and therefore more circumspect. There haven't been such attacks on Peter Daou because he didn't talk a lot of, uh, snark. But as others keep saying here we need to change these rules. Just as this controversy wound down Don Young got on the House floor and called for the arrest, exile or hanging of his opponents. No consequences. Not even a "controversy."

Mgmax, you seem to be a troll.

I think Katha's got the core of this exactly right -- the freedom of speech that a blogger or pamphleteer or journalist or artist needs just doesn't always, or even often, mesh with the realm of politics, where even a belch has to be performed in a tightly controlled manner that will appeal to all constituencies.

Though bloggers are often politically interesting types, they do their best work from the outside in any event because they can and do say what the people within the political world (including the corporate media) won't.

Problem is, these bloggers need to make a living!

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I have to admit that I stopped reading Pandagon simply because of the amount of obscene language. She's perfectly free to use it, but for me, as a reader, it's tiring. It's like reading POSTS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS. PEOPLE ARE FREE TO DO THAT, TOO, OF COURSE. But they may not be read. YMMV.

On the substantive issue, I agree that they were not ideal choices for the Edwards campaign because of the "paper" trail they left.

It is just about as weak as implying someone is stupid for calling someone else a name. It is also as weak as calling your opponent out for acting the same way you (or your sympathizers) did when the shoe was on the other foot.

Furthermore, posting just to call someone weak without adding to the thread is...weak.

I'm glad Katha said this. I like inflammatory writing fine and do my own share of it, but I don't really belong on a Presidential campaign either.

Basically, campaign staff can't have strong personalities and images which compete with or interfere with the candidate's personality and image.

The Republicans have a surrogate track for pungent authors whom the party does not want to be formally associated with. Liberals should find a way to support people like Amanda and Melissa outside the party and unconnected with any candidate. There are plenty of Republican hacks far more objectionable than either of them (Coulter and Limbaugh for two), but they're freelancers.

I just want to agree with noblesseoblige: once a blogger has signed on to a campaign, I assume what I'm getting is spin. (In fact, I assume that of many writers, in blogs and print, who aren't campaign employees but seem to have a too-passionate love of one candidate or another.) Yes, working for a campaign pays the bills, and is probably very educational -- but it does undercut the blogger self-image as unbought and unbossed.
Many have noted that Republicans seem to get away with more than Dems. I don't dispute that (many of the examples, though, are of Republicans who are not campaign employees: the Swift boaters, Bill O'Reilly, Wm Donohue himself). My point was just that in THIS world, with the forces on the ground being what they are, Dem Presidential candidates are probably not going to hire/protect staffers who expose them to attack and risk losing them votes. If McCain thought he would lose votes by keeping Hynes on staff, he'd probably let him go.

Bush (as a sitting president) has degraded the office by appearing on Limbaugh's show, and Limbaugh has also interviewed Cheney. There was no stink made about it. The media people will not hit something that can hit back.

In times of peace, the wise man prepares for war. -- Horace

The blade itself incites to violence. -- Homer

Good point. For those who don't know, Glenn Greenwald covered this well on his blog.

If someone is here to troll, i.e. just say stupid inflammatory stuff for no reason and with no interest in real conversation or debate, I think they should be pointed out. That way there the rest of us know that there is no point in engaging them.

btw, if you really want to engage in conversation, explain to me how a pro-choice, socially moderate Republican like Giuliani can win the GOP primaries.

Regardless, he'd still go down easy given that he's decided to bear the Bush/Cheney albatross of Iraq around his neck. That's going to look really great in 2008.

I would have liked some response bringing up Donohue's background as well, but I still think Edwards would have lost votes as those quotes were dragged up again and again out of context over the course of the campaign, regardless of who it was who brought them to light.

I agree, and I would add that it's disappointing to see Ms. Pollit buying into elitist ideas that are not terribly different than those held by Mr. Donohue and Ms. Malkin.

If we accept at face value their assertions that this controversy is about civility and respect for religious beliefs, then they've already won. It's not about that at all... it's about controlling access to the higher-level political discourse. Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen are clearly not the right sort of people by their lights, and must be kept out at all costs. Are there any feminist bloggers who would be acceptable to them? And are there any feminist bloggers whose words could not be taken out of context and "spun" so that they appear offensive? I think the answer to both questions is no.

I think this is a bad argument.

a) You’re suggesting that a person who has expressed personal political opinions in the past can’t, indeed shouldn’t be allowed to, work as a staffer. We'll run out of people real quick if that's the case.

b) You’re arguing that it doesn’t make sense to go from blogging independently to blogging for a campaign. I think that’s silly. They’re two completely different activities. One is expressing your own opinions and creating dialog on any subject that interests you. The other is writing about a specific candidate (or cause). The campaign job is not about you.

c) Differentiating between blogging and writing is pretty much a text book example of not getting what blogging is - something most "writers" seem to do with surprising regularity. Blogging is about so much more than just writing. Even blogs that don't have communities and comments (like TPM) or aren't activists are still doing more than writing. They're creating narratives, picking topics for debate, creating arguments in support of positions, persuading, debating, digging up issues and interesting nuggets, covering overlooked topics, and on and on. That seems to me to be exactly what a campaign wants. I suppose there are people out there who can step into that role for a campaign that have no experience actually blogging, but I doubt it. As a result campaigns will get silly stuff like the Lieberman campaign blog.

d) If it's not which blogger you hire, it's going to be something else. It's not like a campaign can ever take enough actions to appease their opponents. Giving in won't get you anything. Your opponents will still hate you and gin up false controversies and, worse I think, you validate their argument which is kind of like pleading guilty. You may have "owned up" but you're still guilty.

e) You are arguing that it's ok to make staffers - even junior staffers - acceptable areas for oppo research. Everyone's sh!t stinks which means that just about everyone in the country will have done something that can be portrayed badly. Do we really want that? Yeah, fighting back is hard because you might take a thumping along the way. I bet Donahue, high on success, is digging through every staffer he can identify on every campaign and searching for anything he can on them. Furthermore Edwards has now agreed that differences in opinion are enough to disqualify a staffer.

The problem extends beyond the MSM. In 'polite society' (there's no good term here--I mean public social interaction in schools, in the media, at public events, even dinner or cocktail parties, etc etc) there is a reactionary double standard: reactionary comments, even those that offend ordinary conservatives, are excused. Seriously 'progressive' comments, beyond the limits of, say, the NYTimes, are rejected as 'shrill,' 'extremist,' or whatever: i.e., don't be rude.

The reasonable response should be the old slogan, 'it is right to rebel against reactionaries!'

Peter Miller

The decision is political. When a politician defends a police officer that shot an unarmed suspect, the politician is hedging their bets. They are saying that they'd rather battle the press over defending the officer as compared to battling the police, the police unions, and the supporting groups of the police.

It's a choice.

In this case, Edwards didn't fire Amanda and Melissa. They chose to resign in order to shield Edwards from further scrutiny over the matter. If they had stayed, this issue would be hovering over Edwards all the way up until the primaries began.

Assume that Edwards wins the Dem nomination, he would then continue to have to defend his actions AND the statements made by his bloggers. This was the last distraction his campaign needed.

Public comments from Amanda and Melissa indicate that it was their decision to resign. However, in politics, it's rare that any resignation isn't executed without a sleight of hand.

Savvy blog readers ought to understand political decisions as they are REPORTED as compared to their REALITY within the campaigns.

Excellent essay. Talk about frankness, heh, you've got it down like few bloggers I've read. I recognize the name, but would like to let you know that by posting here, you've gained a regular reader watching more closely for your other work.

P.S. I love the "king of the blogosphere" line.

I hadn't realized the political world outside blogs had ceased to exist. My bad.

In times of peace, the wise man prepares for war. -- Horace

The blade itself incites to violence. -- Homer

A question, peter milller: what are the types of reactionary comments that are passed off? and the progressive ones that are condemnes?  I'm wondering because I've had the opposite experience.

Bill Donahue, who catapulted this story, was clear from the beginning that Edward's should fire the bloggers.

Since Donahue was the most vocal critic of these bloggers, whatever subordinate conservative bloggers wanted is irrelevant.

But liberal bloggers were the ones who wanted, no, demanded, the Edward's campaign keep the bloggers on staff.

I don't know whether Melissa accepted the potential consequences of her rhetoric, although she did resign.

Based upon Amanda's post on this website, she remains defiant and unapologetic and portrays herself as a victim of a right wing smear campaign. That doesn't sound like accepting the consequences to me.

portrays herself as a victim of a right wing smear campaign

And that is precisely what makes me question whether she is as sophisticated and savvy about cultural topics as she likes to present.

Why?

Because Bill Donahue's whole shtick is playing the victim card, that's what he does, the main thing he does, what he lives for, is to promote Catholics as victims of our culture.

It's a thing seems to me started in the 90's (maybe a bit before with the "angry downtrodden white male" thing): some conservatives stopped trying to fight the liberal intellectual victimhood tactic of the 70's/80's, and decided to try co-opting it for their own cause instead.

Pundits like Limbaugh and Coulter still don't do this, they still like to mock the victimhood thing. I believe that's why they sound tired and old-fashioned to many young conservatives. With the majority of the country turning against Bush and his conservative base, we're probably going to see a lot more of the victimhood thing.

Marcotte seems to just respond with the "who's the bigger victim" thing, which seems to indicate to me a great deal of cluelessness not just about politics but about how to fight in the "culture wars."

Must say that knowing the response now, if I were a presidential candidate and couldn't fire her, I'd put her to work at the xerox machine. My opinion only, she's an ok, interesting, beginning writer, that's all, needs a lot more experience before advising anyone.

heh heh. I read mg's post like five times, trying to figure out what the heck s/he was talking about, what was so insulting? 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

I fail to see why this whole thing is worth so many pixels. I'm disappointed in TPM for giving this whole thing more of a platform.

So many people these days conflate "freedom of speech" with "immunity from review," and whine as if their speech freedom is somehow abridged by any less-than-adoring response, or any real-world blow-back.

And bloggers may have to make a living, but they are not entitled to have the world at large make sweeping adjustments to its sensibilities or moral framework so they don't have to write PR pieces for developers and car dealers or otherwise scratch out an existence the way most people do.

Katha Pollitt has a regular column in The Nation. Here is a link to her recent articles. I'm pretty sure you don't need a subscription to read them.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left. Bertrand Russell

My point was just that in THIS world, with the forces on the ground being what they are, Dem Presidential candidates are probably not going to hire/protect staffers who expose them to attack and risk losing them votes.

But the Venn intersection of 'bloggers who care about politics enough to sign onto a Democratic presidential campaign' and 'bloggers with the experience to run a high-traffic group blog' is not very big. Limit that to 'ones who've never said something rude or potentially objectionable' and you've got Peter Daou and that's about it.

This is perhaps a problem with the medium. It's possible for the Republicans to segment its communications into different media forms, each with its own standards of 'acceptability': one wouldn't expect a talk radio person to run a campaign, but there are elements of a campaign attuned to the register of talk-radio. Tony Snow can gravitate from Fox News to the White House with nary a blink, because it's the same register.

Ultimately, you face the question of whether the register of liberal blogs is compatible with the register of Democratic campaigns. If so, which ones? And who has the skills, experience and commitment to run them?

Thank you for the warning, Reece.

When I hear the pounding at the door in the middle of the night, I'll know it's you.

Yeah, I've belonged here a long time, since before it became a bannable offense to hold different opinions, apparently. Fine. Ban me for having opinions that do not match the groupthink of the site, and you'll say a lot more about yourself and your vaunted tolerance than you will about me.

What's most foolish about your response is that we're mostly in agreement, here and in that other thread-- but apparently my tone is all wrong.

So let me try again, in language that I hope will meet your approval.

Ohmigod if we don't want the godbag christofascist Bushitlers to win again in 2008 maybe we should try not absolutely dripping condescension toward the 25% of the electorate that is at least nominally Catholic, and the big chunk of our base that is churchgoing blacks, and so on. Even if they don't read blogs (how recherche).

As someone much experienced with Campaign Management -- national campaigns as well as State ones, my rule of thumb is that staff should essentially be anonymous. Of course party people know who's who and all -- but a campaign is all about the identity of the candidate, not the staff. Staff bring skills and other assets (good sense, institutional history and all) but they should not bring their own agenda.

I suspect campaigns do need to hire experienced bloggers as part of campaign strategy, but they would be wise to hire "no-name" types, who know the new media, know how it works, and can, in the name of the campaign, execute the communications strategy.

Katha,

Hate to say it, but you write like an elitist who doesn't know any real correlates of your hypothetical "unemployed mill worker." I know some unemployed mill workers. They use salty language regularly, as do their spouses and children. They also don't need to be babied about their religious beliefs. Although some of them are indeed Christians of the young Earth variety, they have no problem dealing with folks like me who openly express quite contrary beliefs.

And if you look at the heros of the right - the personalities with huge followings - they talk salty too. It's a sign of separation from the sensibilities of the working (and sometimes unemployed) classes to pretend like the workers are children who should be shielded from the way adults talk. These folks don't swear during church services; but the tradition of using a different language (thee's and thou's) in services goes way back. If I may talk like my unemployed mill worker friends: You don't fucking get it.

And that's why the right's offended by lefty bloggers who speak in ways that show true cultural solidarity with the workers - the very solidarity of culture language the right exploits with its foul performances on talk radio and its own blogs. That's the way real Americans talk. That's a form of cultural communion the right wants to trademark as its own intellectual property

You seem to misunderstand Reece.Deliberately because it suits you to position yourself as a lonely defender of an unpopular position ?

In effect he apologized and you responded as if he had amplified his original attack.

And now that you mention it , your tone is all wrong.

 What's most foolish about your response

isn't language intended , or apt , to convert anyone to your position. Pity because it's worth considering.

Right, but they can't have it both ways. Once you're on the team, your individual voice means nothing. If that's what they want, fine.

It will be interesting to see how sympathetic
the family values cohort are when Rudy's opponents get around to reprinting Jimmy Breslin's Newsday Column describing two-count em- two NYC cops assigned as drivers for Rudy's two mistresses while Donna Hanover and their son were still living in Gracie Mansion where Rudy was being visited by Exhibits B and C .....

With an additional NYC cop assigned on radio duty to prevent an overlap between the three women.

A scenario which I agree sounds improbable but stipulate it for the purposes of this discussion
implications while I attempt to penetrate
Newsday's files and unearth the column to which
I refer.

I'm on board with Katha's post. The Edwards campaign exercised poor political judgement in hiring those particular bloggers.

But I also agree with the posters here who remind us that the MSM routinely lets the Right get away with far more egregious offenses. I attribute that to the fact that the wingnuts have perfected the art of mau-mauing the media, while we on the Left are just learning the rules of the game.

100%Is it 2008 yet?

Douglas, I have known many neo-leftists in Rhode Island (not friends) who for example, demanded the state's children's museum be taken away from the very blue collar mill town it was created in because they didn't want their children mixing with what they considered were less thans. I know of an adjunct professor who teaches sociology with a strong Marxist bent at Brown and RI College who mistook a secretary, who is Native American, for being a fellow Arab, and made racist statements about the Black man who she had seen waiting outside the office. She didn't know that the man was the husband of the secretary.

I've read statements here and on other progressive blogs that infer that the poor and working classes are ignorant, or referred to as rednecks or the ever popular "sheep". All intended to make it easier to view them as less than, and therefore render their issues irrelevant.

In talking about what the MSM does, what the Republicans do, what the bloggers do, and what the Democrats do, you're talking apples to apple juice to pineapple to oranges.

Until we get the FCC rules changed so that media outlets are not concentrated in a few hands, getting media news outlets to act responsibly (be journalists for real)is going to be a hard task.

What the Republicans do we can have some effect on longer-term, but not right away. We went through three election cycles before the Democrats took over the Congress and still there is dirty work on the Repubs part. It's going to take a decisive 2008 in the Democratic Party's favor for the Repubs to start changing their behavior.

That's the Republicans and your MSM. That's not fair, but it's what we have to deal with.

Even if we were dealing with the old Republican Party, the fact is that most people - conservatives, middle-of-the-roaders - are more narrow minded that liberals or progressives. You might not like that, but that's the way it is. You want to win elections, you need some of those people voting for you. Language can't get in the way of the message you want to get out. Are you free to say what you want the way you want to say it? Of course you are - and if you alienate people with your words, they can and will reject your message along with your words.

But we're not dealing with the old Republican Party. We're dealing with people who will do anything to win, people who have no shame and no sense of fairness until the shoe is on the other foot.

Until the shoe is on the other foot, it makes sense to frame the message so that it is heard/read and accepted by the widest possible groups of voters.

Ms. Pollitt, I started reading your work after the election in 2000, and I know you believe in taking on hypocrisy, so please explain the difficulty you might be having in recognizing the hypocrisy of a woman, and her supporters who are against ideologues only when they have an ideology they don't agree with? Perhaps you share their dislike of religion, but I wouldn't have assumed that you also shared their ignorance of what democracy actually means.

I am no fan of the organized catholic church, I was raise catholic, but I was taught, by my Irish immigrant grandmother not to put priests on pedastals and to not be afraid to question. I watched the same grandmother chase the parish priest down the driveway, and up the street a little ways with a broom, after she overheard him chastising the woman downstairs because she was planning on divorcing her alcoholic and abusive husband. My grandmother overheard the priest (in her words) "pulling a Pontius Pilot", basically telling the woman that he "washed his hands of her" and that her children would be bastards in the eyes of the church... thus her taking after him, and giving him an earful.

She stressed the importance of Christ's teachings, and I took that to heart, and despite the fact that I left the organized church, I still am a Christian, because I want to strive to learn from his example. Again, no fan of fundies,no fan of the organized catholic church, but I was damned offended.

Not only is it deliberately seeking to offended catholics and christians to demean much loved christian figures like Mary, but when good, decent christians have been taking on the hypocrisies of the fundamentalist christians, have been taking stands against the hypocrisies of the catholic church, in spite of taking heat for it, our efforts are undermined by hate filled bigots, who in all honesty don't seem to even believe in democracy, rights and freedoms. Because like their right wing peers, rights and freedoms are only extended to those who think as they do.

It's a lot more than the f word, it's an attempt to generalize all christians as fundamentalists... and before you claim that isn't so, her pals Markos of the Daily Kos and Atrios are slandering and attacking Jim Wallis of Sojourners, just as they slandered and attacked Barack Obama for attending a progressive christian conference last year. Claiming that just attending was a violation of the seperation of church and state.

It wasn't secular people who first took up the fight against slavery, nor was it secular people who proposed the seperation of church and state. Some of the biggest atrocities in the world have been perpetuated by those of a secular bent. So if the real concern is the treatment of women, the abuse, et al.. then let's attack the behaviors, the hypocrisies and expose those wrongdoers for what they are, exploiters of positions of power and trust. Again, that is if all this is actually in aid of bringing about positive change.

I remember an article you wrote after the 2000 campaign stating quite truthfully that "progressives are really grasping at straws these days." Pointing out the ludicrous nature of the Naderr campaign, given his willingness to ally himself with some of the monsters of the right wing. You spoke out against John McCain, when the progressives were embracing him as some great hope, of course they did so at the suggestion of neo-con Arianna Huffington, who claimed that she had seen the light, her metamorphosis into progressive darling is about as believable as any fairy tale. Yet many "progressives" embrace her as one of their own. One of her minions, errr.. columnists, Steve Clemons cross-posted an article here, on his own blog and on the HuffPo, greasing a pole for Senator Chuck Hagel, making the point that should Hagel run for the presidency, now would be the optimum time.

Howard Dean, the lousy governor of Vermont, with the despicable record of favoring polluters, and corporate factory farms, who seized state CHIPS monies to create a monster health care fiasco that gutted access to care for those who needed it, to provide free health care for affluent Vermonters who not only didn't need it, but wouldn't have used the substandard care if their lives depended on it. He made an overburdened educational system even worse, and the cherry on the top of the cake, he favored dumping nuclear waste from the state on a poor community in the southwest. And in case that wasn't enough. He not only supported Bush's rush to war when he headed the national governors association, he wasn't the power behind Vermont's civil unions legislation, it was presented to him a fait accompli, and while cowering behind closed doors, he signed it. He really didn't have any choice. While we're on the subject the "progressive" movement were the ones demanding that Dean be made head of the DNC as he would reviatalize it.. his 50 state solution, Dean never bothered to try, and talk about spineless, Dean has done nothing while in the chairmanship. The lousy ineffective chairmanship that has weakened the party the fundamentalist left demanded is incompetent and a failure, but do the nutroots complain? No, not at all, after all, and they never take responsibilities for their mistakes.. just like Bush.

Dean was cherry picked by Joe Trippi, an affluent guy, who doesn't care abo