Betsy's Page
HOMEAdvance your career by earning a masters degree
online.
Betsy neither necessarily uses,
nor endorses,
the products advertised on this site.
Advance your career by earning a masters degree
online.
The truth about Avesil
Wikio
Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights
Comments from an AP history
and government teacher in Raleigh, NC.
e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com
Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you.
Site Feed
The truth about Avesil
Wikio
Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights
Comments from an AP history
and government teacher in Raleigh, NC.
e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com
Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you.
Site Feed
Sunday, February 04, 2007
John Edwards' new blogger
Updated and bumped:
John Edwards has hired himself a campaign blogger, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, a liberal blog. James Taranto cruised by Pandagon to see the sort of blogger that Marcotte is. He found this post from last week as she blogged from the airport.In the meantime, I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good f*** god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and f*** her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.Charming. Gee, I guess that Marcotte is one of the three people left in America who believe the concocted story from the Duke lacrosse story.
I just wonder if potential John Edwards supporters will find such rants beguiling enough to want to send him some of their money. Is this the sort of blogging talent that attracted the Edwards campaign?
UPDATE: Since Marotte's post had achieved some notoriety in the blogosphere, she had deleted the post. Instead she has this message up in its place.UPDATE: Since people are determined to make hay over this quick shot of a post, I’m deleting it and here’s my official stance. The prosecution in the Duke case fumbled the ball. The prosecutor was too eager to get a speedy case and make a name for himself. That is my final word.You can see the original in Google's cache.
As KC Johnson and Liestoppers point out, this is more evidence of John Edwards' cowardice in not speaking out on this case happening in his own back yard. Doesn't he have some opinions on a runaway prosecutor trying to railroad three young men by hiding evidence and mischaracterizing the evidence he does have? Even if it was acceptable to be silent on the matter early on, since this Fall it's been clear how corrupted this case had become. Or aren't the three Duke boys representatives of that Other America that John Edwards is fighting for?
And as for his blogger, Liestoppers has gone through her blog and found some other posts that she has made on this case. And the feminist ranting on the subject is quite rancid. Is this really the voice that Edwards wants representing his campaign. And even if he doesn't care about the Duke case, is it really smart for him to hire a blogger who routinely calls mainstream journalists such as those at CNN or David Brooks of the New York Times "evil"?
Hiring a campaign blogger is now necessary for each campaign. But this episode shows how treacherous the waters can be when a candidate just dives in and picks someone. For now Edwards and his campaign will be in the position of having to defend what this woman has written in the past and explaining why he found her particular writing style so suitable for his campaign.
UPDATE II: Creative Destruction has gone through Pandagon's previous posts and highlights some of thruly poisonous posts she has made. She displays a total contempt for fundamentalist Christians, Southerners, religious people in general, and NASCAR fans.
I suspect that Ms. Marcotte was hired more for her connections within the liberal blogosphere than for her vitriolic writing style. What the Edwards team had to be hoping was that she would be key to rallying support for his campaign among the same people who fueled Howard Dean's campaign. Probably they expect her to tone her style down a few notches for the campaign blog. And it is quite possible that she fully intends to do so. But it also might do well for the Edwards campaign to remember where all that passion and vitriol got Howard Dean in 2004.
Her defenders will say that no candidate is responsible for the opinions of everyone on his team especially if those opinions were expressed before being hired. In general that is so. However, if the person has a history of truly offensive rhetoric and is hired especially as a communicator, it is fair to ask questions about a candidate's choice of employee. Turn it around. If the candidate third in the polls on the Republican side, Mitt Romney, had hired someone to communicate his message with a history of saying vile things about people of faith, do you think he would get a pass? Remember that Edwards sells himself as a child of the South who will have appeal in the Southern states. Having an employee with a history of calling fundamentalists "fundies" who secretly want to torture Muslims isn't going to help him win over the same states that he and John Kerry lost in 2004.
0 comments
Comments:
Updated and bumped:
John Edwards has hired himself a campaign blogger, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, a liberal blog. James Taranto cruised by Pandagon to see the sort of blogger that Marcotte is. He found this post from last week as she blogged from the airport.
I just wonder if potential John Edwards supporters will find such rants beguiling enough to want to send him some of their money. Is this the sort of blogging talent that attracted the Edwards campaign?
UPDATE: Since Marotte's post had achieved some notoriety in the blogosphere, she had deleted the post. Instead she has this message up in its place.
As KC Johnson and Liestoppers point out, this is more evidence of John Edwards' cowardice in not speaking out on this case happening in his own back yard. Doesn't he have some opinions on a runaway prosecutor trying to railroad three young men by hiding evidence and mischaracterizing the evidence he does have? Even if it was acceptable to be silent on the matter early on, since this Fall it's been clear how corrupted this case had become. Or aren't the three Duke boys representatives of that Other America that John Edwards is fighting for?
And as for his blogger, Liestoppers has gone through her blog and found some other posts that she has made on this case. And the feminist ranting on the subject is quite rancid. Is this really the voice that Edwards wants representing his campaign. And even if he doesn't care about the Duke case, is it really smart for him to hire a blogger who routinely calls mainstream journalists such as those at CNN or David Brooks of the New York Times "evil"?
Hiring a campaign blogger is now necessary for each campaign. But this episode shows how treacherous the waters can be when a candidate just dives in and picks someone. For now Edwards and his campaign will be in the position of having to defend what this woman has written in the past and explaining why he found her particular writing style so suitable for his campaign.
UPDATE II: Creative Destruction has gone through Pandagon's previous posts and highlights some of thruly poisonous posts she has made. She displays a total contempt for fundamentalist Christians, Southerners, religious people in general, and NASCAR fans.
I suspect that Ms. Marcotte was hired more for her connections within the liberal blogosphere than for her vitriolic writing style. What the Edwards team had to be hoping was that she would be key to rallying support for his campaign among the same people who fueled Howard Dean's campaign. Probably they expect her to tone her style down a few notches for the campaign blog. And it is quite possible that she fully intends to do so. But it also might do well for the Edwards campaign to remember where all that passion and vitriol got Howard Dean in 2004.
Her defenders will say that no candidate is responsible for the opinions of everyone on his team especially if those opinions were expressed before being hired. In general that is so. However, if the person has a history of truly offensive rhetoric and is hired especially as a communicator, it is fair to ask questions about a candidate's choice of employee. Turn it around. If the candidate third in the polls on the Republican side, Mitt Romney, had hired someone to communicate his message with a history of saying vile things about people of faith, do you think he would get a pass? Remember that Edwards sells himself as a child of the South who will have appeal in the Southern states. Having an employee with a history of calling fundamentalists "fundies" who secretly want to torture Muslims isn't going to help him win over the same states that he and John Kerry lost in 2004.
0 comments
Updated and bumped:
John Edwards has hired himself a campaign blogger, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, a liberal blog. James Taranto cruised by Pandagon to see the sort of blogger that Marcotte is. He found this post from last week as she blogged from the airport.
In the meantime, I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good f*** god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and f*** her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.Charming. Gee, I guess that Marcotte is one of the three people left in America who believe the concocted story from the Duke lacrosse story.
I just wonder if potential John Edwards supporters will find such rants beguiling enough to want to send him some of their money. Is this the sort of blogging talent that attracted the Edwards campaign?
UPDATE: Since Marotte's post had achieved some notoriety in the blogosphere, she had deleted the post. Instead she has this message up in its place.
UPDATE: Since people are determined to make hay over this quick shot of a post, I’m deleting it and here’s my official stance. The prosecution in the Duke case fumbled the ball. The prosecutor was too eager to get a speedy case and make a name for himself. That is my final word.You can see the original in Google's cache.
As KC Johnson and Liestoppers point out, this is more evidence of John Edwards' cowardice in not speaking out on this case happening in his own back yard. Doesn't he have some opinions on a runaway prosecutor trying to railroad three young men by hiding evidence and mischaracterizing the evidence he does have? Even if it was acceptable to be silent on the matter early on, since this Fall it's been clear how corrupted this case had become. Or aren't the three Duke boys representatives of that Other America that John Edwards is fighting for?
And as for his blogger, Liestoppers has gone through her blog and found some other posts that she has made on this case. And the feminist ranting on the subject is quite rancid. Is this really the voice that Edwards wants representing his campaign. And even if he doesn't care about the Duke case, is it really smart for him to hire a blogger who routinely calls mainstream journalists such as those at CNN or David Brooks of the New York Times "evil"?
Hiring a campaign blogger is now necessary for each campaign. But this episode shows how treacherous the waters can be when a candidate just dives in and picks someone. For now Edwards and his campaign will be in the position of having to defend what this woman has written in the past and explaining why he found her particular writing style so suitable for his campaign.
UPDATE II: Creative Destruction has gone through Pandagon's previous posts and highlights some of thruly poisonous posts she has made. She displays a total contempt for fundamentalist Christians, Southerners, religious people in general, and NASCAR fans.
I suspect that Ms. Marcotte was hired more for her connections within the liberal blogosphere than for her vitriolic writing style. What the Edwards team had to be hoping was that she would be key to rallying support for his campaign among the same people who fueled Howard Dean's campaign. Probably they expect her to tone her style down a few notches for the campaign blog. And it is quite possible that she fully intends to do so. But it also might do well for the Edwards campaign to remember where all that passion and vitriol got Howard Dean in 2004.
Her defenders will say that no candidate is responsible for the opinions of everyone on his team especially if those opinions were expressed before being hired. In general that is so. However, if the person has a history of truly offensive rhetoric and is hired especially as a communicator, it is fair to ask questions about a candidate's choice of employee. Turn it around. If the candidate third in the polls on the Republican side, Mitt Romney, had hired someone to communicate his message with a history of saying vile things about people of faith, do you think he would get a pass? Remember that Edwards sells himself as a child of the South who will have appeal in the Southern states. Having an employee with a history of calling fundamentalists "fundies" who secretly want to torture Muslims isn't going to help him win over the same states that he and John Kerry lost in 2004.
Comments:
Post a Comment
