Edwards's bloggers and the media's double standard.

[Mass]

NOTE: This is not intended as a bashing thread for Edwards. This could have happened to any campaign and the decision his campaign will take will actually have an impact on the other campaigns.


It seems to me that this issue is the perfect example of MTD. Just let's remind the facts.

A couple of weeks ago, John Edwards's campaign hired two bloggers, Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte and Shakespeare’s Sister’s Melissa McEwan.

The RW nuts, Malkin, Donohue, ... immediately went after these bloggers for "anti-catholicism" and "vulgarity".

Interestingly, this retained the NYTimes and AP attention.

MediaMatters.org had a good article on it this morning.

The http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/us/politics/07edwards.html?_r=1&oref=slogin and http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/07/ap/politics/mainD8N4KDJ82.shtml">Associated Press have both reported criticism by Catholic League president Bill Donohue of two bloggers hired by John Edwards' presidential campaign; Donohue contends that the bloggers are "anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots."

But neither the Times article, by reporter John M. Broder, nor the AP article, by writer Nedra Pickler, included any mention of Donohue's own history of vulgar, trash-talking bigotry -- or of Donohue's decision to dismiss anti-Catholic bigotry on the part of a key anti-Kerry operative in 2004.
<...>


The editors at the Catholic weekly magazine America seem to agree. In 2000, they chastised Donohue for denouncing movies he hadn't even watched. "While being first may increase one's chances of attracting media attention, there is a danger that the Catholic League reinforces the stereotype that the Catholic Church is at best unreflective and at worst unfairly biased and paranoid," wrote Rev. James Martin. "In the long run, this may do more harm to the church's reputation than a short-lived movie or play."

Donohue's criticism of the Edwards' campaign bloggers concluded with a demand that they be fired: "John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots. He has no choice but to fire them immediately."
...

It is important to know, whatever you think about what these bloggers actually said, that they said that before they were hired by the campaign and at no time as a subrogate of the campaign.

Since this morning, the blogosphere has been fairly agitated by this. TalkingPointsMemo has had several articles on this subject.

The CarpetBaggerReport has also a report:


Intemperate allies for me, but not for thee denouncing the hypocrisy.

But Ezra Klein is probably the one who frames the problem the best:

PRECEDENT.
One more point on Edwards and the bloggers: Does the Edwards campaign really want to set the precedent that they endorse the entire public record of each and every low-level staffer they hire? Amanda and Melissa, after all, weren't brought on to be the candidate. One is supposed to be the blogmaster, the other to run netroots outreach. Neither is there to offer personal opinions on theological disputes. The only real question at hand should be whether Amanda is a capable blogger and Melissa a savvy promoter. I'd suggest the blogosphere's now-demonstrated defensiveness and affection for both rather decisively answers those questions.

But this is really the point, no? John Edwards is the candidate. He doesn't have to agree with his campaign manager, David Bonier, on Israel, nor with Amanda on feminism, nor with Jen Palmieri on ice cream flavors, nor with anyone else. All these folks have been brought on to make their widgets (a working campaign, a readable blog, and a smart press strategy, respectively) and the question is whether they're good widget makers. If Edwards is readying to say that he can't countenance Amanda's past posts because he doesn't want to be associated with them, then what of David Bonier's voting record? The latter is surely in a more influential position than the former.

What worries me about this is not the possible firings of Amanda or Melissa. It's the precedent. And not just for Edwards. If he drops these hires, then that will be the norm for what campaigns do when their new recruits are attacked. And if it turns out that a possibly controversial public record will effectively bar you from political positions down the road, how many young people will avoid the wonderful, chaotic, educational world of the blogosphere because they don't want to close off future options? The question here should be whether Amanda and Melissa are qualified for their jobs. What it's becoming is whether candidates are responsible for the views of their underlings. And that strikes me as rather dangerous to answer in the affirmative.

My feeling is that he is right. None of these two bloggers are going to define policy or message. I do not know what the campaign will eventually do (Salon reports tentatively that they were fired, but does not seem too certain), but it seems to me that it sets a bad precedent to fire them.

Any opinion?

[Mass]

1. KG has a great post as well

The Edwards’ Blogger Firestorm
Posted by Pamela Leavey
February 7th, 2007 @ 11:20 am

A few days ago the Edwards campaign announced they had hired liberal bloggers Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon) and Melissa McEwan (Shakespeare’s Sister). No sooner did the news break, when wingnut bloggers started a firestorm over opinions expressed on their blogs. In particular, Marcotte’s Pandagon blog. Now the firestorm has hit the mainstream media with the news that “the Catholic League, a conservative religious group, is demanding that Mr. Edwards dismiss the two.”

...

There are a lot of bloggers who write some very controversial stuff and often the more controversial, the higher the traffic for these blogs. The wingnuts who decry Marcotte and McEwan are also no saints when it comes to spewing profanity and invectives around the blogosphere or for that matter cooking up false stories and controversies and then perpetuating them ad nauseam. Glenn Greenwald takes a look at “John McCain’s blogger-consultant” and notes he’s no saint either.

For any blogger who has aspired to blog for a political campaign, particularly a presidential campaign, which is the pinnacle of campaign blogging, it’s common sense to temper and tone your opinion in the blogosphere. I know, I’ve been there. My time as the only grassroots blogger on the Kerry campaign, set the tone for my blogging here.

Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan have an exciting opportunity to represent a candidate they believe in and get paid for their efforts. It’s an opportunity they probably never dreamed would happen. I have no doubt they will do a great job for John Edwards. It’s a crying shame the hatred from the wingnuts is tarnishing this opportunity before they even have a chance to do their jobs.

[sandnsea]

2. Arguing the merits instead of the tactic

I think we should have a standard strategy whenever there is a clear attack from the right and we should never get into the merits of their attacks. I can see the Edwards campaign going either way, but what should be happening now is to somehow make Donohue pay for even attempting another diversionary smear campaign.

[beachmom]

3. Well, here's the thing:

bloggers are different than any other staffer because they literally have a journal of their thoughts on everything archived on the internet. This is far more revealing and possibly damaging than even a former senator or congressman, who at least have to edit speeches and couch terms for the media. Imagine if Kerry had a blog during his protest days -- emotions were high, there were all kinds of ideas, both radical and reasonable, floating around. Or a Milblog during the war. This stuff can easily be used against people, especially if taken out of context.

Thing is, this trick of going after bloggers is taken from a page from the Allen campaign during the Virginia Senate 2006 election. The Webb bloggers on Raising Kaine were pounding Allen every day on Macaca and then his bizarre reaction to his Jewish heritage being suggested by a reporter. So the Allen campaign decided to attack the bloggers, including Lowell Feld, calling them anti-semites (problem was Feld is Jewish), and it was on the FRONT PAGE of my newspaper. And it caused a huge uproar in the Virginia blogosphere, where one of our resident "pundits" said that paid bloggers was a very, very bad idea. (Let me be clear -- paid bloggers as in bloggers who have had independent blogs, and even worse, that they continued to maintain this independent blog throughout the campaign). Normally, staffers are NOT allowed to talk to reporters, and yet here these bloggers are putting stuff out there multiple times a day. The "A-Team", Allen's bloggers, were downright awful and nasty, and everyone agreed to nominate them as worst bloggers in the state.

So fast forward to this new incident, which essentially penalizes bloggers for things they've said in the past. Thing is, this is fair game. This is politics, after all. The only way it could be neutralized if it turned into a nuclear situation -- mutually assured destruction, with all sides going after everyone's bloggers. But .... the liberal side is far ahead of the conservative side as far as having free lance independent bloggers. Conservative bloggers tend to be more sheeple like, and the stuff they say is similar to everyone else in the conservative movement a la Ann Coulter. In the past, our outrage over extremist conservative rhetoric hasn't seemed to work. But the Democratic side is, well, more decent than the Republican side and doesn't take kindly to hateful rhetoric, so we do have to adhere to higher standards (this is not a weakness, this is a real difference between the GOP and the Democratic party, and it's part of the reason I'm a Democrat).

The problem is I'm not sure it's right that a person must be penalized for the rest of their life for having, say, a bad day, especially when they're not the candidate. It seems that the problems that erupted in Virginia last year have not gone away -- they're still here. I think it's also a good argument for maintaining anonymity for anyone who wishes to get into the political biz, although even there, you could be outed causing extreme embarrassment for your boss.

As far as the Right attacking, well that's what they do. And the MSM picks up their stuff. This happens ALL the time, and I just don't think much has changed on that score. These are the rules -- we are at a big disadvantage in the media, and saying that it's a RW attack and should be ignored will NOT make it go away. Remember the "joke" was videoed by a right wing talk radio guy and then brought up the food chain until it was on CNN 24/7. Do you guys think that Kerry saying this was an attack from the Right, and therefore should be ignored, was going to work? Of course, not. I've seen this argument on dailykos, too, and frankly, if the charges are true (and I suppose I need to read the actual passages that the RWers found), then that's all that matters. If the charges are bogus or lies, then we have a better case to make against it.

[beachmom]

4. Interesting TIME magazine article about this and bloggers, in general

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1587018-1,00.html

They cite the dailykos straw poll. Sad but true, but dailykos is the most prominent lib blog on the internet and is cited in MSM articles all the time.

I suppose this situation is like the Markos "screw them" incident where the Kerry blog removed dailykos from the blog roll. A lot of lib bloggers are going to be pissed at Edwards now, now that he's fired those bloggers.

[emulatorloo]

5. Edwards statement on the bloggers here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3101728

[wisteria]

6. Well, it was a good decision on his part if he didn't fire them.

The Repubs were waiting for that. I think this will end the discussion. How much false outrage can the Repubs muster against some Bloggers comments and Edwards. He isn't Kerry you know.

[sandnsea]

7. False Outrage, exactly

How many False Outrages do the Republicans have going today? Pelosi's plane, phony Iraq resolutions, Edwards' bloggers, we need to keep the attention on their hateful diversionary tactics.

[karynnj]

8. I don't know - I do understand the reasons to be annoyed

because of the way the attack was build up and because the Catholic League is not exactly fair in when they get upset. (I don't recall they cared that the REPUBLICAN PARTY (not a 527) said a devout, believing Catholic would take people's Bibles away - even though he could have won a debate on the Bible with Bush as easily as he did the 3 he had.).

But, if the posts on GD-P are accurate - these are pretty obnoxious. Here's one that would offend many Christians:

"ON THE CATHOLIC TEACHINGS ON BIRTH CONTROL:

Last year, Marcotte blasted the Catholic Church's position on birth control: "Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit? A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology."

The question to me is, could this be used against Edwards? My concern is that it could.

[sandnsea]

9. Considering the crap they say

I absolutely refuse to give an inch when an attack comes from the right.

Perhaps the Edwards campaign should gather together some of the worst offenders and have a summit, live stream it, force these different factions to confront the horrific things that are said from all sides. But to punish his bloggers when you know they would never do the same, it just emboldens them to attack more, it seems to me.

[beachmom]

10. Oh, I see -- the bloggers WERE fired and then with the outbreak

of outrage on the lib blogosphere, Edwards REVERSED the decision. Kind of messy, but pretty funny that Edwards is more terrified of us (collectively the liberal blogosphere) than the right wing attack dogs. That's kind of cool. Of course, he is unique because he is THE netroots candidate for '08, but I'd like to see more of this from the other candidates -- fear of the liberal blogosphere base. Hillary is going to continue to thumb her nose at us, and good chance she's going to lose the primaries. JMO.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/08/bloggers_rehired/