And not take too much pleasure out of this.
It will not be easy.
Reader Interactions
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.
“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.
A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
The GOP is a fucking disgrace.
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.
Republicans in disarray!
They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.
This blog will pay for itself.
He really is that stupid.
A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.
Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”
Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.
Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.
In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.
Peak wingnut was a lie.
Everybody saw this coming.
T R E 4 5 O N
Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?
Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.
Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard
Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.
We still have time to mess this up!
Battle won, war still ongoing.
demimondian
Hmm. So, does that one rate a “Democratic stupidity” tag, John? C’mon, you *know* you want to use it.
Andrei
Agree with Demi… I’m ready and waiting to commence the bashing of Democrats that deserve it! Lordie knows doing the same to GOPers these past six years has become like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s long past boring.
Pb
Oh man, I couldn’t care less about this one–but maybe that’s just because I’ve been sick of hearing about the Duke rape case BS practically since before it began.
Andrew
More importantly, Duke lost to UVA in OT last night.
Evil is vanquished!
yet another jeff
BTW, Rush has been nominated for the Nobel Peace prize…apparently someone is petty and jealous…. I guess it’ll just prove that the peaceniks on the Nobel Committee have a liberal bias…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20070201/pl_usnw/landmark_legal_foundation_nominates_rush_limbaugh_for2007_nobel_peace_prize
TenguPhule
Old News. And not worth noting really, since the real nominations are by secret selection and not by Conservative Goobers.
Bubblegum Tate
Amanda Marcotte is, to my knowledge, the first person to call me a right-wing knuckle-dragger by virtue of the fact that she called the entire balloon-juice commentariat that. I thought that was pretty funny.
Pb
yet another jeff,
That’s their press release. Of course, they have no more authority to actually nominate anyone for that than my cat does. And my cat has better taste, besides.
Barrasso
I really don’t get the importance of this case, is it a southern thing or what. Here in Idaho I couldn’t find anyone who could even tell you the name of anyone involved. Is the interest because white people are finally making some inroads into being wrongly prosecuted for gang rape? Soon we can expect a Bush in high office to sign off on a load of executions he hasn’t read a review of.
yet another jeff
Yeah, but still there’s an 8th grade prickishness to it.
Barrasso
of course I could probably find about ten people in town who have ever seen a lacrosse game.
Paul L.
When someone says “Feminist”, Amanda Marcotte is exactly the type of person I thinking of.
Elvis Elvisberg
This is why it’s far from clear to me that hiring bloggers is going to be a winning strategy for candidates.
Blogging is a quick-reaction endeavor. Any interesting blogger is going to say stuff that will later look stupid. So of course this Amanda Marcotte has some wrongheaded, foul-mouthed posts in her background.
Imagine if some Republican candidate hired Taranto? There’s a lot of gay-bashing and torture support and ill-founded war cheerleading that, regardless of his writing talents and soapbox, would bring shame on a candidate.
That is, if Republicans were capable of feeling shame.
Pb
Yeah, the candidate who hired him would definitely score some points with the base–gay bashing, torture support, and ill-founded war cheerleading? That’s a Republican trifecta!
Steve
I think it’s going to be quite difficult to make any kind of serious issue out of who a candidate’s “lead blogger” is.
demimondian
I odn’t think that any of us will vote for or against Edwards because whats-her-name is his lead blogger. The fact remains that John was right, she was wrong, and she was a jerk about it.
Richard 23
Well, moonbats. You lay down with dogs and you get up with fleas. Amanda Marcotte is the ideal spokesperson for liberal “ideals.”
BadTux
I don’t get it. First, John Edwards is a civil lawyer, not a defense lawyer. He doesn’t prosecute anything, so he has nothing to do with the Duke lacrosse case. Secondly, whats-her-name is not a decision maker for the campaign. She is a mouthpiece. She is basically the Internet version of Tony Snow. Yes, the same Tony Snow who is the press dude for Dear Leader. Yes, the same Tony Snow who, prior to becoming press dude for Dear Leader, said “George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.” Oops!
In short, being a paid mouthpiece means properly pimping your candidate, and despite anything that Tony Snow said in the past, he’s done as good a job as possible given the divergence between what Dear Leader wants the press to believe and objective reality. Heck, unlike Scottie, he doesn’t even sweat when he’s lying! The stuff Tony Snow said before he started fronting Bush hasn’t affected his performance, and somehow I suspect that whatever whats-her-name said before she went to work to pimp Edwards has anything to do with how good a job she’ll do as Edwards’s Internet mouthpiece. More important will be her experience as a paid propagandist/marketing type. Which I don’t know, so I have no predictions yay or nay as to whether Edwards is out of his freakin’ mind or not.
moonbiter
IMHO, Amanda is deeply, deeply disturbed. I don’t know why, and don’t really care all that much, but it shows in her writing on several subjects. To me, that would be a good reason not to hire her as a campaign spokesperson.
Edwards used to be my preferred candidate, but he is starting to lose his shine for me for this and a couple of other reasons. To most normal people (those not involved in the blogcest of the politics-oriented sites) this is not going to be an issue, but this is just one of a series of recent bad decisions on his campaigns’ part that make me question how fit he is to repair the damage the Administration and it’s supporters have done to the Republic in the last seven years.
carpeicthus
She was a bad choice for Pandagon, and a bad choice for Edwards. I’m not sure most campaigns have the frame of reference to pick out the good bloggers from the popular ones. Perhaps that will change.
Jonathan
And Rush Limbaugh is the ideal spokesperson for conservative “ideals”.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,982270,00.html
Krista
If that’s what you think a feminist is, then no wonder you’ve got such a beef with them.
Here’s a little thought exercise.
Amanda is a feminist.
Amanda is nasty and quick to leap to conclusion.
Therefore, all feminists are nasty and quick to leap to conclusions.
Need a bit of a hint as to what’s wrong with your assumption?
Paddy O'Shea
The John Cole “Conservative Coming Back Out Of The Closet” clock has just moved a few minutes forward.
Tim F.
The part where she erases her dumber comments is what gets me here. Hell, I’ve said plenty of stupid things. The only thing worse for my credibility than leaving them out there for everybody to see would be erasing them and getting caught at it.
cleek
well duh. of course you’re gonna find a hundred offensive, unhinged, ridiculous things from Marcotte’s blogging – she’s barking mad.
Edwards needs to fire her, and whoever chose her.
Justin Slotman
By the way–all the old links to Pandagon and the Cole-Marcotte feud lead to 404 errors. I think they changed their archiving over there at some point. (That was a great feud, by the way, I laughed out loud all over again rereading the “back hair” exchange.)
Richard Bottoms
>Amanda
Amanda who?
This is like fuss Hannity makes about some obscure professor that we all must denounce or be branded as kooks.
John Edwards doesn’t have a chance in hell to start with, but importantly, who the fuck is Amanda whatshername that he can’t replace her and forget she ever existed.
This is an argument that few people outside of spaces like this even know about, much less care.
It’s like Serenity. We know it should have made more than $50 million dollars and not cost Josh his slot on Wonder Woman, but what can you do.
This flap is just about as important.
demimondian
Not only is it bad form, it’s both stupid and useless. After all, teh G00gul hes a *long* memory.
Otto Man
This is so insignificant it doesn’t even merit the tag of “navel-gazing.”
I know you hate Marcotte, John, but Jesus, let it go.
Bob In Pacifica
Having spent a good chunk of my last year following the Duke case closely, and being a liberal who actually believes in the presumption of innocence for people who are charged with crimes, I have been profoundly disturbed by people who presume the guilt of other people based on theories of their sex, race and class. The presumption of innocence used to be a standard belief among people who called themselves liberals. I was over there at Pandagon yesterday to respond to a couple of really stupid, ignorant comments about the facts of the case and Marcotte immediately deleted them, mine and another poster’s. She also announced that she was refusing to read any emails that seemed to support the Duke defendants. I’m not sure what’s still up at her site, apparently there’s been a big housecleaning, but it’s clear that she’s keeping a sharp lookout on who gets into her playhouse.
That’s not a good thing for anyone in the spokesperson/bloggerperson business. In the real world Edwards may not have even known that Marcotte was hired onto his campaign, but no matter how busy his schedule he must be hearing the rumblings by now. The first rule in politics is don’t screw it up for the guy you work for. Someone in Edwards’ campaign should supply her with a sword to fall on.
Pb
Bob In Pacifica,
Indeed–I can’t stand the Nancy Graces of the world. If you think you’ve got a case, then take it to trial, and we’ll see what happens. I often have opinions about court cases, but I don’t feel the need to play-act judge, jury, and executioner (aka decider).
Sirkowski
Duke happend last year. Old news is old, nobody cares.
Zifnab
I don’t entirely see what all the noise is about. John Edwards hires a speech-writter who jumped the gun on the Duke Lacross case. Yeah? And? Tell it to Newsweek, Time Magazine, People, CNN/FOX/MSNBC, the National Enquirer, and Women’s Home Weekly Journal. This was John Bene Redux – cops pull a Nancy Grace and the whole media world piles on.
I don’t see how Marcotte shooting her mouth off somehow damns the entire Edwards campaign. This sounds alot like a giant GOP Swift-Boat whine-fest. “Whaaaaaaa! How can you trust John Edwards when he hires someone who said negative things about rich white men in a racially charged rape case?! Whaaaaa!”
Pb
Zifnab,
I wonder what she had to say about John Mark Karr!*
* no, I really don’t…
Pooh
My best guess is that a higher up in Edwards HQ suggested the deletion.
FWIW, I don’t find her Duke post all that bad. Given what we thought we knew from Nifong (who turns about to be an incredible douchebag. Seriously, here, he’s the real villain, not Amanda, not the kids, not the alleged victim)…Isn’t Taranto all about us believing the veracity of authority figures anyway?
Honestly, though, I have no dog in this fight, as I’m not sure I’ve read a single thing by Marcotte (Bitch PhD and Lindsay Bayerstein being my preferred feminist bloggers should one be needed…)
David
John Edwards hires a speech-writter who jumped the gun on the Duke Lacross case. Yeah? And?
Well, the thing there is that she wrote the post in question two weeks ago. It’s not like all the evidence of Nifong’s incredible asshattery came out yesterday.
Nikki
IMDB says that, as of 12/6/2006, Joss Whedon is writing the script for Wonder Woman.
Pelikan
While Nifong is the the main villian, I’d like to nominate Marcotte for spear-carrier. I used to read Pandagon, then she came along with her fans. It was like being back in the dorms listening to self-righteous freshmen just quivering to spill the “facts” from the latest tract they’ve read.
Luckily, I’m old enough not to give a shit whether or not it’s sexist to think a woman is a bitch. Amanda Marcotte is a crazy bitch, and not in the watered down rapper sense either.
Now I read Balloon-Juice, and I thank you for not allowing the wacky freshmen in, except of course for Darrell.
-Yers
Pelikan
tBone
Not anymore.
The Other Steve
Oh come on. Nuclear war isn’t all that bad.
Zifnab
Darrell’s more like that annoying drop-out kid who bitches about how his Professors made him fail. Or the Harvard buy-in who’ll graduate with whatever average his parents can afford to pay for.
Bob In Pacifica
Sirkowski: Duke happend last year. Old news is old, nobody cares
Except that at least some of the charges are still pending. The prosecutor has recused himself and is now facing charges by the State Bar (the amended charge letter has close to 300 examples of violations). There will be civil cases that should deplete Durham of millions of dollars, and the DA and several of Durham’s finest will face criminal charges too. The North Carolina NAACP has abandoned its pretense of justice and now finds itself disgraced and discredited by its unwillingness to follow the facts of the case. And now Amanda Marcotte, showing herself to be ignorant of the facts of the case and prejudicial against the defendants based on race, sex and class, has brought a bit of embarrassment on the Edwards campaign.
I care about injustice, Sirkowski.
What did Faulkner say? “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
dreggas
Duke Case = Tawana Brauly (or however it’s spelled) redux.
Those who want a war-pony to attack with and need something to get self-righteous about found it and facts be damned they fell for it hook line and sinker only to be proven wrong and disgraced as a result.
I was a kid but even I remember the whole Brauly case and how there was “outrage” the end result of it being Al Sharpton becoming the butt of many jokes.
As for Edwards and who he hires, really I could care less. As it is things are shaping up to where this race is going to come down to Obama and Shillary unless gore jumps in. I still say it’s far too early to start predicting these things.
Jimmmm
I had no idea this many of my fellow liberals hated Marcotte as much as I do.
dreggas
What I still don’t get is why we have to support every single liberal in the blogosphere or in office. Some of them are just as worthy of getting torn apart as those on the right for various reasons.
It’s like you have to pass a litmus test of liking X, Y, and Z liberal or X, Y, and Z cause to be in the “big tent” of course the same can now be said of the Right but I guess the tree-house “No [Insert group here] allowed mentality can, in many cases, get worse with age.
Nikki
Really old news, but Ezra Klein claims that the disappearing comments is a bug that has always been at Pandagon.
Bob In Pacifica
Jimmmm, I didn’t hate her until I discovered her.