The Campaign to Sham America
Jeff Taylor | February 2, 2007, 4:12pm
John Edwards has a new blogger-in-chief. First order of business? Covering her tracks.
Amanda Marcotte joins Edwards' crew from Pandagon. A couple weeks ago Marcotte uncorked the following post there, on the occasion of getting stuck at the Atlanta airport:
In the meantime, I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good fucking 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 fucked 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.
Not exactly the best defense disgraced Durham DA Mike Nifong has received, but interesting in the same way that ramblings about CIA radio transmitters in your teeth are interesting -- as a marker for raving moon-bats.
So you might be thinking, at last and at least, a presidential candidate has had the balls to hire on a full-fledged, out-front propagandist, someone boldly willing to not just fudge facts, but fuck them in the ass. A Marcotte-led Net communications op may actually give the jaded among us some reason to pay attention to this 08 election-thing -- there'd be no telling what she'd say.
Alas no. Marcotte chickened out. She went back and deleted the post, presumably after it was linked to today by a conservative North Carolina blog. Marcotte left this justification:
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.
Let's see if there is a final word from the Edwards campaign as well. And when will people learn that Google cache means, "Forever."
Jay J. | February 2, 2007, 6:45pm | #
Like several other posters, I'm not surprised by this.
I went to went to her blog from a link at Matthew Yglesias, and it didn't take me long to find her spewing out stuff that I considered to be completely over the top.
In responding to some right-wing stuff about how Arab Muslims are having babies at a much higher rate than White Christians, she posted that she really doesn't care if the white race dies out or not. She asked if it was the roseasea, the imperialist bent, and several other apparently "white" (and negative) physical and political characteristics that needed saving. I asked if the sickle cell and other apparently "black" characteristics needed saving. Almost needless to say, my post was not allowed on. And I only posted it to see if an equivalent statement about a non-white race could pass...it couldn't. I then e-mailed her to find out what the deal was. She told me that she was pissing on the white ideal.
I asked her very specifically several times if it was race in general that she thought wasn't worth saving, or just "whiteness." She did what every other hard left, postmodern types that I've interacted with do: After bashing what they consider to be the dominant group, they utterly refuse to do the same to any other group and refuse to hold people accountable across the spectrum. It seems that when someone white says something bigoted it is proof of deep and abiding racism, but when someone like a rap artist or black leader says something racist its only a natural and justified reaction against "the man.' I'm really not committed to either position, I would just like a little consistency.
I also specifically asked her if she thought Bill Clinton was justified in his "Sista Soldia" moment. She decided not to answer that one too.
I thought about e-mailing her back and explaining to her that not all white people are in situations where they dominate black people. There are, for example, white kids in the inner-city who are mocked for their whiteness and are expected to overcome this weakness. And her diatribe against whiteness would not be particularly comforting to someone in that type of situation. But I figured she would be about as inflexible as she was in our first exchange, which is the only way people like her have ever been with me. For the record, I think if people could avoid making "blackness" or "whiteness" or any other racial-ness be some inherently good or bad thing, it would be much better. Ironically, postmodern lefties usually see race as completely illusory, but they go about saying things that only solidifies racial thinking.
I consider myself a Democrat and the GOP's pandering to racial animus has infuriated me over the years, but with Clinton, I had the feeling that he wanted to take the Martin Luther King approach, rather than the Malcolm X one. Racism is bad, obviously, but dragging white people across the coals isn't the way to go.
I had hoped back in 04 that Edwards would be a moderate Clintonion type, but he isn't. And his hiring of this woman has made it official, I won't be voting for John Edwards.
I don't buy the bitter, anti-"the man" tack that Amanda and her type take, but I would still love to vote for a woman (Hillary) or a black man (Obama), imagine that.
BTW, someone said that rape was a particularly difficult subject for Amanda. I am trying to sympathise with that but I have to say that it's not only rape that seems to set her off. It's the WHITE MALE type. It wouldn't surprise me if she thinks that the reason white males rape is because they are hellbent on having power, but when black men rape, its because they've been oppressed. In either case, white male patriarchy would be behind it.
Don't get me wrong, once again, I hate the GOP's tactics on race, but Clinton showed the way forward in race relations, and it was by following MLK's lead, by trying to make the world better for everyone, not by striking out in a vociferous manner at the majority, most of whom are relatively innocent.
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