Marcotte Leaves Edwards Campaign

The Edwards Campaign has just announced that liberal blogger Amanda Marcotte has resigned her position with the the organization, and it is a great day for American politics.

I must respectfully disagree with Ms. Dipollina's assesment of John Edwards' choice of Amanda Marcotte to manage his campaign blog. Dipollina characterizes Edwards' decision to maintain Marcotte on his staff despite heavy criticism from the Catholic League and others as a victory for political honesty.

Her article describes Marcotte as a blogger "who had made disparaging remarks about the Catholic Church, at times using profane language." This does not begin to describe the vitriol Marcotte employs on a regular basis in her posts.

A sampling follows, all asterisks mine:

On the Virgin Birth:

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.

Why not? Just remember, false witnessing is okay if done in the service of knocking women up against their will. Like it’s perfectly okay to say, “I had a vasectomy years ago, baby,” if you didn’t. God loves that sort of thing, since he’s a sadistic bastard.

On the Pope:

I suspect Pope Ratz will give into the urge eventually to come out and say there’s no limbo and unbaptized babies go straight to hell. He can’t help it; he’s just a dictator like that. Hey, fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, the Pope’s gotta tell women who give birth to stillborns that their babies are cast into Satan’s maw. The alternative is to let Catholic women who get abortions feel that it’ll all work out in the end, which is just not doable, due to that Jesus-like compassion the Pope is so fond of.

On Former Senator Rick Santorum:

The problem with Rick Santorum is that every time he talks about sex, that little part of all of us that wants to run into a preschool and yell “f***s***” or go to a born-again church and scream about how God loves to come in our backyards for our milkshakes, well, it just grows a hundredfold, and the restraint that most of us show just flies out the window. As a Senator, however, Santorum finds himself frequently faced with many of the most pressing issues of penis insertion that have ever faced America - and so he must speak, lest his lack of self-control be manifested by f****** his desk on the Senate floor. (There’s a knothole that’s just the right size, y’know.)

So Edwards hired a self described "c** guzzling boozehound" who has a little part inside of her that wants to yell sexually charged obscenities in a room of four year olds. Needless to say, this hire was a complete disaster for the Edwards Campaign. Worse still for Edwards, Marcotte's abdication will have consequences of its own as it will alienate the so called liberal "netroots," a devoted group of web-based activists credited for the rise of Howard Dean to chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and for funding his 2004 presidential bid.

A far cry from promoting honesty in presidential campaigns (Edwards distanced himself from what he described as the blogger's "personal views" and said "that it was never [Marcotte's] intention to malign anyone’s faith"), Edwards decision condoned profane public dialog and ad hominem attack.

Derick Vollrath @ Tue, 02/13/2007 - 12:37pm

Obviously, this entry has been heavily edited from above, because it's absurd for me to get all riled up over "Pope Ratz." You can find more telling examples of Marcotte's sterling prose here

here

and my favorite, in which Marcotte refers to that little part inside of her (supposedly all of us), that wants to run into a preschool and yell sexually charged obscenity, here

John Lichman @ Tue, 02/13/2007 - 12:40pm

So, if today's a "great day in American politics" what about this

I mean, isn't that just awesome! Oh, well, no, I guess it isn't.

This is Edwards trying his best to focus on the new "personal" image he's decided to use. Ideally I still agree with Whitney. Religion in politics is nothing new and has been abused to the point in the last eight years that to bring it up means an outcry of this "Bible-roots," which is mainly effective in firing people with blogs. Oh, right, and getting nuts to write in to you with death threats.

Also, it's odd to see "netroots" as purely liberal. May have been when Trippi snatched the idea from meetup groups, but now? Everyone uses it.

John Lichman @ Tue, 02/13/2007 - 12:41pm

also, could you throw us some google caches? All I'm seeing is a suspended page filled with death threats and a dead panda GIF.

Derick Vollrath @ Tue, 02/13/2007 - 12:45pm

This post has been a complete disaster. Every salient quote was edited out and the new links are gone. It isn't that religion isn't a viable topic for public debate, it's that due to media sanitation or Marcotte's language, no one has much of a clue what she ACTUALLY says.

I also don't think it's necessarily ridiculous for Marcotte to write her blog in the manner that she does. It IS ridiculous however, and downright stupid, for the Edwards campaign to hire her.

Derick Vollrath @ Tue, 02/13/2007 - 1:11pm

I'm going to post salient comments with more heavy explitive deletions, pending Phillips' approval:

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. - Why not? Just remember, false witnessing is okay if done in the service of knocking women up against their will. Like it’s perfectly okay to say, “I had a vasectomy years ago, baby,” if you didn’t. God loves that sort of thing, since he’s a sadistic bastard.

I suspect Pope Ratz will give into the urge eventually to come out and say there’s no limbo and unbaptized babies go straight to hell. He can’t help it; he’s just a dictator like that. Hey, fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, the Pope’s gotta tell women who give birth to stillborns that their babies are cast into Satan’s maw. The alternative is to let Catholic women who get abortions feel that it’ll all work out in the end, which is just not doable, due to that Jesus-like compassion the Pope is so fond of.

The problem with Rick Santorum is that every time he talks about sex, that little part of all of us that wants to run into a preschool and yell “f***sl**” or go to a born-again church and scream about how God loves to come in our backyards for our milkshakes, well, it just grows a hundredfold, and the restraint that most of us show just flies out the window. As a Senator, however, Santorum finds himself frequently faced with many of the most pressing issues of penis insertion that have ever faced America - and so he must speak, lest his lack of self-control be manifested by f****** his desk on the Senate floor. (There’s a knothole that’s just the right size, y’know.)

God I love it when people call me names. Sometimes the urge to curbcheck some motherf******* is hard to control. I’m a sadistic a**hole, but I am a sadistic a** in the name of justice.... I wish I wasn’t a c**-guzzling boozehound.

Recap (and this was in the original post): Marcotte, a self described c**-guzzling boozehound with a little bit inside of her that wants to yell compound, sexually charged obscenity in front of four year olds, was given a position as head of John Edward's internet initiatives. What the hell was the Edward's campaign thinking?

John Lichman @ Tue, 02/13/2007 - 8:49pm

But I'm just curious, where is this all coming from? Did you save the entire blog or is this from caches?

Derick Vollrath @ Wed, 02/14/2007 - 1:57am

The links are back up on my previous comment. All but the boozehound comment appears in those links. I need to rewrite this entry and consolidate the quotes back into the article. Everything was linked and sourced in the previous version of this article before Prof. Phillips edited out all but the "Pope Ratz" blockquote due to Ms. Marcotte's expletives.

Cristina Gonzalez @ Wed, 02/14/2007 - 11:54am

Derick, I commend you for having the guts to put this up. It just goes to show that anything that can't even be posted on OUR blog is not something that should be representative of any Presidential campaign, Democrat or Republican alike.

When you hire a committee for your campaign, you are hiring the people, faces, histories, beliefs etc. because they are the people that will stand by you throughout the process.

Imagine if Edwards were elected into office and was this careless with a hire. Even better, if it were Bush and he hired someone half as bad as this girl...can you IMAGINE the media firestorm??? But Edwards will be praised for standing up for her. Go figure.

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