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• Saturday, February 24, 2007 11:54 PM

  Why did Marcotte "have" to quit the John Edwards campaign?

  Although a progressive activist who blogs regularly and has enjoyed some of Shakespeare's Sister's and Atrios's posts, I'm not an avid follower of the stylish blogs, referring more regularly to the more fact-based, say Confined Spaces (http://spewingforth.blogspot.com/) and Secrecy News (http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/) . And after reading a few entries at Pandagon, I'll admit to preferring the less coarse, but equally hard-hitting non-blog writing of the late Molly Ivins.

  So, this whole debacle could have blown over without my noticing like a tornado in the next county on a day when I was outside gardening under blue skies.

  Then, today, I read a colleague who's involved himself in political blogmastering, albeit he's a generation older than the 30-somethings and more scruffy than the khaki-wearers that Marcotte writes of as being who folks imagine as the bloggers who join campaigns. (http://www.orient-lodge.com/trackback/2160)

  Marcotte writes she was aware the she "didn't exactly fit the image." My question: how is that image to change if folks like Marcotte quit, allowing themselves to be driven out of a job by the "noise machine."

  My advice: toughen up, gal! Your narrative leaves me wondering what candidate would want to stand behind someone only to have her quit?

  Femember, the New York Times's Abe Rosenthal had to fire Molly Ivins. And she bragged about not having shown "due respect and deference to the great dignity" of that paper.

  (http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003157012)

  Her offense? She had called a chicken slaughtering festival in New Mexico a “gang pluck.”

  (http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003541583)

  —Beth Wellington at The Writing Corner
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