I read this article and didn't ever really see anything bordering on taking responsibility for what you actually wrote. I guess I can understand that -- after having been run through the VRWC buzzsaw, it's probably hard if not impossible to feel like a victim. Nevertheless, regardless of what subsequently happened to you -- the drive-by BS that has happened to so many lately -- I would hope that you'd understand that words do have consequences.

You excuse what you wrote: it was childish, only to be easy to understand, or you never meant to mock someone's personal faith. Yet, by any reasonable standard, your words were incredibly offensive to Christians, and you displayed nothing less than a contempt for them that equaled the contempt that your detractors have had for you in the time since. It is certainly true that your words are being used cynically by much more powerful ideologues who will someday come to know that they never came close to advancing God's kingdom, but yet: Can you really say with a straight face that you never meant to mock someone's personal faith? Can you ever possibly say that you as well aren't an ideologue with an axe to grind, and that you'd go far past reasonable in order to advance your agenda?

As was written in the Adventus blog,

If you want to engage in public life at all, beyond shouting opinions and spouting your preference and gathering to you people of like mind who nod at your "sage" pronouncements, you have to take responsibility for what you say. It doesn't mean "they" get a free pass for threatening your life or simply your job; but it does mean they get to swing back, and you can't retreat behind complaining about their "hurt feelings." If that's the best you've got, the kitchen's gonna be too hot for you.

(http://rmadisonj.blogspot.com/2007/02/jesus-loves-me-but-he-cant-stand-you.html)

I hope in the future for dialog, for understanding, for something other than this vicious cycle of recrimination and hate. I'm sick of it. We're liberals, after all, and isn't bringing light with love into the world what we should be about? (And yeah, I hope that sounds familiar.)

Anyway, I wish you well, and may the crazies be satisfied with their pelt on the wall and leave you alone in the future.

Marcotte's essays at Pandagon are filled with fighting words: godbag this, fathers' rights activists that.

Marcotte is absolutely 100% lying when she said in her apology that she didn't mean to upset anyone. Her posts were intended to inflict as much harm with words as can possibly be inflicted.

So Amanda goes through life doing this kind of crap and then like a true arrogant dumbshit she signs onto the Edwards' campaign. Is she a complete retard? Does she really think her shit didn't smell?

If she wants to be a polemicist fine, but the first rule of polemics club is that you don't sign onto a political campaign.

And does she take any responsibility for this? No. It was all Donahue's and glovers and riehls and everyone else's fault.

And then her dipshit friends like Ezra Klein want to know, "what was Edwards' thinking by hiring her?" Well what the hell was Amanda thinking?

Isn't Amanda a rational agent? Isn't she responsible for her actions? Apparently not.

In Amandas world, the godbags and the mens rights activists and the misogynists have it out for Amanda.

And if you read Pandagon, realize that Amanda ruthlessly bans and deletes people that dissent. She has kicked out men, she has bashed gays, she has tossed out women.

And there are plenty of feminist women that disagree with her. That's her dirty little secret.

If you dissent with any bit of her extreme blame it all on godbags and misogynists than out you go.

So read her tale of woe. Oh, poor Amanda, hiding behind her skirt as usual. It's the haters. Everyone hates her.

Amanda and Camille Paglia, Salon is two for two.

The key to understanding Amanda Marcotte and Pandagon is the book Queen bees and wannabes and the movie mean girls.

Amanda Marcotte, for whatever reason, and her coterie at Pandagon are stuck in their high school girl years.

Pandagon is a closed, insulated community wear group think is encouraged and enforced with gossip, insult, and invective. Sadly, most of these women then play the victim card in order to excuse their vicious behaviors and believe they are fighting a noble fight for women's liberation.

Discussion of any issue can only be done along the strictest and narrowest dimension, and extreme oppositional politics is the order of the day.

Amanda and her coterie are blind to the damage they are doing to the men and women that actually agree with much of what they have to say.

She is by far her own worst enemy.

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 joke was typical of Pandagon's satirical tone and was intended to mock a common rhetorical ploy of abortion opponents -- a hypothetical question and answer -- not to mock anyone's personal faith.

Does anyone believe this is satirical in nature and not intended to be hurtful?

Does anyone believe that if not for that awful Donohue, that no one else would have had a problem with this?

Don't we demand an honest voice from our bloggers? Isn't that what they were supposed to bring to the table?

...and the fact that Donohue is a slavering mouth-breather doesn't change that. "Selecting a target and making a fuss" is not a tactic peculiar to the right-wing noise machine -- that's a willfully ignorant point to make. The writer's Duke lacrosse statements are exactly, precisely, "selecting a target and making a fuss".

I am always mystified by what the right wing decides is "beyond the pale" in civil discourse. When your world view contains a lot of sacred cows, I guess you get testy if somebody starts poking at them with sticks. With so many events and actions in the world worthy of outrage, it seems astounding they choose feminist bloggers for so much nasty vitriol. Truly, feminist bloggers like Amanda strike a nerve with certain people.

I’d much rather see a weekly column by Amanda Marcotte on Salon than more impenetrable muck from Camille Paglia. Still, I don’t hate Camille Paglia or think she needs to be silenced just because I don’t like her writing. I certainly wouldn’t waste my time sending her mail suggesting she perform fellatio as penance for the column I didn’t like.

.I’ll read her columns as well as Amanda Marcotte’s at Pandagon and be better for it, because bland writing, carefully parsed to be inoffensive, is lame. I’ll read someone who will take a stand and defend their ground any day. Right or wrong, it makes you think.

Some people apparently just get angry if they are forced to think hard.

The Edwards campaign lost here. Ms Marcotte and Ms McEwan will do more good as loud and proud bloggers than they would tucked behind the artfully crafted media wall of a political campaign. Bill Donohue and the screaming harpies of the right wing think they won this round but they didn’t. .