Where is your outrage that this case should be in a court at all?! Yes, I misread a portion of an e-mail (not World Net Daily, whatever that is), but look again: a judge has already ruled that similar language is hate speech! This is an appeal of that ruling.

My point stands: simple, neutral language is being punished because of the totalitarian Left's intolerance of anything that deviates from its orthodoxy.

So forget that I made a mistake in reading; answer the important issue of what the Left tries to silence anyone who doesn't fit its worldview but whines incessantly when it is criticized back.

You have to admit, she really knows how to whine.

I've been working on campaigns for decades now, and I can tell you that you are likely adopting a victim mentality that is far too specific. These folks didn't care that you were young and feminist. They cared that you had what they considered to be a weakness they could exploit.

The myspace generation -- with all their opinions and laundry airing online -- are going to be crippled so long as the public (and the myspacers) care about opposition research barrages.

It will take a bunch of folks caring enough to say they don't care -- from John Edwards to the average news consumer -- to disperse this.

In the meantime, every blogger who wants to get involved in politics is going to be wearing his or her old posts like a face tattoo.

Get tough, and understand that most right wing activists have a much more exaggerated idea of keeping their truly private and controversial bits to themselves. The young left is so open minded about how people *should* interpret them, their brains have fallen out.

You want to know why your mothers and grandmothers (and fathers and grandfathers) were, perhaps, not quite so ballsy and outspoken in every public forum? Maybe it wasn't because we didn't have nerve. Maybe we were strategically reserved, so we wouldn't find ourselves picked off like sitting ducks by the oppo guys.

Those smoke-filled back rooms were the networks of trust of years past. Perhaps our bitching didn't reach as wide an audience as your blog, but it rarely came back to bite us in the butts.

What's the proper tradeoff between transparency and open opinion, and keeping oneself strategically effective for the long haul?

Me? I'm not running for office any time soon, myself, but I made that choice and I understand the consequences of living an open life.

I'm not blaming the victim. I'd love to live in a world where openness wouldn't screw you -- but you have to understand this ain't it, and it won't be so long as folks consistently cave.

McTavish, writing in defense of Ms. Marcotte, says "Liberalism is the institutionalization of decency."

Remarkable.

He also slams Camille Paglia, as several others have done in this thread.

I would suggest that Liberalism is not an algorithm. You can't just type "lesbian and liberal" or "feminist and liberal" into a syllogism called "right thinking liberalism" and be assured that nothing surprising to you may pop up.

Ms. Paglia is one of the most interesting political and cultural commentators I've encountered on the internet. I especially value her ability to surprise me with insights I've never had, which I couldn't have predicted based on an algorithm.

Poor little Amanda. While she is quite able to "blog" her way to

infamy, she sheds considerable light on her self-pity side with her lame

defense against those who retaliate. Repeatedly using the feminist as

victim strategy, she apparently thinks she can rally all women to her side.

She would be much better off by simply admitting she entered a fray for

which she was ill prepared and equipped and lost.

After briefly reading all this, I make an appeal for all my time back. I can't understand why the Edwards campaign hired a loose cannon like this in the first place.

She writes:

"Reasonable people... (C)an tell the difference between a personal blog post and those I'll write for the campaign."

They can't; she shouldn't have expected them to (I mean, our president can't even tell the difference between terrorists and insurgents). Lesson learned, she should move on. And I suggest she do so at some point in her career in a more "professional" environment than that of the blogworld. There is but one public venue and she tried to live separate identities in two. That's just reckless.

BTW, I'm a progressive feminist (not a "wingnut") and former journalist. The latter is a profession; blogging in the context of a purposeful campaign could've been this woman's profession but she blew it because she was unprofessional. If Edwards hadn't fired her, I hope he was getting ready to do so.

Neelynz writes:

"Christian bashing is the new national pastime. [sic]"

Actually, I'm pretty sure that going to church is still the national pasttime. Polling shows that 40% of Americans go to church at least once a week, or claim to.

What other activity do we engage in as a group, in such large numbers, on a weekly basis? Christian bashing? Ya because one hundred million Americans get together and do that every week in big buildings?

90% of the country describe themselves as Christians. One could reasonably assume that only the other 10% would be doing any "Christian bashing," no? So every single 24 million of them would have to Christian bash for at least an hour at a time, at least 4 times a week, in a public place, just to balance the churchgoing people enough where you could even start to say that it was the national pasttime.

Oh, and Christian bashing is so en-vogue that only atheists get elected to public office, right? Oh wait, it's the other way around, isn't it?

Poor little persecuted majority. I guess I see your point.

I’m not Catholic.

Nor am I a Republican or Democrat.

And I’m certainly not part of the “right wing smear machine.”

Anti-Catholic bigotry wasn’t the issue with Ms. Marcotte and the Edwards campaign.

The fact that Ms. Macotte seems to be young, green and painfully East coast and provincial was.

The issue was about common sense.

The fault of this fisco lies with John Edwards, not Ms. Marcotte.

He should have known better.