I'll halfway agree with one of the previous posters who says you weren't attacked because of your sex. That's true. He goes on to say it was because of your views on religion. That's where he's wrong.

You were attacked because you worked for a Democrat. Yes, you had plenty of stuff to stir up their faux indignation, but nobody really believes that Malkin et al give a shit about your religious beliefs.

But don't fool yourself into thinking that if you had a penis they would have ignored you. This simply was not a case of trying to keep women down. It was just a partisan hit, with no greater significance.

Believe it or not, the hate mail you're getting would be little changed if you were male. There would still be death threats, and the writers would still talk about your "need" to get laid, and would probably talk about how getting some dick would make you happy.

Your unimaginative tormentors equate sex with power, and would cast you in the role of a "bottom", male or female, because you're a Democrat.

Oh, boo frickin’ hoo, Amanda. “They” didn’t silence you, YOU silenced you. Face it, you folded. When the going got tough, you whined like a little bitch with a skinned knee. And now you want to play the victim card and get sympathy? Denied.

As a bold feminist fighter doing battle with the dark forces of misogyny, you’re a complete weenie, dude. In fact, I hereby dub thee “Weena, Worrier Princess”.

And yuh know? When you post a crack like “...Mary... hot, white, sticky etc.” you knew you were lobbing a verbal hand grenade. So it’s a bit disingenuous to feign surprise when the grenade explodes. Then when you get called on it, instead of being honest and saying, ‘Yeah, I phrased it that way to push yer buttons, so what, fuck right off,” you claim you were misunderstood.

To paraphrase FZ, “If your children ever find out how weak and fraudulent you really are, they'll murder you in your sleep.” (Feel free now to whine about how you were driven away from the Letters section of Salon by threats to your whatever.)

I see your point, Johnalives. I don't think it was that simple. I agree that fighting the wingnuts instead of having "real" power would have been a stupid tradeoff, but I didn't feel I had any real power any longer when doing my actual job for the campaign was becoming impossible under the barrage.

... as a misogynistic nutcase with sexual problems.

Oh, "Virginia Dentata", give me a break. You realize that that nasty little comment of yours would, by recently confirmed standards, totally disqualify you from working on anyone's campaign? It's vitriolic, pissy, rude, intemperate.... Ooh, but wait, unlike Amanda Marcotte, you haven't used your real name.

Keep writing, keep talking, keep expressing your views, Virginia. After all, it's a free country, no thanks to people like Donohue, O'Reilly, Malkin, et al.

Best wishes to Amanda and Melissa. Good grief, I wish Molly Ivins could send columns from heaven.

While I feel for Amanda, (and Melissa) I can't help but feel that they (and the Edwards campaign) gave in far too easily.

Look, dirty campaigning and smear campaigning are a fact of political life, and it's neither a new phenomenon nor something that Republican's have a lock on. I don't say that to defend it (or Donohue, whose views I find abhorrent) but because I'm surprised at the surprise Amanda expressed over the level of vitriol. And while the content of the attacks may have taken a specific tact because she was female, I don't think the attacks would necessarily have been lessened had a liberal male blogger who had written some of the same things been selected for the position.

Look, Amanda, this was a dream job in some ways, but as an astute observer of the culture in general and politics in particular, you can't have gone into this with your eyes closed. Walking away so soon only fuels the fire and hands Donohue an easy and early victory. Politics is ugly. That's not right, it's not the way it should be, and the attacks on you were wrong. Still, while acknowledging that it's easy for me to say because I'm not in your shoes, I think you let yourself down by not fighting harder for this. It was a great job and a chance to do something that made a difference, and you let Donohue win with hardly a fight.

Of course, to be fair, Edwards should have handled this completely differently. For starters, the Catholic League is not likely to turn out to vote for Edwards anyway, and giving in to pressure from a sexist, homophobic religious organization certainly doesn't appeal to Edward's core constituency.I think that Edwards should have approached this as a non-negotiable, defended Amanda and Melissa's ability to do the job they were hired to do, and otherwise ignored it.

It's a shame that Donohue won this round so easily.

Gosh Amanda, I don't know of any sites on the net that ban more people and delete more comments than your site.

Why is that?

Your comment section reads much more like the right wing (hate speech) sites like Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, Hot Air, Protein Wisdom, Patterico, Riehl World, The Anti Idiotarian Rottweiler than it does like any of the prominent left wing sites.

The comments at Atrios', Hullabaloo, FireDogLake, ThinkProgress, TalkingPointsMemo, TalkLeft -- none of these comment sections read anything like yours. And none of them ban or delete even 1/100th of the comments that you do.

What is it about your writing that engenders so much dislike for you? Why have you had to ban men, women, heterosexuals, gays, lesbians from your site?

I feel very sorry for you that you have been the victim of all of these people.

Virginia Dentata you're revealing yourself

... as a misogynistic nutcase with sexual problems.

Ah, it's time for the ritualistic name calling and denunciations from Amanda's friends from Pandagon. One letter of dissent and boom, you're a misogynistic nutcase with sexual problems.

When called on their bullshit they will all tell you about how they were being satirical.