I just chuckle when I hear Amanda's defenders crying "free speech!" Sure, she has the right to speak her mind. And others have the right to react to it.

Amanda is free to be a racist, sexist bigot. I have the right to NOT support a candidate who would hire such trash. The fact of the matter is, nobody made up anything in this whole saga. These were HER words, HER thoughts, HER opinions. The fact is that HER OWN WORDS show her to be an immature, racist, sexist bigot. I will not vote for someone who chooses to associate themselves with this garbage.

YOU made your bed. Grow up and lie in it. Quit playing the "victim." YOU are solely responsible for what you wrote. Be an adult and take responsibility for your actions.

Since when has Amanda every battled anything? she posts in a self created echo chamber over on Pandagon - hardly toughing it.

She markets herself as the hard nosed feminist blogger but the moment she faced real flame she folded like a limp rag. She's done tremendous damage to the credibility of women political bloggers, having confirmed the stereotype of the weak women.

Wow!

Amanda seems to leave a few points out.

She fails to mention that John Edwards said he was personally offended by some of her posts and found the content intolerant. That didn't sound like she was off to a good start with the boss did it?

She also fails to mention the substantial amount of criticism levied at her by the religious left and moderates. Oh well, that's easy to forget when you're trying to pin the blame on the VRWC and avoid responsibility for your own actions.

At least she's not some rich white godbag's bitch anymore and can say what she wants again.

Oh yeah Amanda you deleted your writings and just substituted something that more accurately reflected your views? What an effin lie... you simply got hoisted on your own petards grrrlll. Poetic justice for the unjust.

If that was truly your purpose then you would have updated or corrected. But no, you simply add another lie to your list of incompetences.

What really happened was that you realized how stupid and wrong your Duke post was and how likely it was to make trouble in the Carolinas with the Edwards job. Then, caught with the cookie jar, you tried to whitewash your stupidities.

Your only problem is that it didn't work.

And so now we get your Act Three, Poor Poor Amanda The Bwavest Wittle Feminazi Bwogger Evwer and Her Bwavest Bwattle With The Pwatriarchy.

How dare those big meanies hold you accountable for the stupidities you wrote!

You ask of us, no you require, an understanding and sense of fair play that you never showed your perceived "enemies". You got a better break than you were ever willing to give the Duke players.

You said incredibly stupid things and then when receiving the heat you should have expected you gave us your mealey mouthed "But but it was satire"! and "I'm so sorry if some were offended!".

Your martyr act is already old and stinking Ms. Loser.

But wait there is more!

When you got fired, yes you were fired, you had the bad taste to tell us that only after long consideration and despite support from the Edwards team you decided to "resign". What a crock.

What is sad is that the Left wasted so much time and energy defending a pathetic little whiner who isn't worth defending, someone willing to destroy and disavow her own work for the hope of $$$$.

Now get back to cleaning up the big stinking piles you leave around.

It is clear that your critics are nothing more than fucking fucktard little penis heads afraid of your Mighty Morphin Vaginal Girl Power Politics.

Wahhh Wahhhh Wahhhhh!

Funny how that works.

Donohue and Malkin know they're demagogues. But despite a well-deserved reputation for inflammatory rhetoric, you still labor under the impression you are not. No wonder you got your ass kicked.

That a liberal blogger of any stripe, much less one with a sizeable audience, would be surprised by the long knives and gnashing teeth of the Republican Smear Machine is nothing less than dismaying.

More disturbing, though, was your willingness to promote a spineless featherweight who, in order to show off his Mighty War Cock to voters, supported the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq... only to "regret" his decision when it became crystal clear that a continued defense would have *certainly* ended his career.

Edwards was buying authenticity and you were selling. To the extent there's even a story here, it is one of astoundingly poor judgment, both yours and your candidate's. Martyrdom is surely more comfortable than owning up to that, which explains the self-pitying tone of your essay.

Contrary to prevailing opinion - yours, Salon's and pretty much everyone else's - the left blogosphere is not a Democratic monolith. Many of us have turned our backs on the party which refused - and refuses still - to stand up to the lawlessness, bullying and criminal machinations of the Republican Party. Rewarding serial non-performance, duplicity and corruption with contributions and votes makes progressive political reform impossible. Perhaps another decade of being marginalized, suckered and abused by the DNC-ites you so enthusiastically support will strengthen your powers of observation.

The writer's claim that the passages in question were satire does not hold water. You can't float in and out of the conceit of pretending to identify with those you wish to skewer, and still call it satire. And you can't describe a (presumed, by her, at the time) act of rape AS an act of rape and still call it satire.

No, what Ms. Marcotte indulged in was merely sarcasm. Many aspire to satire, and some even claim it. But precious few can really pull it off.

I guess the Edwards campaign was trying to score some hip, swinging cred by adding some bloggers to their campaign of walking stiffs. But to profess dismay about content is kind of silly -- what makes blogs interesting is that they're unpredictable and not sanitized and scrubbed and safe.

Why Edwards added bloggers makes sense: he needs the cred; Why the bloggers took it also makes sense: it was a great opportunity; Why the Catholic wingnuts went after the bloggers doesn't make sense to me.

Perhaps they wanted to "make an example" out of somebody to discourage establishment types from mingling with bloggers.

Maybe their tempest in a teapot really was gender-based (I'd have to see if other campaigns with female bloggers had them get similarly slagged, or whether it was Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister who were specifically targeted).

Or perhaps it was simply a target of opportunity -- the wingdings saw it in the news and went after them because they weren't powerful enough to protect themselves from attack. Certainly if it happens again, then we'll know that there's a systematic effort to derail prog-bloggers from getting involved with mainstream pols.

The whole thing is odd and perplexing. What does the Right gain from this? That's what we have to figure out.