Letters to the Editor
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Can the original vision be made to work?
Thanks, Lindsay, for an interesting story and a convincing analysis. I don't know if you've looked at the Edwards web site much since Amanda's departure. It's very bottom-up, with some active volunteers producing some moderately interesting content and a traffic cop who has been fair and competent but has been purely an administrator rather than a content provider as far as I can tell. What I envisioned when Amanda was hired was that the blog would take on a personality from her and from other front-page posters, much as DailyKos does. That could still happen if some great volunteer talent emerges from the diarist population -- the structure of the blog, much like that of DailyKos, would allow such a person to gain a following and have their content featured. But the process would be greatly enhanced by having a "professional" blogger who could spend the time being a leader. Do you think that's possible in the current atmosphere? Or is it even a good idea?
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Very perceptive...
I watched the whole Edwards thing from the blogsphere, but this article added good insight to my understanding of the whole thing. BTW, I have followed links from various places to your blog a few times, but will take a closer look now.
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It's the Duke case; not religion
As an atheist, Democrat-voting, liberal/libertarian hybrid, I couldn't care less about Ms. Marcotte's cynical views on religion - though I certainly see why the Edwards campaign should have cared.
However, Ms. Marcotte's response to the Duke rape case was absolutely repugnant. To continue to beat the drums of race and class in a situation where almost-certainly innocent (witness the botched photo lineup, for one) people have been subjected to a witch-hunt is morally reprehensible.
That's proof enough that Ms. Marcotte is her own special flavor of wingnut.
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Good for you!
Good for you, Lindsay!
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Bingo Bingo Bingo!
knew that if I was blogging for Edwards, anything I said on Majikthise would be a potential liability for the candidate, even if I wasn't talking about politics.
Something that would be common sense to anyone who has been alive and supported a Democrat for the past 20 years.
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Question...
First of all, good call, Lindsay, for declining to be a campaign blogger. Common sense wins.
Now for my question: Since when do bloggers matter much? Last time I looked, 99% of the population couldn't care less about who blogs what for whom and how. Unless your blog breaks a scandal or something, it seems like a pretty limited medium for a mostly insular audience. Am I wrong?
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Fantastic article
Sharp and incisive, and also wise on a personal level. Beyerstein has chosen to be a radical of sorts (at least in our current environment). She understands that this choice (like all choices) does limit her in certain ways. She was able to step back from any wishes she might have had for a salary or an official campaign role allowed her to analyze the situation objectively and see the trouble coming.
She's completely correct that more is lost than gained by linking a popular blog "officially" with a campaign. The whole power of the surrogate role that conservatives like e.g. Anne Coulter play is that when they say something outrageous, the establishment Republicans can completely deny any responsibility. But at the same time the surrogates work with the campaign unofficially to get the message out. That is all lost when a blogger is on the payroll officially.
I've never thought much of Amanda Marcotte -- thought she was self-absorbed and had a lot more passion than intelligence. The contrast between the earlier article by Marcotte and this one confirms me in that belief.
Re: the letter above which asked about whether bloggers were important. Yes, they are. A huge amount of money in 04 and 06 was raised through blogs. In the primaries, a lot of things are determined by a comparatively small number of party activists. These activists follow blogs, even if most of the public doesn't.
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Or...
Here's a stab in the dark...
Maybe most of the inexplicable "abuse" Amanda mysteriously encountered were reactions to the semi-deranged, reckless, bomb-throwing she's done over the years?
Such as... stuff that would be considered hate-speech if it were directed against Jews, her lynch-mob mentality towards the Duke lacrosse team, her creepy contempt for the opposite sex, her nonstop profanity, etc?
My, that would seem to make a lot of sense, wouldn't it?
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The Best?
I'm sorry, but I had to laugh at the notion that Amanda Marcotte is "the best" that the liberal blogosphere has to offer. While she and I would probably agree 90% of the time, the fact of the matter is that she's not a very talented writer, and she has very little of interest to say other than standard-issue vitriol (which one can find anywhere, and usually by people who are actually good at it). Her reaction to criticism? To delete posts that disagree with her, and ban anyone who has the nerve to take issue with the amen chorus. She's taken what was originally a very good blog and turned it into a lefty version of the standard right-wing hate-fest.
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So, she brought it on herself
Thank you for that insight. It's okay that the right wing flooded her site with vulgar, threatening crap, because she took a position you didn't like about the Duke rape case. (About that, I didn't like the way the presumptions fell early in the game either; I thought the spectacle of the enormously pro-players coverage in the initial days of the story, before the election, were very creepy.)
I thought the qualifications for a crime story to go 24-hour were that a) it had to involve a white girl, and b) the suspected perpetrator(s) had to be characterized as obviously guilty; but suddenly, we were not only sympathetic to the accused in this case, but also, we were required to be outraged, and to presume that the woman in question, not a white woman, was obviously telling lies. Well, they'll do that, I guess, was the general consensus.
Marcotte was simply turning the suppositions around. A more temperate way of saying what she said would be, "Don't be so fast. Don't presume facts you don't know about. Let the system take care of it."
As it turned out, it apparently did. The prosecutor has been pulled back, as apparently he should have. Many more responsible stories about the matter have informed us. That's as it should be.
I think the "other" position from Marcotte's was to simply let this privileged bunch off because, well, the woman must be lying, and college students wouldn't ever do anything like this. Well, they do sometimes.