That site says it's been flooded by spammers. Mystery deepens.

(I don't live under a rock, just in Eastern Europe...)

She apparently took her site down until the storm moves on. It's a shame she got used as a pawn so someone could make a power play.

The fact that Edwards didn't definitively stand by Amanda is a sign, to me, that he really has even less to offer as a candidate than I thought he did.

He voted for the war, isn't particularly strong on feminist issues relative to Obama and Clinton, was unable to carry a single Southern state for Kerry/Edwards in 2004, and given the opportunity to stand up for a real progressive, he caved in on friggin' Bill Donohue.

Note to Edwards: The people who like you the most like you because they think, in your heart of hearts, you're a little bit like Amanda Marcotte. By refusing to stand up for someone who represents your convictions better than you do, you have just demonstrated why you are not going to win the Democratic primary. You may as well drop out of the race now. Your campaign is finished.

Cheers,

TH

Tom - Didn't Edwards refuse to fire Marcotte?

From what I understand, the decision to quit the campaign was strictly her own based on the realization that if she remained on staff he would possibly lose voters, or am I just incorrect? I think putting the blame on Edwards here is not where the focus should lie but rather on the extreme religious fundamentalists in this country who too often call the shots in politics when the requirement for separation between church and state is not in any way unclear in the United States Constitution.

By the way, how was a Vice Presidential nominee supposed to carry a state? Edwards certain won my state in the primary last election and was likely a reason why some voted for Kerry in the end, but I think most voters vote for the candidate running for POTUS not the VP.

Yeah, Edwards is a joke. And we can "blame" a-holios like Donohue all we want, but it won't do any good as long as we have cowards like Edwards who are too chicken shit to stand up to them dominating our public life.

As for Pandagon, I don't know if Amanda took it down or if it's just crashed because of so much traffic, or if the traffic brings the always alert spammers, who have caused it to shut down under a spam attack for poker sites and pr0n.

it'll be interesting to watch kate michelman ostentatiously (all over salon.com, all the time) stand by her man edwards after he let catholics take down a feminist blogger. it was clear from what edwards said in un-firing amanda that he was not a good fit for any woman who says out loud that religious zealots and the ladies don't mix so well. i'd still vote for a religious zealot appeaser over an actual religious zealot any day. but his handling of this has weakened my enthusiasm considerably.

"Tom - Didn't Edwards refuse to fire Marcotte?"

I'm with Tom on this one. Edwards caved pretty fast. He didn't fire her, but he gave a half hearted "givin' her a second chance" statement in which he said he was disturbed by her comments, talked to her as though she were a child, and expects better behavior from her in the future. He might even give her a lollipop if she is good.

If Edwards caves like this so early, what is he going to do when the campaign really heats up? It is situations like this when the two year presidential campaign might be a good thing. This was an early test of who is a real leader and who is a poser. Edwards looks like a poser and thanks to him, Donahue has increased credibility.

carolina girl, obviously Donohue is the creep to blame here. But that doesn't absolve Edwards for his complicity. And yes, it was complicity. His pathetic APOLOGY was a slap in the face to Amanda (and Shakes) and to anyone who has the good sense to know how damn smart they are. If Amanda didn't want to work for someone so spineless, I can't say I blame her. Indeed, she showed a TON more courage than I likely would have had in that situation. I'm incredibly impressed with her. Now, if she'll just jump over to the Obama camp, she'll be my hero ;)

So sad and lame that you can't work on a political campaign and have POLITICAL OPINIONS. I feel so bad for all the shit she's gotten through this power play, but am proud of her for stepping away and valuing her own political commitments first and prioritizing herself over fucking John Edwards, who hasn't done enough to back her up, in my opinion. Not to sound motherly or anything, but eventhough itp robably doesn't feel like the best thing that could have happened at this point, it probably is in the long run.

Amanda Rocks!!
I'd be so shaking with rage if I was her that I wouldn't have been able to write something that eloquent. I'm really impressed.

I'm with Tom too. This sort of agressive spinelessness is why I've all but given up on the Democratic party.

By the way, Pandagon is back up, and Amanda has a post up about the hate mail she's been receiving. I can't wait to hear all the "Christians" denouncing this outpouring of venom.

it'll be interesting to watch kate michelman ostentatiously (all over salon.com, all the time) stand by her man edwards after he let catholics take down a feminist blogger. it was clear from what edwards said in un-firing amanda that he was not a good fit for any woman who says out loud that religious zealots and the ladies don't mix so well. i'd still vote for a religious zealot appeaser over an actual religious zealot any day. but his handling of this has weakened my enthusiasm considerably.

As far as I'm concerned, this no longer has to do with Edwards and what he did or did not do. It's about the fact that all of these forces are trying to intimidate us and invalidate our opinions. And we need to fight back.

They can attack Amanda and shut down Pandagon temporarily but they can't silence all of us. We need to expose these people for the frauds they are and continue to advocate for change. The political climate and nature of the mainstream media led to this outcome, and we need to try to change it so ignorant and biased criticism can't dictate the debate.

Maybe I'm extrapolating too much, but I want this whole experience to open people's eyes to just who and what we are fighting against.

Whether or not Amanda quit in order to save votes for Edwards, he will not be getting my vote. Had he stood his ground and called out these people for what they were that would have been something but he didn't and now the only message this sends is that, yes, they CAN shut us up if they bitch loud enough and there isn't a candidate who 's going to stand up to them. Pandagon might go back up and everything on the net will return to normal but there won't be a candidate who's going to fight them, instead they're going to cow tow to the right in order to get as many scraps from them as possible.

As of right now I have very little hope for our future.

bear writes:
I'm with Tom on this one. Edwards caved pretty fast. He didn't fire her, but he gave a half hearted "givin' her a second chance" statement in which he said he was disturbed by her comments, talked to her as though she were a child, and expects better behavior from her in the future. He might even give her a lollipop if she is good.

Agreed, and well put. He basically did the whole Donald Trump/Miss USA schtick.

DDay writes:
As far as I'm concerned, this no longer has to do with Edwards and what he did or did not do. It's about the fact that all of these forces are trying to intimidate us and invalidate our opinions. And we need to fight back.

Believe it or not, I'm not all that mad at Bill Donohue over this one. He was doing what Bill Donohue does, and if he didn't do it, somebody else would have. But what liberals are supposed to do in situations like this is stand up for something. Edwards is widely perceived as the darling of the antiwar left--even though he was partly responsible for the war in the first place, and discovered his antiwar roots only when the polls showed it was becoming unpopular.

Look, I just walked through the Mississippi State Capitol and talked to reporters and strangers with a great honking big "KEEP ABORTION LEGAL" sticker on my chest. I don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for Edwards. The man's an abject coward and has no business anywhere near the White House.

Cheers,

TH

Wanted to put in my support for Amanda, and figured here's a decent place in light of the fact that unsavory asshats are messing around with her own space. Here's hoping they find some other OMG HERETICAL PAGAN to chase soon and leave her alone.

LOVED her rebuttal, though. Those trying to use the Bible against her would do well to read the damn thing themselves.

Oh, and what makes me madder is that I'm sure Edwards' people knew exactly what kind of blog entries Amanda posts. They picked her in hopes that some of the cool and edgy would rub off and help build netroots, and then they turned on her like a pack of wolves as soon as the PR didn't line up the way they wanted it to.

John Edwards has just demonstrated that he has no business running against the likes of Clinton and Obama.

Cheers,

TH

considering that john edwards "supposely" stands for both BC ANDpro choice ideology, i am confused as to why he would be disappointed by these statements? i find it disgusting that he didnt stand up for her personally and he wont have my vote if he even gets that far. critcizing the church is not anti catholic, and it is not a slur against catholicism, most normal catholics would realize that one would hope. furthermore, most catholics i know are democrat, (even if they are pro life dems) so methinks there are alot of fundies here standing up for catholics, which is amusing since fundies preportedly think catholics are about as good as the devil for following the pope.

I've always lurked and read Feministing but never commented until now. Natalie Maines put it best- I'm speechless. As someone who calls themself both a Christian AND a feminist, I am absolutely horrified and disgusted by the emails and letters that Amanda is getting. Thanks for having this site for people like me who may not have otherwise known about all of this. Furthermore, I am very disappointed in Edwards- he's definitely going to need to work his ass off to get my vote.

my hopes for edwards weren't particular high, but they're much lower now. i'm pretty disappointed by his response. he could've used this opportunity to show progressives that he won't back down quickly when faced with criticism, but he totally caved. spineless. i don't care that he didn't fire Amanda, he should've fought like hell to keep her.

through all of this I've gained even more respect for Amanda though. she's always impressed me, but i think it's remarkable that she's shown so much courage and integrity through all of this. much more courage and integrity than the candidate she was representing.

as for the hate mail, i expected it to be bad, but i had no idea how many far people will go to show hatred towards a complete stranger.

some well-thought out, strongly wordered rhetoric would've been one thing, but "It's just too bad your mother didn't abort you. You are nothing more than a filthy mouth slut. I bet a couple of years in Iraq being raped and beaten daily would help you appreciate America a little. Need a plane ticket ?"

come on....seriously?

through all of this I've gained even more respect for Amanda though. she's always impressed me, but i think it's remarkable that she's shown so much courage and integrity through all of this. much more courage and integrity than the candidate she was representing.

Agreed!

This sux. And I haven't been under a rock, I've been in Edmonton.

I'm not voting in the election, being Canadian and all, but if I were, I'd be looking for a new candidate to support.

Also? I think we should declare tomorrow International Panda Day for Amanda.

I know Amanda is a well loved figure here, but I'd still like to throw in a dissenting view.

I stopped reading Pandagon a while back because it generated lots of heat and little light, and Amanda was the worst offender. Amanda makes for an entertaining firebrand, and I happen to agree with many of her general conclusions, but she has long had a habit of using heavy-handed straw man attacks, outright mischaracterizations, and profanity in place of actual cogent reasoning. She is, in many ways, very much a version of a number of popular right wing bloggers I could name that would generate instant dislike among most readers here, except that she happens to be on our side on most issues.

And I will admit, a rant, even with the occasional profanity, can be fun to read -- especially when you know it's likely to be against someone or something you personally dislike.

But that's not sufficient. Her wild style drew a lot of attention, and made her a great point for drawing general attention to issues that might otherwise get overlooked, even if they were presented more than a little inaccurately. That's a good thing. But, although I hate to say it, if I were Edwards, I would have fired her outright, and kicked myself for hiring her just on the basis of her being both popular and a good writer, without having read a whole lot of her work. (And then I would have hired another blogger just as left-wing, but a bit more thoughtful.) It's a mistake akin to McCain hiring someone from Little Green Footballs, for instance. Flair, popularity, and creative competence in writing aren't sufficient to mitigate a complete lack of competence in analysis and a strong tendency towards lack of civility. She can be a fun read, but I'm occasionally embarassed to have her on my side.

But I really do hate to say this, because I don't at all like the way the other side has behaved in regards to this. For every journalistic sin that she has ever committed, her accusers have generally committed them threefold or more, sometimes in the very act of their accusations towards her, which misquote or mischaracterize what she actually wrote. I don't like at all uncivil people complaining that their opponents lack civility, and making it stick because the religious (of specific religions) are such a protected class. I don't like the abuse being heaped upon her for past writings before she has the chance to write anything official.

I don't like the character of some of the abuse being heaped upon her, period.

I'm somewhat cool on Edwards, but only because he's never struck me as a man exceptionally capable of getting things done. (I'm also cool on Obama, but for the opposite reason — he seems overly fond of political expediencies and seems substantially less honest than Edwards. Take that for whatever it's worth.) In this particular situation, I can see myself reacting almost exactly as he's done — not happy having hired her, but not wanting to fire her, because it gives a bunch of complete and utter wingnuts (in the most pejorative sense of the word possible) something that they have blown completely out of proportion, and lets them set a tone that is not healthy.

But I'm seeing an attitude here that Amanda was a perfect choice for Edwards, that Edwards had no cause not to stand by what she'd written, and the only thing against her is the flaming right-wing crowd, and I simply cannot agree. If she continued to write for Edwards the way she often wrote at Pandagon, it would have turned me off Edwards. I don't like people who seem to be getting to the right answers, but with atrocious methodology. I also have no beef with Edwards being willing to state that he's personally offended at some of the things she's written, or accepting her resignation. Some of her mischaracterizations have, in fact, been pretty offensive. That's part of what makes her a fun read sometimes, actually, but it's not appropriate when you're trying to convince a country that you're the best person to lead it.

Let her be a useful firebrand in her own space, but find someone else to replace her in a political campaign.

I'd nominate our own local Ann, for instance. When she's offensive, she's educationally offensive. :P

This is complete crap! Edwards had a moral and ethical obligation to sacrifice himself and his career for a WATB.

I disagree, Zed. I only got a computer fast enough to surf the internets a few months ago, and in that time, I've learned a lot from reading Amanda's incisive and uncompromising posts. I think a lot of the debate about blogs and their usefulness assumes that everyone reading blogs already has their views completely cemented, and just seeks out people they agree with. Besides youngsters, there are people like me who didn't have strong opinions on a lot of things, or felt conflicted, but have largely been won over by compelling writers like Amanda (and not only because of her caustic brilliance with the insults). I don't always agree with her, and somewhat often see things as more complex than she does, but that doesn't mean she's just attacking straw men or doing obscene hatchet jobs on various wingnut jackasses (although, again, I got no problem with that).

Whether she was a good match for the Edwards campaign or not, Edwards sought her out and hired her. Whether he didn't really know who he was hiring, or didn't anticipate a backlash and was too weak to stand up to it, or both, I seriously can't see him as anything other than a joke after this. I'm not even going to consider a candidate who can't stand up to a bullying and bigoted piece of shit like Donohue.

Very good Heraclitus, you sound just like Ann Althouse explaining that she can't vote for Dems because they will give away her security.

I for one welcome my new John McCain overlord.

Oh, and I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me why using obliquely obscene language to make fun of someone's religious symbols is somehow more disrespectful than saying that unbelievers are going to hell or that gays are "disordered." I'd just like to see the hypocrisy explicitly acknowledged just once.

Brilliant analogy, flathead.

Thank you!

Zed - You are missing the point. You might be right about some of Amanda's writings, but she is very good at what she does. She isn't the important part of this story though. She is just the unfortunate martyr that got hung out there. No one is accusing Amanda of doing anything wrong once she got hired. They are upset about things she did before she got hired. It was those very things that got her hired. So Edwards or someone on his staff knew what they were doing when they hired her. For Edwards to not back her when the screaming people showed up exhibited a lack of respect and loyalty for his employees and that he doesn't have the courage of his convictions. It also showed the screaming people that their screaming works and encourages them to try it again.

Brownback. McCain won't break 15% in the primary.

I'm with Heraclutius on this, why the fuck, yes FUCK, does her language matter? If she had a penis would that make it better? A woman using cuss words, oh my we must discredit her opinions!

Fuck that logic. She says what she feels and she's blunt in doing it. Good for her. I too have learned a lot of Amanda's posts and say what you will but she knows her shit and writes very well.

Zed, I'm not enough of a long-time reader of Amanda's to say whether she routinely engages in the poor analysis you say she does. I haven't seen anything from her that seems poorly thought out, though. Offensive? Perhaps. Angry? Sure. Hotheaded? If you want. Vitriolic? Maybe on occasion. But nothing that's made me question her analytical abilities.

Further, Donohue and the wingnuts didn't take her to task for insufficient intellectual rigor. They took her to task for bad language and criticism of the church (which they creatively termed "anti-Catholic"). Bullfuckingshit, I say. There's plenty about the church that is rightly up for criticism. And ain't a goddamn thing wrong with a woman cussing.

If you re-read Edwards' apology, that's what he's apologizing for. Her language and her temperament. That's fucking offensive and weak. On those notes, Amanda has nothing to apologize for, and Edwards had no right to do it for her. Good for Amanda, sticking up for herself after her boss cowered in fear when the wingnuts came knocking.

What Amanda did last week was like stumbling into a tank of piranhas. She made it out alive, barely.

What Amanda did with this latest post was like hanging raw meat around her neck and jumping back in.

It's one thing to judge her based on posts written before her affiliation with Edwards. But three days after the public apology, when she knows a million wingnuts are waiting to pounce, why write this? Of all the things to talk about, why Christianity? There weren't ANY other movies, ANY other issues, she could have talked about?

If I were Edwards I'd be astounded by, and furious with, her bad judgment.

Right, let the most destructive lunatics in the game dictate the subject of public discourse. Why stand when you can kneel and cower? Why do anything to imply that these poisonous little vermin shouldn't get their way in everything?

mamis62, She has resigned if you didn’t get that part, why should Edwards care now that she isn’t affiliated with the campaign? Why should she care what Edwards think now that h isn’t her boss?
“Of all the things to talk about, why Christianity?� I don’t think you read her post, it’s not about Christianity, it’s about attacks against her person by people who claim to be Christian, as a direct result of her association with the Edwards campaign. So it is timely and relevant.
“There weren't ANY other movies, ANY other issues, she could have talked about?� Huh?

Of all the things to talk about, why Christianity? There weren't ANY other movies, ANY other issues, she could have talked about?

What's your point? Her post was one hundred percent appropriate. These so-called Christians were threatening her and calling her names far more disgusting than anything she's ever called a Christian. Not to mention they were using plenty of the language they claim to be offended by.

As a Christian, I thought her post was spot-on and wholly appropriate.

The Law Fairy - Amen!

Edwards could have used this issue to showcase the kind of hate and intolerance the far right fringe like Donohue uses. He could have mentioned some of Donohue's past comments that would make most of the country cringe. He could have also at least stood up for Amanda's free speech rights even if he didn't agree with the tone of her personal posts. He also could have used all of that media attention to discuss what was being discussed in Amanda's posts that caused all the faux-issue. It was related to the Catholic conservatives who are trying to freaking outlaw contraception and Plan B use by NON CATHOLICS. If that is not the ultimate is religious persecution by the Catholic church I don't know what is. It was a perfect opportunity to discuss the need for tolerance of other people's way of life and how un-American the conservative Catholics are behaving by trying to restrict non-Catholics access to birth control.

What I saw that was interesting is that in the same week the PM of Australia flug accusations at Obama. He countered the nasty attack with a sense of humor, and a stinging but eloquent comeback that really make the PM look stupid for opening his mouth. Then the PM was taken to task by his Parliament.

Don't get me wrong. I still like Edwards and I think he has some important ideas on domestic policy that do need to happen. You can't be viable if you can't stand up to a low-rent hack like Donohue

I'm seeing an attitude here that Amanda was a perfect choice for Edwards, that Edwards had no cause not to stand by what she'd written, and the only thing against her is the flaming right-wing crowd, and I simply cannot agree. Some of her mischaracterizations have, in fact, been pretty offensive.

I'm guessing you're Catholic. None of the bloggers said she was the perfect choice for the campaign. When she suddenly announced her job offer, alot of us in the blogosphere were surprised. I like her blog alot and the free reign of intellectual discourse there. I actually didn't like the way her job muzzled her albeit only until 2008. What I have a problem with is Edwards 1) lack of preparation and v