Vox Day serves me crow,
here,with a rich mole poblano, re my comments on Amanda Marcotte, late of the John Edwards campaign. As a blogger, I really should have known better than to take words at face value: Edwards is a politician, his lips were moving, therefore he was lying.
But the whole episode has been bizarre. As Vox points out, it probably wasn't Edwards but one of his operatives who got the idea of using Marcotte, and that operative will probably quietly disappear in a week or so. In any case, it showed no comprehension at all of the blogosphere. We're seeing this more and more: politicians figuring that since the bought Old Media are going under, they have to blog. When they do, they are consistently wooden and boring. So they hire a blogger, who, in order to not cause public offence, has to be wooden and boring too. Blogs are by their nature countercultural. It might be possible to do a viral Edwards campaign, but if you're going to do that, it has to be sub rosa; you don't shout to the rooftops, "Hey, we got one of the biggest bloggers out there to blog for Edwards!"
I still think though that, having made the mistake of hiring her, and her having made the mistake of taking on the job, they should have brazened it out. This is a hit on their credibility, and it shows both of them as fundamentally gutless. That it had to be a bullying moron like Donohue that brought her down is worst. Yes, it would have been inevitable; if she didn't screw up on Edwards' site, she would have done it on her own (and why didn't he pursue an exclusivity agreement?)
The moral of the story is: if you want to run for office, keep it clean, reasonable, and not too bizarre. And if you can't do that, and get busted by your words, stay in there like you meant your words, because if you didn't, you had no business writing them. The classic example is Tom Alciere, who had won election to the New Hampshire legislature but gave up his seat in the furor over comments he made again and again on Usenet on the moral propriety of defending yourself with deadly force against the police, no matter what they want from you. That argument has theoretical validity, but if you make it, you're going to have an awfully hard time, both practically and ethically, in becoming the cops' employer...which is what Alciere did. And his response should have been, "Look, you guys deserve to get hurt, but I don't want you to get hurt, so I'm going to do my best to get all the illegitimate BS laws off the books, so there's no reason for you to get hurt." But he pulled an Amynda and backtracked on his words (but couldn't remove them from Usenet). I try to write so that I will never have to do that (questioning Vox Day's intelligence excepted...hey, I'm saving one of the breasts for Spacebunny...)
Comments
Posted by: Jason
Posted on: February 13, 2007 04:02 PM
The strange idea, for me, was that a face-saving exit was possible for the bloggers and Edwards. The defenses of Marcotte (and the demands for Edwards to "stick up" for her) seemed to assume they could work their way out of the situation. That's the thing about swiftboating, though - the process is effective from the moment it begins. It could have been Gavin at Sadly No! blogging for Clinton, someone from Think Progress blogging for Obama - wouldn't have mattered. Same system, different input, same results. Once messages are out there, it's over with. Popularity perpetuates itself.
Posted by: Gene
Posted on: February 14, 2007 10:03 AM
That was very sweet and very humble of you. The highest of admirable traits that we don't see often enough and might never see from the likes of Marcotte.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: February 14, 2007 11:29 AM
Well, I'd have no reason to be sweet and humble if I hadn't snarked (however gently) on Vox. And since you think I'm sweet and humble, I think I'll keep my opinion of Ms. Marcotte to myself. :-)
Posted by: Gene
Posted on: February 14, 2007 04:37 PM
How do you think what Ms. Marcotte says is helpful? She won't dialogue with me. She has erased every post I have ever tried to make.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: February 14, 2007 08:31 PM
Huh? I don't. Actually, before this particular s--tstorm in a teapot, I never read her. And having read her, I see why. Now, Vox has fun with her as a feminist punching bag, but she's really pretty far from my personal concerns.
Posted by: Gene
Posted on: February 15, 2007 09:27 AM
My 8 year old takes a keyboard class with the community college. Yesterday, class was canceled because the instructor's 18 year old son committed suicide. He locked himself in his car and set himself on fire.
How would Ms. Marcotte respond to this mother? Would she hold to her "foolish consistency" and worship of irreverence like Emersons "hobgoblin of little minds"? Should we not judge right and wrong behavior, and lack of reverence for our brothers and sisters in the face of earthshaking tragedy. Is there a point where even Ms. Marcotte would choose not to mock goodness and humbly bow her head in sympathy for a fellow human. In other words; act like a Christian to comfort another?
Posted by: Gene
Posted on: February 15, 2007 09:57 AM
I understand why Amanda is far from your personal concerns, but the reason she is a concern for others is that what she says doesn't stop with her. It spreads like a cancer and makes "selfishness" look cool to the unrestrained socially ambitious, which includes enough people to make a paradigm shift.
Some have a great concern that society be conducted with civilized behavior or we will have hell on earth.
Imagine if every agreement someone makes with you is optional; their word means nothing and if you think it does, you are a "hater" and you are vicitimizing them. Life would no longer work and things would become more tooth and claw, just like Darwin feared. If even a minority of people copied the brazen selfishness and refusal of decency she displays, it would be like living amongst adults who never got over the "terrible twos" for all of us.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: February 15, 2007 10:27 AM
Gene-
Those are all valid points. I guess we each have a different prognosis for American society. Apparently you think that the cancer is in an early stage, and by cutting out the tumor (Marcotte), it can be saved. I say the cancer has metastasized, and the removal of a little tumor like Amanda will only bring needless pain to the body politic. She's a symptom, not the disease.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: February 15, 2007 01:04 PM
And Billy Beck weighs in:
Posted by: Gene
Posted on: February 15, 2007 03:12 PM
She's a symptom, not the disease.
***
What do you think the disease is?
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: February 16, 2007 11:11 AM
Speaking of Vox, he damn near lost an eye while playing metric football. Here's wishing him a speedy and complete recovery.