Amynda is barely on the job before she manages to get a fiasco named after her. While it is an accomplishment of sorts, I truly thought she’d be able to do more unintentional damage to the Edwards campaign before she was inevitably “asked” to resign:
The Edwards-Marcotte Fiasco
Before entering politics, Edwards was one of the state’s best-known civil attorneys*. He even worked in the law firm of Wade Smith, Collin Finnerty’s lead attorney in the lacrosse case. So if anyone should be sensitive to massive prosecutorial abuse, it’s Edwards.
His response? First silence—and then, as Liestoppers and Betsy Newmark have noted, appointing as his campaign’s lead blogger a figure who has branded the players guilty, in ugly rhetoric that almost makes Wendy Murphy look temperate.
Amanda Marcotte wrote on the Edwards blog that she came to her post after a stint at Pandagon, “which is one of the top liberal political blogs on the internet and known mostly for insightful and often humorous political blogging.” [emphasis added]
What kind of “insightful” blogging has Marcotte offered on the [Duke] lacrosse case? Liestoppers had the graphic detail:
In the meantime, I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good fucking god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and fucked her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out.
Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it?
So unfair.
Yes, how dare a rape victim act confused and bewildered like she was raped or something.
Natalia, do you know the details of the case? If so, why do you think a women enthusiastically jumped into a sexual situation with men making slavery jokes at her? Furthermore, what is your theory on why she supposedly looooooved having sex with guys holding her facedown on the bathroom floor? There’s no “if” they behaved in a disrespectful manner. We have conclusive evidence that happened.
This is about race and class and gender in every way, and there’s basically no way this woman was going to see justice. In her part of the country, both women and black people are seen as subhuman objects to be used and abused by white men.
Yeah, I know, Alon. Which is why I’m frustrated that people are pretending ‘can’t identify which one raped her” somehow equals ‘wasn’t raped’. I had some initial confusion about exactly who was assaulting me when I was assaulted, but that doesn’t mean that his hands weren’t actually where they were.
Plus, the media is acting like these men are exonerated!
After James Taranto brought attention to the words above, Marcotte deleted them (so much for “transparency” in the Edwards campaign).
What, you mean it’s not a good idea to put a foul-mouthed feminist in charge of public relations for your political campaign… in the South? Boy, you sure learn something new every day!
If this had happened closer to the real campaign season or if Edwards was a bona fide candidate, I’d suspect that Amynda was a Clinton plant. But as anyone who has paid any attention to Pandagon knows, that’s just Our Amynda being Amynda.
The funny thing is that whereas I was falsely accused of removing controversial material from my column – I most certainly did not and every single word is still on voxday.net in all its original Medved-stroke-inspiring glory – Amynda has now openly admitted to doing so. I wonder if all of those who foolishly tried to jump down my throat are going to be criticizing her for this post-facto attempt to hide her words.