Now, having been in the Navy and a teenager, I am no stranger to coarse language and Marcotte's personal blog is full of foul language with multiple uses of the "F-bomb" and other assorted swearing. In general, I have found that those who use such language as a rhetorical tool often fail in the presentation of their argument since the attention is on the foul language and not on the logic or substance of the argument, but then again, when your whole message is is based solely on hatred or Bush Derangment Syndrome it is hard to lend any credence to the argument. I am no fan of sites like Marcotte's and the Daily Kos for this very reason. Coarse language doesn't connect you to the "people," but merely demonstrates a lack of command of the English language. This is, of course, not to say that the political right in the blogosphere is free from such base discourse, but then again, I generally don't patronize those sites either.
But the the real problem with Marcotte is not that she uses such language, but that she pretends to be something larger than her coarse self. Add to that the after the fact scrubbing of her personal site, one has to wonder how long she will be employed by the Edwards' campaign.
The scandalous storyline: Like all bloggers, Marcotte is fast and loose with her opinions, and her opinion of the infamous rape allegations against lacrosse players at Duke University didn't sit well with some folks. When Marcotte started catching flak for that opinion, she apparently deleted it and started altering other comments at Pandagon.Indeed, had the situation simply been that Marcotte doesn't know how to add to the political debate without a curse word, the story would have been Edwards' hiring of Marcotte as a campaign blogger and maybe a brief couple of hours or days discussion of her previous writing, such as it was. But the ham-handed attempt to change her past has led to a real embarrassment for Edwards, who other than a too large a home, seemed to be on a solid path to competitiveness.
Marcotte's move to the Edwards campaign and the subsequent hiring of another blogger, Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister, as netroots coordinator won praise from her netroots friends.
"What this move symbolizes in the blogosphere is that Edwards team understands how to move to the left on the issues," wrote Jerome Armstrong of MyDD. "The early move by Edwards to consolidate the liberal wing of the Democratic party at the beginning is very smart."
But now Marcotte's attempts to airbrush her past are fast becoming a black-eye for Edwards, even as he earned raves yesterday for a speech at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting in Washington. "Edwards should demand Marcotte’s immediate resignation from the campaign," wrote K.C. Johnson of Durham-In-Wonderland, who blogs about the Duke case and acknowledged being a supporter of Barack Obama, an Edwards presidential rival.
Some commeters in a forum at TalkLeft called Marcotte a "political liability" to Edwards, and one said that "if she feels this man should be our next president, it might be wise [to] make herself politically correct immediately or resign from the position."
As often is the case in politics (and blogging) -- and as a prominent blogger like Marcotte should have known -- the cover-up is worse than the crime. And it doesn't help that Marcotte has been both dismissive and defiant in response to her critics.
The problem for Edwards now is that his staff has become the story and not him. While this may deflect attention from is palatial home (which could house 14 families in pretty good style), it is not a good thing for a candidate to have the press talking about the people he hires.
Update: In response to a reader comment, I have changed the spelling of "course" to "coarse." Yet another reason not to depend on spell check.
No comments:
Post a Comment