I thought this was interesting:
Upon reading the announcement, my partner Darcy said, "I hope the Edwards campaign knows what it's in for."
"I'm sure they do," I said.
(Also, I was entertained by how heavily edited the Salon piece appeared to be. It doesn't read at all like Beyerstein's usual writing voice, at least not as I'm used to it on her blog. If Salon had such a heavy editorial hand [on tone, not content], it's not hard to imagine how a campaign could indeed box you into just churning out press releases.)
Yeah, I've noticed Salon's editors seem pretty active.
I was going to say the same thing. I'm a fan of Beyerstein's, and that piece seemed slightly less graceful than her normal longer pieces.
Lindsay is both articulate and clean.
Lindsay's probably about the smartest blogger out there.
That story does make you think the Edwards campaign is a bunch of clowns. I could maybe see hiring a controversial blogger as an ill-thought-out attempt to make connections with people who read blogs, and not having a sense of what a fuss would blow up. I could see (and this is what I thought was happening, until Marcotte resigned and the campaign didn't insist that she stay on) hiring a controversial blogger as a deliberate invitation to the fuss -- an active attempt to legitimize Marcotte's style of polemic by sticking with her through the attacks. But this makes it look as if they didn't want the fuss, but ignored clear warnings about exactly what was going to happen.
Not clever.
And of course, Lindsay, who is clever, is exactly right about the value of having agressive allies you aren't responsible for. That's exactly the value of someone like Donohue -- he can be as filthy as he likes, but since he's not paid by a campaign, you can't blame anyone for him.
Goes back to what Ogged said originally: "explaining why Marcotte should never have been hired feels like explaining why Kucinich is never going to be president." If the Edwards campaign couldn't see this coming, they're in for a rough go of it.
LB's 7 gets it exactly right -- and this: But this makes it look as if they didn't want the fuss, but ignored clear warnings about exactly what was going to happen.
They were warned what would happened, it happened, and they didn't have a response prepared? If you don't want to take Vienna, don't march on Vienna!
Lindsay's probably about the smartest blogger out there.
In the kingdom of the blind...
Katha Pollitt said something rather similar at TPM Cafe. It's sad in the sense that Amanda probably still doesn't quite know what hit her, much less S's Sister who might have survived if she had been the only one.
Amanda seems only one notch more respectable than our own beleved Bitch here, if even that. Though I would say that Twisty probably would have been an even worse choice. (Why they didn't hire me I can't understand at all. The Relationship-Free Life is deeply conservative).
What I said at TPM Cafe is that the Republicans have this whole outside-the-party pipeline for funding Lindsays and Amandas and also getting them into the major media. There are lots of the "Pioneers" etc. who give more than the maximum legally allowed, and I'm sure Karl Rove (or someone who reports to him) gives them quiet hints as to who seems to be good at hurting Democrats. The fact that discouraging voting and increasing paranoia, suspicion and cynicism are key Republican strategies means that they really need a lot of surrogates of that type.
Media placement is one of the big problems. Winger surrogates get on TV, etc. easily and there are surrogate-agents who get them there. Why is Jonah Goldberg near-big time when Sausagely isn't? It's not talent, knowledge, writing ability, or credentials. Both have family connections, but Jonah's is a pretty embarrasing one (Lucianne of the semen-stained-dress). Nobody picks this one up when I say it, but there are wingers throughout the media at the high management and ownership levels (not just Murdoch, Scaife, and Moon).
The liberal money has been very very stingy at supporting message development and dissemination and media. It's a mystery to me. An easy explanation is that they're either morons or else not very liberal. (Hollywood, for example, cares enormously about censorship and sexual-freedom issues but is neutral or conservative on a lot of the money stuff.)
Another problem may be that the liberal money is too fastidious about partisanship and dirty tricks. Orwell and Gandhi help you to be a nicer political person, but if they're your main teachers (esepcially in the canned form they usually come in) they're not very helpful to a budding activist.
Agree with 6. That is a great article. I think it's pretty amazing that she had such foresight. That kind of opportunity, "hitting the big time" as she puts it, would *still* be hard to resist.
I said this over at Majikthise, but I'll say it here too. Lindsay would have been a lot harder to smear than Amanda. The same good sense that made her walk away from the job has also meant that she has said fewer smearable things.
I'm also interested that she hit on something that I also thought about: why buy something that the Edwards campaign could have gotten for free (and thus could have gotten without any of the dangers involved)? I almost think this was a case of Elizabeth Edwards wanting to give something back to the blogging community in the form of salaries and respect, which is a gesture I appreciate--but a clearly unwise thing tactically.
Amanda seems only one notch more respectable than our own beleved Bitch here, if even that.
Oh, Amanda's much more respectable. Her only real "problem" is that she's outspoken--it all boiled down to that, really. But she has the brains not to write about her private life.
17: Not entirely true. She's written about her garden and a couple of other semi-private things, like how much her family prizes cleanliness and how she's internalized that standard. She sees that they would judge her if her house were unclean, because she's a woman.
She talked about her breakup with her boyfriend and how abusive he'd been. I don't think that she was stupid to do that. In fact, I think it's laudable.
Salon comments was awful. I don't know if it's Amanda, Salon, or Edwards, but all the trolls were out. I was going to comment there but it was a hopeless sump.
18: Fair enough, musta missed those. And I certainly don't think it's stupid for people to write about their private lives; I do it all the time.
I've always found Beyerstein to be much more thoughtful, articulate, and sensible than Amanda. Comparing this article to Amanda's previous one -- Amanda still doesn't seem to have real perspective on what hit her -- really confirmed me in that.
I agree with 21. Hiring Marcotte really led me to question Edwards's judgment. All she does is bait people and make fun of people she thinks is stupid. I don't see how she'd be any better than me for the job of "genial campaign-info disseminator".
21.--I can't tell whether Amanda doesn't know what happened or whether she's telling the story that best suits her narrative and politics. It may not matter, I guess.
I think Lindsay would have been better exactly b/c she's much more of a working journalist and a photographer--she's got an eye and an ear for the real world--physical detail, interesting gestures and quips, like that. Amanda seems like more of a commentator. I think you definitely want to pya *someone* to do that--you need it to be regular and you need it to be someone travelling with the campaign. I can see that in certain frames of mind "taking it for free" might feel vaguely exploitative.
As I understand, Lindsay is giving a journalistic career a serious shot. Doing campaign work wouldn't completely mesh with that. I'm looking forward to seeing what she ends up doing.
Also, still she's clean and articulate.
26: Well, people have been known to go back and forth a couple times. My favorite example being the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg.
God, whatever happened to charity and empathy? If you'd been in Amanda's shoes, would you be in a position to write a thoughtful, articulate, and sensible article about your experience? I think she did a pretty good job, probably better than I would have done.
Republicans do it a lot, but they're thugs. Will, Novak, Safire, Buchanan. Not an honest man among them. There are more, too.
Stephanopolous and Estrich are no longer Democrats the way those four are Republicans, much less Chris Mathews or Tim Russert (both one-time Democrats).
probably better than I would have done
Dear America,
I hate you all.
Sincerely,
BitchPhD
The same good sense that made her walk away from the job has also meant that she has said fewer smearable things.
This utterly mistakes the nature of the right.
That's exactly the value of someone like Donohue -- he can be as filthy as he likes, but since he's not paid by a campaign, you can't blame anyone for him.
This also utterly mistakes the nature of the right.
I suppose you've mastered Hegel's "Philosophy of Right", Mister Smartypants?
As we all know, the vast majority of wrong-thinking people are right.