According to Salon.com,
The right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps -- John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach, Salon has learned.
The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare's Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan "anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots," and an accompanying article on the controversy in the New York Times this morning, put extra pressure on the campaign.
Speculation from sources that the two bloggers might be rehired was bolstered by Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, who said in an e-mail that she would "caution [Salon] against reporting that they have been fired. We will have something to say later."
I wouldn't be surprised if they took them off the payroll for a day, then put them back on it, calling them something else.
Allahpundit at HotAir has some interesting thoughts on the situation.
If you think you’ve seen the worst of Marcotte, wait ’til the axe finally falls and she gets to respond to the uproar at Pandagon, using her idiom of choice instead of the diplospeak the campaign’s momentarily forced on her. The “patriarchy” will be blamed, the F-bomb ostentatiously deployed (conspicuous profanity being shockingly “unladylike” and therefore mandatory for the liberated consciousness), and the anti-Christian insults will come faster and furiouser — and filthier — than ever. Which, ironically, will only confirm the campaign’s good sense in deciding to can her. And of course, virtually to a man/woman, the nutroots will rally behind her. If that means mainstreaming someone who enjoys a little Virgin Mary/semen humor as part of her arguments about birth control, hey. The right wing is criticizing her; that’s all they need to know, just like it was all they needed to know about Jamilgate vis-a-vis the AP.
I'm sure Amanda's got her list going of people to blame (everyone but herself), sites to blast, Christians to mock, and Catholics to eviscerate. But that's really not much different than what she was doing in the first place. I frequently have posted about the more outrageous statements made on Pandagon, usually about abortion and feminism, but sometimes about other things.
One of the more interesting side issues that seems to be bothering a lot of people is the ability of bloggers to work on political campaigns (see specifically, this post from Captain Ed that I linked earlier, plus this from E.M., as quoted by Allahpundit):
Honestly, its time to let Amanda go. Let her and her "so rebellious its conformist" ideas be on her way. If we continue on the current path, we are signing away a license to skewer mercilessly any blogger ever hired by any Republican Presidential campaign. Its open season on everyone. There's no political job that any of us can take without the understanding that we will now be vivisected for our very beliefs. And thats not something we are looking forward to.
Allahpundit rightly points out that no rightwing blogger stood a snowball's chance in hell of not being eviscerated by the likes of Amanda, anyway. Heavens, she got bent out of shape the first time I quoted from her site, for crying out loud. We aren't talking about people who are in this to play fair. They'll even tell you so (see I Won’t Be Fair to Fascists I Won’t Be Nice to Nazis by olvlzl).
UPDATE: Media Matters is already trying to imply that Republican bloggers are as bad as Amanda Marcotte. Not that it will work.
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