Thursday, February 08, 2007

Six Myths about Amandagate

1. It's all about the cursing. There's no question that dropping f-bombs in every other sentence is an offensive and unnecessary rhetorical trick employed by Amanda and other lefties, but the problem isn't just how Amanda says things but what she actually says.

1. Pro-life supporters want to control all American vaginas.

2. Pro-life supporters just want a larger supply of white babies for adoption.

3. The Catholic church's teachings are "crazy."

4. Republicans are a misogynistic, homophobic, racist party.

5. NASCAR is a symbol for southern white supremacy.

6. Christians who support Israel hate Muslims.

7. Christ's crucifixion makes fundamentalist Christians want to kill Muslims.

8. Religion Is Bad For Society, and Charity is an Excuse To Harm the Weak.

9. People who believe in Creationism have the understanding of toddlers.

10. President Bush doesn't care if people live or die (referring to people working in the oil industry).

11. Parents who don't want their daughters to get the HPV vaccine would rather their daughters die of cervical cancer than admit their daughters will have sex one day.

(Taken from sources here and here, as well as various Pandagon posts.)

The truth is that using curse words is the smallest problem with Amanda's writing. She's vicious and nasty (President Bush doesn't care if people live or die?) and the rhetoric is ugly enough without the f-bombs.

2. There's a double standard at work here. This is the Media Matters, Glenn Greenwald, Carpetbagger Report meme du jour.
I realize this is a point I feel compelled to make from time to time, but it simply amazes me that there are two distinct standards for political associations. High-profile Democrats are supposed to keep their distance from anyone who dares to say anything intemperate, but Republicans have no qualms about maintaining close professional ties to some of the most vitriolic, hate-filled voices in our public discourse.

This comment was below a picture of President Bush speaking with a cadre of radio talk show hosts (Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, Neal Boortz, Mike Gallagher). The problem with this meme is that none of the people in the picture work on political campaigns. Nor would you want them to because they would lose any credibility with their audiences to criticize other candidates.

Media Matters and Glenn "Sock Puppet Master" Greenwald have focused on a paid consultant for John McCain, Patrick Hynes. The scuttlebutt is that Hynes called Henry Waxman names (which to normal people would just be childish name calling, but to someone grasping at straws, they became racist insults), he wrote a book calling America "a Christian Nation," he wrote some anti-Mitt Romney things, and he blogged about political matters without revealing his status as a paid consultant for McCain.

I'm sorry, but none of what Hyne did compares to the daily diatribes of Amanda and Melissa. If Greenwald and Media Matters wanted to make this charge stick, they need to find some nasty, trash-talking, well-known conservative who is working for a Republican presidential campaign. What they've come up with is pathetic.

3. The MSM is biased against Marcotte and McEwan. This argument is being played out in whinier corners of the internet, but it's not true. The argument is that the New York Times has shown its rightwing bias by covering this fracas, but there's no evidence of this. Amandagate had been in full swing for nearly 10 days before the NYT wrote anything at all about it. In fact, there were rightwing bloggers arguing that the MSM was trying very hard to bury this story.

The fact is that it is an interesting story about a new area of campaigning (the internet) and its potential benefits and pitfalls. If anything, the NYT bent over backwards not to portray Marcotte and McEwan as the rabid, race-baiting moonbats they actually are. The descriptions of Amanda's posts were tepid and restrained. The NYT did as dry a story about this fiasco as was possible, not a hatchet job on people they dislike. If lefties want to discuss hatchet jobs, go read some of the stuff about the Scooter Libby trial or half the pieces done on President Bush.

4. Edwards will lose votes if he dumps Marcotte/McEwan or Edwards will lose votes if he keeps Marcotte/McEwan. I put these myths together because I see them juxtaposed on virtually any lefty blog. The truth is that keeping the trash-talk twins on staff probably is doing Edwards more harm than good because they are distracting from his message. On the other hand, they are very internet savvy and that is an asset to his campaign, which seems to be trying to lock up the internet user early in this race. Judging from remarks made in the much-touted Salon.com article, I suspect the Edwards' campaign is going to take a page from the Clinton strategy guide and hunker down, waiting for the storm to blow over, keeping the gals on staff. To be honest, I hope they do because watching the Edwards campaign implode will be oh, so much fun with those two around.

5. The only people complaining wouldn't vote for Edwards anyway. It's true that the blogs shining the light on the cesspool that is Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister are right-leaning in nature. But the idea that no one reading those posts would vote for Edwards in any case is patently untrue. Blogs get readers, commenters, and lurkers of every political stripe imaginable. Lots of people (like me) read a lot of blogs that contain nothing with which they agree. The idea of reading those blogs is to expand one's range of information sources. There are plenty of potential Edwards supporters who read Little Green Footballs, Ann Althouse, and Daily KOS.

6. If Edwards fires Marcotte and McEwan, he'll be caving into pressure from the right and who knows where that will lead? If Edwards fires the trash-talking twins, he'll be admitting he's human and made a mistake in hiring such radioactive personalities. But if he keeps them on, they will continue to be a source of entertainment for right-leaning blogs, which won't be good for Edwards, either. There's a paranoid thought floating out there that admitting a mistake will only agitate the forces against you. I think there are instances where this is correct (for example, President Bush acknowledging mistakes in Iraq lead to a feeding frenzy demanding he "admit he was wrong" or whatever). For the most part, however, dealing with unfortunate circumstances and moving on is the best way of handling bad news. Part of the problem with the Mark Foley scandal was that Denny Hastert couldn't let the thing go and it kept damaging Republicans.

While this list is far from exhaustive, I think it covers the main myths swirling around Amandagate at this time. I'll update as more comes up.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.