Jefferson Would Be Appalled

Who does God want me to be today?
Blond? Brunette? Shaft?
-- Bo Chrysalis, "Absolutely Fabulous"

Election 2008 is gearing up to be the most sanctimonious, Bible thumping, separation of church and state be damned, election in my memory. And Democrats are the worst offenders. I made the mistake of turning the TV on today, and was assaulted by Hillary's sad rendition of the "southern preacher character" a good ten times. Pulling off that suit was no mean feat, but her flair for color ends about there.



The style-over-substance news channels declared Obama the winner of the dueling preachers contest, in historic Selma, Alabama. And, yes, I do appreciate that in the black community churches serve a much broader social function than they do in the white-bread world I grew up in. But Martin Luther King didn't harp on religion as much as these two do, and he was a preacher.

But the icing on the cake of my day was opening The Huffington Post to be greeted by a photo of a haloed John Edwards scolding the country for failing Jesus.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards says Jesus would be appalled at how the United States has ignored the plight of the suffering, and that he believes children should have private time to pray at school.

Edwards, in an interview with the Web site Beliefnet.com, said Jesus would be most upset with the selfishness of Americans and the country's willingness to go to war "when it's not necessary."

"I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs," Edwards told the site. "I think he would be appalled, actually."

Considering that a healthy percentage of Americans don't have reason to care one whit what Jesus would think, isn't there some other moral arbiter we can reference?

And the sanctimony continues:

Edwards told Kuo he stood by a decision to keep two bloggers on his staff despite their provocative writings criticizing the Catholic Church. Edwards said he also found the writing offensive, but "decided to forgive them and stand by them, knowing there would be potential political consequences for that."

Excuse me. Forgive them?! For what? Exercising their First Amendment rights? He was offended. Fine. But making them "wrong" is a whole 'nother matter.

The bitterest irony is that as our national obsession with religiosity is reaching ahistorical heights, the country has come completely un-moored from its moral underpinnings.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America’s global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

I'd like to hear our Presidential front-runners talk a little less about God and little more about how they intend to restore the Constitution. See, you don't need to be religious to know that torture is wrong.

Why Blogging for Hire is a Bad Idea

Blogger Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise explains how she dodged the bullet that found its mark in Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. Her article in Salon should be required reading for bloggers as they define their roles in the political arena. At some point you have to decide if you're going to be a citizen journalist or a publicist, because you can't be both.

Just ask Armstrong Williams how well it works to mix the worlds of political commentary and payola, even if you believe in the cause you're being paid to espouse. There's a reason he didn't disclose that he was a paid operative. It would have made his appeals seem as disingenuous as Howard Sterne's pitches for Snapple. And by failing to reveal it, he found himself discredited and scandalized.

Interviewed for a job by an operative from the John Edwards campaign, Beyerstein asked all the right questions of herself and "Bob." Questions the Edwards campaign should have considered a little more carefully before wading into that minefield.

As we walked, Bob downloaded his vision: The whole Edwards campaign was going to be a decentralized grass-roots operation.

"Elizabeth Edwards gets it," he said with unabashed admiration.

We settled into the back of a small, brightly lit shawarma joint and ordered baklava. After this heartfelt pitch, Bob asked me if I was interested in blogging for the Edwards campaign.

I was dazzled by Edwards' speech, Bob's vision and the sense that I might be on the verge of the big time. I wanted to jump on the bus, but I knew I couldn't.

"I'm probably not ... the person you want," I said, finally. "I mean, I'm on the record saying that abortion is good and that all drugs should be legalized, including heroin. Don't you think that might be a little embarrassing for the campaign?"

Bob assured me that my controversial posts weren't a problem as far as the campaign was concerned. They were familiar with my work. And Bob did seem to know my writing. I didn't get the impression he was a daily reader, but it was obvious he had been reading the blog for a while.

"That's you, that's not John Edwards," he said.

To her credit she wasn't just concerned about how her more incendiary ideas might impact John Edwards. She considered how being on the payroll of a political campaign would affect her as an independent blogger and a readership that counts on her independence.

I asked if I would have to quit blogging at Majikthise in order to take the job with Edwards. My blog means more to me than any job I've ever had. After three years of hard work, I finally have a platform from which to express ideas that won't get a hearing in the established media, let alone in mainstream Democratic politics. So the prospect of giving up my untrammeled freedom to blog press releases for John Edwards gave me pause. Still, I assumed Bob would say it was a necessity.

I was wrong. Bob promised that I wouldn't have to give up my personal blog. He added that I probably wouldn't have much time left for personal blogging, since everyone was working 18-hour days on the campaign. But, he noted, he hadn't given up his own blog, and neither had another member of the Edwards Internet team.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A bunch of Internet staffers with private blogs sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. . . .

And aside from the risks to the campaign, I wasn't sure this arrangement would be healthy for my blog. With this responsibility weighing on my mind, how could I continue to deliver the independent perspective that my readers value? If I were suddenly on a candidate's payroll, yet still posting my own "independent" thoughts on Majikthise, what would my longtime readers think? Would they still trust me? Should they? Full disclosure wasn't going to solve the problem of divided loyalties. [emphasis mine]

She explained these concerns to "Bob" who it appears did not get it.

I tried to suggest that the campaign might not want high-profile bloggers. I thought it might be better off hiring a well-connected political operative with good connections in the blogosphere. . . .

If you hire these larger-than-life personalities to blog for John Edwards, they'll have to stop espousing many of the radical policy positions and unconventional values that made them popular in the first place.

Fans will also know when a John Edwards message conflicts with the bloggers' own record on an issue. Big-name bloggers hired by campaigns will be accused of "selling out" and open themselves up to accusations of hypocrisy from both sides. [emphasis mine]

Beyerstein ultimately took a pass, trying instead for a photography job, which would have allowed her to cover the campaign, without giving up her independent voice as a blogger. The Edwards campaign moved on to Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, and the rest is history.

Beyerstein hits on the central conundrum that makes the idea of paying grassroots supporters oxymoronic.

The Edwards campaign wants decentralized people-powered politics. Ironically, by hiring well-known bloggers to manage a destination Web site, it was actually centralizing and micromanaging.

If political campaigns want so badly to court the netroots, they should put a little more energy into listening to the ideas and concerns of left wing bloggers, not paying to put words in their mouths.

See John Edwards Run

See John Edwards cave to right wing nut jobs. See John Edwards cower. See John Edwards lose my vote.

Well this thing over John Edwards's hiring of bloggers Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon) and Melissa McEwan (Shakespeare's Sister), has really turned into an embarrassing spectacle. There is so much about this that sickens me it's hard to know where to begin.

I was going to hold off on pronouncing my verdict on this whole brouhaha until Edwards made a statement, but since he and his staff have gone to the mattresses, I think I know all I need to know. He's a craven coward. Firstly, because he's allowing himself to be bullied by the likes of Bill Donohue and Michelle Malkin into even considering firing the two bloggers. Secondly, because he can't even be man enough to own up to a decision and make his promised statement.

It looks like the Edwards camp is in total disarray over this and that is a poor comment on how they will handle right wing aggression during the campaign or, god forbid, in office. He's a typical Democratic weathervane politician, and I'm done with the like. I'm with Booman on this. It was an opportunity for him to show some backbone and it turns out he's a slinky.

My disgust with Bill Donohue, Michelle Malkin, and the rest of the right wing noise machine that has stirred up this teapot tempest is fairly self-evident. For these people to accuse Marcotte or McEwan of hate speech doesn't pass the laugh test. As Salon points out, Malkin is associated with genuine hate groups:

Malkin, it should be noted, is hardly innocent of being involved with what ABC News' Terry Moran termed "hate speech" when applied to Marcotte. Malkin has long maintained ties to VDARE, a Web site tagged as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center that has published works by people like Jared Taylor, one of America's leading white supremacists, and Sam Francis, who was fired by the conservative Washington Times for his own white supremacist remarks, given at a conference held by Taylor's organization.

She's also noticeably insane, but that's a subject for a different discussion.

Media Matters has done an admirable job of cataloging Donohue's embarrassing verbal tics. Here's a tiny sample:

• "People don't trust the Muslims when it comes to liberty." [MSNBC's Scarborough Country, 2/9/06]


• Addressing former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) in a press release, Donohue said: "[W]hy didn't you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn't allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?" [10/4/06]


• "Well, look, there are people in Hollywood, not all of them, but there are some people who are nothing more than harlots. They will do anything for the buck. They wouldn't care. If you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face." [MSNBC's Scarborough Country, 2/9/06]

As my husband, whose mother was almost a nun, said when he first saw the odious Donohue on "Hardball." "Who is this lunatic? Why is he on television? Why should anyone care what he thinks?"

That Edwards cares enough what these people bloviate about to be driven into total retreat speaks ill of him and of his campaign. But that's the good word from TPM. Of course Edwards is getting it from all sides. The media has jumped onto the non-story of the Catholic baiting bloggers with both feet. And the blogosphere Edwards was attempting to court with this hire, is in full attack mode. We might need a GPS tracker to locate him. I wonder if he left his cell phone on.

Meanwhile, the Edwards camp is under blogospheric siege from some quarters. Chris Bowers of MyDD is threatening not to support Edwards if the two bloggers are fired. He writes:

While there is no way I will support Edwards with Amanda and Melissa...fired, I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired. Consider the heinous reporting that is being done in this story, where bigot William Donahue is somehow an authority on what defines hate speech, it is clear that the Edwards campaign will take a lot of flack from outside the netroots if they do not fire Amanda and Melissa. Keeping them on would show a willingness to take risks and stand up to the media in a way that most Democrats just are not, all because the campaign will be doing so in order to defend the netroots.

If someone is willing to stand with us, that should mean something big, and should not go unrewarded.

Oh Mr. Bowers. You are a whore. A staunch Edwards supporter for no reason other than how he treats the netroots? So his creepy position on Iran... that's cool as long he backs bloggers? And this brings me to the final item of disgust in this whole affair. What this whole thing does to the credibility of the blogosphere.

That bloggers, myself included, are not practicing journalism, as in unbiased reporting, is clear to all but the most self-aggrandizing among us. We are at best advocacy journalists or self-appointed op-ed writers. And that's fine. Blogging has allowed average citizens a platform in a very large village square, from which to voice our opinions on the political process, form alliances, and step into greater rolls of civic responsibility. The power of such movements is diminished more than a little, as it becomes clear that our voices and passions can be bought and sold by political campaigns or anything else. At that point we aren't citizen journalists. We're publicists.

As skippy said in a post on this issue:

warning to bloggers: don't ever take a stand if you want to work for a candidate

If a blogger is doing his self-appointed job, he is probably taking a lot of stands that would come back to haunt him in the political arena. If a blogger isn't standing on principle and ruffling feathers, what the hell is he doing? There has been a fair bit of speculation that the reason Kos dissed the bulk of his blogroll, is that many of those bloggers aren't diehard supporters of the "my Democrat right or wrong" school of thought. And let's face it, all Kos is interested in at this point is positioning himself in the Democratic Party machine. That was obvious a long time ago, and it was the death knell for any credibility he had as an independent blogger in my opinion. As I've said before, the Democratic Party isn't courting bloggers because it wants to incorporate our issues and our voices into its vision. It's trying to buy our votes and manufacture consent. John Edwards will get neither from me.

Update: It appears that Mr. Edwards has issued a statement and that the bloggers jobs with his campaign are safe for now. This, even though he is "personally offended" by their religious commentary. Too little too late, imho. I don't care for the way the Edwards camp has handled this. His "fair shake" smacks of Donald Trump. And if he's going to let the wingnuts rock him back on his heels with their baseless attacks, it reads to me like a lack of character and conviction. His behavior leads me to believe that if he wasn't at risk of losing the bulk of the left wing blogosphere, he would have caved.

She's Not a Lesbian -- She Just Plays One at Parties

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I avoided reading this article in Salon for a day and a half because I knew it would make me want to vomit blood. And lo... No, it is not news to me that young girls are marketing themselves as sexual exhibits for male entertainment, nor that faux lesbianism is all the rage. I just prefer not to think about it. Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon sums up this horror pretty succinctly.

On that subject, there’s an article in Salon about the “new” trend of straight girls making out with each other because merely clinging to assholes in backwards baseball caps and begging for their attention doesn’t radiate the concept of Desperation clearly enough. But it’s actually worth sticking through, because after the lurid set-up, the author addresses how deeply homophobic the act is, since it’s a way for the male audience to lull themselves into believing that women are so wholly their property that even lesbianism exists to please men.

Salon gives us a peek into this brave new world, where women have been liberated from the bonds of sexual repression only to lunge into the open arms of sexual exploitation.

[Alexandra] and a friend were drinking at a party, and some guys dared them to kiss ... so they did. "It was like, look, I'm the center of attention! Everyone's looking at me and cheering me on. It felt good being in the spotlight," she says. Then she adds, "And the kissing itself didn't really bug me. From then on it became a normal thing to do."

I know that's what I'm looking for in a kiss; that it not "bug" me. So I guess this is the modern version of, "Close your eyes and think of England."

"I think it's empowering to these girls," Jay says. "Immediately after, guys come up and are like, Do you want to do that with me? It's a quick fix to get a guy's attention."

That's right, Jay. Female power is contingent on male approval.

But for girls who get it on with other girls as a performance for guys, questioning their sexuality doesn't seem to enter into the picture. In fact, they feel free to hook up with other girls precisely because it's understood -- by the girls involved and their spectators -- that all parties are straight. "Girls kissing each other didn't start until my senior year of high school," Nina says. "If it had started earlier, it would've been seen as gay, and we would've been afraid that guys would think, Oh my God, they're lesbians."...

The general consensus among straight girls who make out with other girls seems to be that kissing is fine, but there are two caveats: You can't go further than that, and you have to be watched -- by males.

In other words it's cool for a gal to be sexually adventurous as long as it's completely inauthentic and she derives no sexual pleasure from it. No, we certainly can't have women exploring what turns them on unless what turns them on is turning men on.

None of this is really new. Girls have long been taught to trade on their sex appeal. Now whole new generations of young women are learning to market their sexuality, in increasingly degrading fashion, and they're not even holding out for jewelry.

After two months at Northeastern, the "girl-on-girl" make-out session had become inevitable at parties, but Julie still hadn't kissed a woman herself. Then she and a female friend showed up at a party without the $5 cover charge, and she suddenly realized that girl-on-girl action could be a form of currency. "I said to the guy, 'What if we make out? Will you let us in for free?' He said, 'Yep, do it.' I knew it'd be something that [the guys] were into which would get us what we wanted -- to save $10."

Some years ago I was at my favorite dance club chatting with one of the bouncers. He always had the best stories and on this night he shared with me his irritation at how many non-regulars tried to beat the cover, which was kept artificially low at $3. He told me that a young woman had come to the door and reacted with exasperation at being asked to pay the cover.

"I don't have to pay the cover," she said. "I slept with the owner."

"You slept with the owner," he said. "Who hasn't slept with the owner? Everyone here has slept with the owner!"

"Yeah, well. I slept with some of the bartenders," she said.

"Oh," he said. "Well, have you slept with even one of the bouncers?"

"No," she said.

"Three dollars," he said.

A humorous anecdote, but, not without an element of tragedy. "That's what she thinks her body is worth?" I said to him, "Three dollars?" No, he admitted. He really hadn't considered that.

As shocked as many people are to learn that young girls are being this sexually permissive and experimenting, however disingenuously, with the taboo of sexual fluidity, we are largely inured to the all-too-familiar undercurrent of female sexuality as a currency. We think of it as normal that a woman would trade on her natural assets to attain everything from free drinks to financial security. Sadly, what many of them actually want is love.

Long-term dating isn't the goal of the straight-girl make-out, says Julie; hooking up with the guy watching is. But she concedes that many girls attempt to hook up with a guy in the hopes that he'll become a boyfriend. "One of girls' fantasies of hooking up with a guy you like is that they'll want to date you, but that's a tried-and-failed situation. If you go home with a guy [right away], you have a minimal chance of him taking you seriously."

Yes, Julie. The more things change, the more they stay the same.