Amanda Marcotte: Not Ready For Prime Time

I realized that I couldn't handle the stress of having people flinging an endless stream of baseless accusations at me without being able to come out and defend myself, so I resigned from the campaign.

...And by "baseless accusations," she means her own words, in context.

Professor Althouse sorta kinda came to Marcotte's defense, in a "she's exaggerating, but there's some underlying truth there" way. Althouse is certainly correct that some of the comments attacking her (mostly from the left) are thinly veiled sexism, but Marcotte is the wrong person to defend here. Note my comments at the very beginning of Althouse's comment thread.

The best take I've read on this is from Cathy Young. She had the experience of a previous battle with Marcotte, and so she took the time to respond in detail to criticisms Marcotte leveled at her.

pandagate and anti-male bigotry

I was shocked by how, well, utterly deranged Marcotte is. She takes the art of "in other words you think that " to a new level.

I was wrong. She doesn't deserve any benefit of a doubt or a chance to become a mature commenter, and her hiring reflects extremely poorly on Edwards and his campaign.

What bothers me most is the relentlessly illogical insistence on having it both ways. If you don't respect x, and say so virulently and repeatedly, admit that you don't respect x when you get called on it. Or at least clarify excaclt what aspects of x you don't respect...

....for example, when Simon calls Barack Obama "Obambi" or you call the NY Times the Teheran Times, that's not respectful, right? But so waht? You've both cheerfully and proudly acknowledged your lack of respect, and supported it in detail. And you've taken the time to say that there are certain specific aspects of each that you don't respect or have trouble with. Simon doesn't think Obama is pure evil, he just believes that the centrist portion of his rhetoric will bear liberal fruit. You don't think everything the NY Times does is wrong, you just thik that the predominace of liberal staffers colors its framiong of political issues, etc.

Those are the sorts of things good critical thinkers take the time and energy to do, and Marcotte is someone who clearly can't be bothered to do so.

Now what she's doing is mounting a campaign to get elected to the celebrity victim hall of fame, so she can preserve a bit of spotlight. Pathetic stuff.

...is that she left the Edwards campaign because staying would have interfered with her ability to play the "victim."

Tragic. Simply tragic.