What's with the dogpiling of Amanda Marcotte?

Of course, that assumes that Edwards has the balls that God gave a hamster. Which is a big assumption.

He's got 'em. He got rich as a plaintiff's attorney, which requires skill at the art of making outrageous claims in public and demanding money for them.

Jean,
I'm not defending what Marcotte has said so much as pointing out that she hasn't said anything that hasn't been said by a lot of other bloggers in the leftosphere. I just don't think it's fair to basically hang her on a cross for the sins of all leftie bloggers. It might be good for her ego and Tori Amos' record sales (karaoke version of Crucify will abound after this), but she just isn't that unusual, special or important. This is what the face of the nutsroots looks like. People should take a good look at it and not throw things at Marcotte personally, but reject them and the candidates they support. And if they are fired (as all the indicators suggest), then that will be tangible proof that the voters can look at and say "maybe all these people who say Edwards is self-serving and spineless were right after all."

The Edwards campaign's in an awful bind. If they fire her, the nutsroots will be furious that he kowtowed to the vast right wing conspiracy; if they don't fire her, despite whatever cutely-worded press release they put out to the contrary, he will be (and should be) associated with her intemperate oeuvre.

The thing about swearing. Lookit, I don't have any objection to people swearing. You will find posts and comments of mine that include cusswords, and that's not shocking. What's so difficult to take about leftie blogs -- and again, Marcotte is no different in this regard -- is the torrent of profanity, the tourette's-like obsession with every other sentence containing at least one swear word to prove just how inchoately angry the poster is. It suggests that the person has little self control and a poor command of the English language, and why would one gravitate towards that in a written medium? Is this how these people talk in every day conversation? I guess it must be. People who are turned up to 11 day in day out are terribly boring. It's like trying to have a conversation with Axl Rose. And honestly, who has the f*cking time. ;)

Needless to say, my objection to Bush's calling the Constitution but "a goddamned piece of paper" has nothing to do with objecting to mild expletives. ;)

A spade is a spade (or a manual excavation implement, for the overly-PC) but it's not a ******* ****ing ****** spade unless you're an essentially juvenile person with a very limited vocabulary, little self-control, and no other means of expressing yourself. The reflexive use of profanity is, frankly, childish at best.

CPD^tm doesn't change that, and leads nowhere. Even if it can be fun at times for angst relief. I really don't care much about the debate itself, as I think candidates will automatically receive their just rewards for hiring anyone too publicly obnoxious, and it's thus a self-curing problem. Anyone shocked that paid political hacks act like paid political hacks needs to stay out of politics and go play checkers instead, and any paid political hack who has no ammunition other than mindless rage and f-bombs is going to end up working a lot of losing campaigns.

I would beg Simon to read the footer, and thank Jean for having done so.