Posted by: Dale Franks on Monday, February 12, 2007 I want to highlight a few things from McQ's Amanda Marcotte quote below: Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills don't respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills....Assuming facts not in evidence, counselor. At no point did Bill Donohue—for whom I have no particular respect, by the way—or anyone else either state or imply that Ms. Marcotte's gender or skills were at issue. No one has any objection to Ms. Marcotte being an empowered woman. Nor do her skills enter into it. The only thing at issue were her writings. The objection of Mr. Donohue and others were based on the idea that, if you choose to write excessively expletive-filled, hateful rants, doing so places you outside the norm of civil discourse. You are perfectly free to write anything you want on your personal blog. You cannot, however, expect that doing so comes with no price. That's simply not the way the real world works—not only for Ms. Marcotte, but for anyone else. If my employer disagrees with what I write here, feels it is outrageously incendiary, or insulting to our customers, he is perfectly free to fire me. By writing publicly, you establish a persona for yourself. Others, reading your public writings, may object to that persona. That's the way the free flow of ideas works. Apparently, Ms. Marcotte is unable to accept that simple fact of life, and is driven to create her own hobgoblin of sexism, to explain objections to her writing. But, maybe people don't dislike her because she is a woman; maybe people dislike her because she is a jerk. Additionally, Ms. Marcotte has made it her business to object to people like Mr. Donohue in remarkably uncivil terms. It has more than a whiff of Inspector Reynaud's surprise to proclaim to be shocked that the feeling turns out to mutual. ...and pretended that John Edwards had to be held accountable for some of my personal, non-mainstream views on religious influence on politics (I'm anti-theocracy, for those who were keeping track).Pretending? No pretense is needed. Mr. Edwards is in some sense accountable for those views, by the mere act of hiring Ms. Marcotte. Hiring a public figure is an implicit endorsement of that public figures stated positions. After all, when a campaign hires a public representative, that hiring is an implied endorsement of their policy views. Indeed, that is precisely what we expect. Mitt Romney, after all, won't be trying to get Kevin Drum or Matt Yglesias to take a campaign job. Why? Because Messrs. Yglesias and Drum hold policy views with which Mr Romney disagrees. Obviously, no candidate will find a blogger that agrees 100% with the candidate's stand on the issues, but, as Jules said to Vincent Vega, there is a distinct difference between being in the same ballpark, and playing two entirely different sports. But it is not only a policy confluence that is important, but the tone of the blogger's writing. A candidate, if he wishes to attract the widest possible following, has a responsibility to himself and his campaign to hire staff that will not be viewed with repugnance by a significant proportion of the electorate. By hiring Ms.Marcotte, Mr. Edwards implicitly condoned the tone of Ms. Marcotte's writing. Clearly, that was not his intent, as we learned later, but failing in the responsibility to conduct due diligence in vetting prospective staff is not an excuse. The act of hiring makes a statement of approval, and Ms. Marcotte should know this. Ms. Marcotte writes in an intentionally incendiary style. To come back later and express surprise that such style creates enemies simply defies credulity. Ms. Marcotte wants two contradictory things. She wishes to create a public persona that spouts the most outlandish views, in the most incendiary fashion possible, then she wishes the rest of the world to ignore the public persona she created when it suits her. But, as she is learning, the world doesn't work that way, either. Bill Donohue-anti-Semite, right wing lackey whose entire job is to create non-controversies in order to derail liberal politics-has been running a scorched earth campaign to get me fired for my personal beliefs and my writings on this blog.Or, more properly, none of the above, since her freedom of speech hasn't been restricted. After all, if it had, we wouldn't be able to read her current apologia. Ms. Marcotte doesn't want freedom of speech. She wants freedom from criticism. I'm sure that would be a cool thing to have, but, unfortunately, freedom of speech makes that...well...impossible to obtain. Apparently, when Ms. Marcotte speaks insultingly about religious people of a conservative bent, or makes arguably blasphemous statements about God filling the Virgin Mary with his hot, white, sticky, Holy Spirit, that's just a commonplace expression of free speech. When other criticize those statements, they are attacking her right of free speech. But, of course, they are doing no such thing. They are using their own freedom of speech to make criticisms. But Ms. Marcotte doesn't like that kind of free speech. it's, you know, icky. And patriarchal, to boot, no doubt. "Free speech for me, but not for thee" seems to be Ms. Marcotte's motto. But that is largely irrelevant to the proximate case, which is that free speech has nothing whatsoever to do with consensual employment. I may say or write whatever I like. My employer's customers may complain to my employer. That the customer exercising his right of free speech. My employer may decide to terminate my employment if he doesn't like it. That's part of my employer's exercise of the right of association, in case Ms. Marcotte needs the tip. Regardless, it was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign.No, it wasn't creating the situation. Ms. Marcotte created the situation by creating a public persona that many found objectionable. That Ms. Marcotte now wishes to minimize that public persona is irrelevant. Prior to her her hiring by Mr. Edwards, Ms. Marcotte seemed to glory in her public persona. Now that she has discovered it to be a hindrance, she asks for our pity. I find I have little to give. No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can't do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn't have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won't do it.Heh. Well, you see, that's the thing about Bill Donohue. He doesn't have anything better to do. In fact, he's made a career out of doing this kind of thing. he lives for it. Consider this another "Opie & Anthony" lesson. I resigned my position today and they accepted.I'll bet. I'm gonna have to resign. Yeah. OK. Sorry about how all this went down. Now get out. I suspect that passersby were fortunate not to be cut to shreds by the slivers of glass that resulted from the overpressure of the collective "WHEW!" blowing out the windows when she left the building. |
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