Yeah, I’ve read those comments, as well as 5 million other posts at Pandagon. And for the most part none are offensive like that one, and on top of that you can comment at Pandagon and argue about the language and further the debate. It is part of a conversation. This is what blogs can be. Amanda was being provocative and in doing so she probably obscured her main point, her point being that misogyny exists under the heading of religion, but does not necessarily spring from it, and if Christianity did not exist, we would still have people oppressing women, and using a particular world view, possibly religion to do it. She was not effective in doing this, most likely because she really laid it on strong. I know the words matter a lot, but do they really, deep down in this case?

“What if Jesus were just another dude…”

“What if Jesus didn’t exist…”

“What if Mary and Joseph had sex and Jesus were not the son of God…”

All of the above can be taken either to propose a hypothetical (meaning imagine a world where the above are true, different from the world we have), which most likely is the only way Amanda’s statement can be taken, or the above could be proposing alternate factual realities for our world, thus suggesting Christianity is false. However, Amanda’s statement can’t even be the latter because Mary did not have access to Plan B. Amanda may have been offensive in how she phrased an alternate reality where Jesus doesn’t exist, but why not read the actual words? And the problem with religion is, if Jesus means as much to Amanda as any random individual in existence, why does she have to show reverence for Him?

I don’t even want to defend her language because it was unfortunate (very much so) in this case be it obscured her point. Given that she writes thousands of words a week, I can allow some intemperance because if she did something to shit on my head, I would say so. If you care about the conversation, join it. I don’t like it when people offend other people, but those of certain religious persuasions perhaps don’t have any clue what it is like to be treated like unethical garbage, which is exactly how atheists are treated. Add that to the institutional misogyny of certain creeds and beliefs, you might understand better where Amanda’s anger is coming from, anger that might cause her to offend people occasionally.

I guess first you’d have to explain what exactly a “blogger” even is to most of the people you reach out to. Honestly, the impact of a candidate’s blogger on his or her campaign chances is such a non-issue it makes the right-wing response to her hiring all the more unhinged–that’s the term they like to throw at liberals, right? Most of America lives in blissful ignorance about the controversies that rage across the blogosphere. Your hypothetical campaign would get a lot more mileage out of all the “evil trial attorney” stuff they trotted out last time.

The heck with that. In my hypothetical smear campaign, I’ll attribute her statements to a “senior campaign official”- with some thought, I can probably come up with some wording that makes it sound like it came from Edwards himself. Once I push that out to the low-information voters who decide elections (i.e., the dopes who bought – and still believe – all that swift-boat crap about Kerry), it’ll be all over.

If I was running a hypothetical campaign against Edwards, I’d be drooling at the thought of the mailers, radio ads, TV ads, robocalls, push polls, etc. that I could use against him just by quoting Marcotte’s past posts.

I guess first you’d have to explain what exactly a “blogger” even is to most of the people you reach out to. Honestly, the impact of a candidate’s blogger on his or her campaign chances is such a non-issue it makes the right-wing response to her hiring all the more unhinged–that’s the term they like to throw at liberals, right? Most of America lives in blissful ignorance about the controversies that rage across the blogosphere. Your hypothetical campaign would get a lot more mileage out of all the “evil trial attorney” stuff they trotted out last time.

I’m less than impressed

I will not repeat my analysis of the politics. I do believe them to be cogent and untouched here, as yet.

I know a few self-proclimed witches, and they look nothing like that. If they did, I might take them up on their offer to join their coven.