The Edwards Blog-ha-ha: Some Final Thoughts.

This thing needs to die, but some things I'm not hearing said need to be.

1. The Messenger Is Not the Message.

Yes, Donahue and Malkin are intolerant, viscious, hypocritical windbags. And yes, the media should have acknowledged their far more egregious comments when reporting that they were shocked, shocked. But just because someone is an intolerant, hypocritical windbag, does not make that person automatically wrong about everything, every time. Broken clocks and blind pigs and all that.

2. The posts were problematic.

The two posts in question were coarse criticisms of the Catholic faith. The comment suggesting that the Church is against birth control to generate more tithing Catholics argues that a Church teaching is based on greed. This one on Pandagon crudely mocks the doctrine of immaculate conception – a sacred tenet of the faith.

We might as well start admitting this to ourselves now, because things aren’t going to get any easier. The reason many people of faith believe the Democratic party is hostile to religion is that an identifiable segment of the party is hostile to religion. Or to put it more succinctly, people who are hostile to religion and who pick a party pick the Democrats. (Very much like people who are hostile to minorities and pick a party these days pick Republicans, though I’d much prefer dealing with the former group than the latter.)

And by the way, the nasty about white, sticky holy spirit doesn’t even make sense in context. Here it is in its entirety:

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

I’m hard pressed to find evidence that the doctrine of Immaculate Conception is used as a cover for misogyny. If anything, it gives women a role in getting out from under Original Sin – a truly pestilent and misogyny-generating doctrine if ever there was one. And one certainly open to feminist parody:

Q: What if we were given the far more likely scenario in which Satan appeared to Adam as a beautiful woman and promised to sleep with him if he bit the apple?

A: [etc.]

So the line wasn’t just bad politics, it was bad theology as well.

All that said, it should be noted that the bloggers in question aren’t the compulsive potty mouths one might assume from reading the media stories. They write plenty that I disagree with and their discussions of reproductive rights veer close to being anti-child, but for the most part they are just tough-dealing libs. It’s noteworthy that in their considerable blog work, we are talking in the main about one post each here.

3. Harsh, but not Bigotted.

The implicit message in Donahue's ranting is that disagreeing with church doctrine is tantamount to bigotry. Disagreement, bigotry -- two different things. I disagree with Catholic doctine. I don't hate people in my life who are Catholic as a result -- even those who side with the Church in all things. If I did, that would be bigotry. My Catholic friends love me even though I'm a Unitarian and therefore, by Catholic teaching, a heretic. Granted in the Donahue/Malkin universe there is no difference between disagreeing and hating, but for the both of us we can pull it off.

4. The Mistake was in the Vetting.

It might have taken some digging to unearth these two posts, but it wouldn’t have taken much work to figure out that the tone set by the two bloggers in question is inconsistent with that Edwards is trying to set. I can’t imagine what the campaign was thinking and can’t help wondering if someone else’s head will roll over this.

5. John Edwards Is a Standup Guy.

No one can know what the man was thinking, but my guess and my hope is that this keeping them on was a matter of keeping his commitment to them as much as avoiding blogosphere blowback. That works for me. The campaign made a mistake hiring them without fully vetting their public work, but it was the campaign’s mistake. It would be messed up to fire them for something they did before joining the campaign and which the campaign should have uncovered itself. Edwards manned up and agreed to take whatever hit there might be.

6. The Two Liberal Blogospheres.

At least two. In this case, we have a more professional blogosphere – bloggers associated with media outlets or long-time, well-established bloggers (think Drum, Marshall, Klein, etc.) in one and true-believer netroots (including dKos and MyDD) in the other. The netroots frankly wigged about this issue. The more professional blogosphere had some sharp things to say, but understood the issue through the lens of understanding how politics works – you don’t take on baggage unnecessarily. Witness this observation by Jon Chait by way of Yglesias.

The one exception to the rule was Glenn Greenwald who wigged impressively, mostly on the messenger-is-the-message tip.

Alright, this story has taken up far too much oxygen and now, let it be done. But hey, it kept us from talking about the untimely demise of Anna Nichole.