Michelle Malkin posted a link to Marcotte’s resignation announcement and has a roundup of links. Here is a bit of Marcotte’s announcement:
I was hired by the Edwards campaign for the skills and talents I bring to the table, and my willingness to work hard for what’s right. 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, 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). 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.
In fact, he’s made no bones about the fact that his intent is to “silence” me, as if he–a perfect stranger–should have a right to curtail my freedom of speech. Why? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m pro-choice? Because I’m not religious? All of the above, it seems.
Regardless, it was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. 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. I resigned my position today and they accepted.
There is good news. The main good news is that I don’t have a conflict of interest issue anymore that was preventing me from defending myself against these baseless accusations. So it’s on. The other good news is that the blogosphere has risen as one and protested, loudly, the influence a handful of well-financed right wing shills have on the public discourse. Blah, blah, blah…it was all the rightwing godbags’ fault, blah, blah, blah. No way could it be because of her inability to control her filthy hate-spewing mouth. We might not ever know what happened behind the scenes. Did someone in the Edwards campaign convince her that she would be a liability? Did they get wind that someone in Hillary’s camp was just waiting for the most opportune moment to take maximum advantage? Did Marcotte decide that she didn’t want to spend the next two years in North Carolina after all? Who knows? What we do know is that now it is on. Does that mean that now she will really start showing her feisty side?
Update: Greg Tinti sees a familiar pattern. It is never about the individual’s actions. It is about freedom of speech, don’tcha know?
Update II: Wow. I saw Michelle’s reference to O’Reilly’s segment, but missed the show when it first ran. I am watching the replay now. He did not sanitize things. O’Reilly made it his talking points memo, then continued with the segment with Michelle and Kirsten Powers. O’Reilly had to warn viewers about the offensive content and told them to turn the channel for three minutes if they were easily offended. It is obvious why Marcotte had to resign, but then it was obvious last week. I just wonder now if McEwan will be going next. He read some pretty offensive quotes from her, as well. Here is video of the segment Michelle Malkin and Kirsten Powers did about the Edwards’ bloggers.
One of Ed Morrisey’s readers says, “record her blog posts as a book, and she’ll almost certainly win a Grammy.”
Update III: In a comment at Pandagon, Marcotte said “this was a targeted hit on atheists in politics.” There are quite a few atheists/agnostics on the right side of the political blogger aisle and I don’t see any of them being attacked. Maybe that is because they choose not to attack those of faith or ridicule them with insulting names.
Update IV: Jim Addison has more at Wizbang Politics, including a movie review Marcotte posted over the weekend.
Update V: James Joyner has a great roundup of opinion from the blogosphere.
Update VI: The Anchoress has now written about the resignation and her take was worth the wait — especially her newsflash.
