It’s been interesting, the last few days, to have what amounts to a ringside seat at the big stupid manufactured blog-related media crisis of the week. For those of you who don’t frequent political blogs, here’s what happened.
My pal Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon got a job running John Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign blog. (I got the ringside seat when she asked me and a few others to help out at Pandagon.) A few rightwing bloggers dug up some stuff Amanda had written and threw it around the wingnutosphere. The thing that stuck was an admittedly vulgar but completely defensible (and in my view, true) criticism of people who invoke the Virgin Birth of Jayzus as an “argument” (for lack of a better term) against abortion. Enter William Donohue, sole proprietor of the Catholic League, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Baron Vladimir Harkonnen as overplayed by Kenneth McMillan in the bad David Lynch version of Dune. Donohue is best known for his vulture-like opportunism (and I apologize for the slur against innocent vultures) but ought to be better known for his blatant and chronic Anti-Semitism and his defense of child sexual molestation done by Catholics. Melissa McEwan, aka Shakespeare’s Sister, also hired onto team Edwards as a netroots coordinator, was the other target of Donohue’s ire, as he objected to a remarkably tame statement asking what religious conservatives don’t understand about “keeping your noses out of our britches, our beds and our families”, calling that vulgar anti-Catholic bigotry. Donohue sent out press releases alleging that the women’s remarks were bigoted against Catholics, ridiculous on the face of it, and demanding that Edwards fire them.
He’s got a right to his opinion, of course. But Donohue soon started making the rounds of the media, actually being granted air time to make his case, a spectacle not unlike CNN inviting Jeffrey Dahmer to speak for a few minutes on the Atkins diet. After several days of this shit, Edwards released a pursed-lip statement that seemed intended to placate all sides, about which the best thing one could say was that no one really expected anything better. After all, he didn’t want Donohue to pull out his heart plug or anything.
And then Amanda, after receiving assurances that her job was safe and that she was free to continue writing at Pandagon, published a review of the movie Children of Men that included the sentence:
The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels.
Donohue sent out press releases blasting the sentence as “bigotry” for failing to deliver the requisite respect to conservative Catholicism, and reiterating his demand that both Amanda and Melissa be fired. I’m not sure why Melissa deserved to be fired for a movie review Amanda wrote, but what the hell. She’s a left-wing feminist woman so she’s probably guilty of something. Interestingly, Donohue neglected to continue his quote of Amanda’s review with the very next sentence in it:
But this movie offers an alternative interpretation of the virgin birth—one where “virginity” is irrelevant and one where a woman’s stake in motherhood is fully respected for the sacrifice and hard work that it is.
Which hardly seems disrespectful of the alleged historical personage of Mary, or even really in conflict with a traditional Mariolatrous Roman Catholic view of the Blessed Virgin as Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediatrix. I mean, if being the go-between among the Holy Trinity and a world full of sinners isn’t sacrifice and hard work, what is? And do we ever write or call? I know I don’t.
So Amanda, feeling on the one hand like a liability to the campaign and on the other hand like she couldn’t defend herself adequately, quit and came back to Pandagon. And now Pandagon is up only sporadically, reeling under the traffic the insipid “scandal” has generated. And by oh boy, has the hate mail poured in. I’ve taken the liberty — so as to avoid sending you all to Pandagon to read the “site down” page thus making the slashdotting worse — of reprinting Amanda’s statement-with-hate mail below the fold. Some of that hate mail is pretty vile, which makes the accusations of Amanda’s having a potty mouth all the more funny. You know what? She does have a potty mouth. Amanda Marcotte is, aside from being a hell of a fun writer, a vulgarian in the best American sense, like Lincoln and Clemens. Even so, you’d have to distill about a year of Pandagon posts to reach the number of swears on the Deadwood Season One DVD.
I have more to say about the larger point this whole mini-scandal makes about our body politic and the suppurating pustules thereon, but this post has gone on long enough. More in Part II. For now, suffice it to say that whether you’re conservative or liberal or leftist, if you call yourself a Christian, you’ve got some goddamned sick people claiming to speak in your name. And I’m not pointing fingers: I want to help you come up with a way to neutralize them. I’m not a Christian any longer, but though I disbelieve in the stories and ideology at the root of Christian mythology I do find a lot of good in Christian communities, and these sick people need to be repudiated but good.
Amanda’s clarification and a hate mail sampling:
Update: To correct misinformation in the comments, I was not “fired”. I offered my resignation and it was accepted.
Because I had the nerve to be critical of the Catholic church’s stance on birth control and abortion—-nevermind their political opposition to distributing condoms to fight HIV, a stance that has helped usher thousands and possibly millions to their untimely deaths—-I’ve gotten a number of letters from people who call themselves “Christians”, as Bill Donohue also calls himself. Chrisitians are people who are supposed to follow the behavior and teachings of Jesus Christ. I mention this, because it seems to me that therefore, when Christians are contemplating an action that is morally questionable, it appears they should consult the Bible before acting.
Luckily, I happen to have a Bible laying around this house, because even though I’m not a Christian, I was an English major, and it is important to Know Your Ancient Mythologies if you are reading poetry. And I flipped to this passage that seems to have solid advice on what to do if you’ve got some asshole dragging a woman in front of an angry crowd and yelling, “SINNER!”:
The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
Granted, I don’t think criticizing the church for policies that hurt families and even get people killed is a “sin”, but my letter writers do. But I thought I’d bring up this story for two reasons. One, I’ve always been impressed by the subtext of the story. I suspect, strongly, that this story is part of the reason that Christianity was so attractive to women in its early days, because this sort of random misogynist scapegoating is all too real in a patriarchy, and this story must have touched a lot of women at the time, who would be impressed with Jesus’ unwillingness to play into such misogyny. In fact, from everything I understand, much of the history of Christian misogyny is one 2,000 year long backlash against early female power in the church.
I’m also impressed by how so many people who claim to follow Jesus have basic reading comprehension problems when they regard this story. (Not all—-for instance, some fellow Pandagonians take their faith seriously enough to read the Bible and try to follow its precepts.) From my mailbag:
I pray that I had some small part to play in your “resigning” from the Edwards campaign you libelous fraud!
That’s from a Vivian Thomas, who also wants me to know that I’m a worthless hag.
Catholics are concerned about killing unborn children, you stupid bitch. Chop away if it suits you, but we don’t have to accept that as moral. That’s why it’s called a religion. Look into it.
Frankly, if I were a churchy person, this “Look into it” thing would insult me, since R.R. from Tallahassee, FL is all but saying that religion is his excuse to declare his misogyny “moral” so he doesn’t actually have to think and decide what his morality is for himself.
Amanda,
after reading your vile screed against Catholics and the Holy Spirit, I just had to see what you looked like. (I envisioned you eyebrow-less, with no visible pupils, and a blank, dead stare.) I see I was correct about the blank, dead stare, but other than that you’re not too bad. I then thought maybe you were mad at God (and by proxy Catholics) for making you ugly, but now I’m figuring you’re just mad at him for making you a woman.Annette D’Amato is somewhat right, that I’m angry—-but not that I’m a woman, but that people like her have such uncalled for contempt for women. But I am impressed that I gave her a small bit of education. Contrary to what people have been telling her, feminists are not demons without eyebrows (she missed the boar’s teeth and snakes on our heads), but human beings.
Andy Driggers from Dallas, TX was also so moved by my criticisms of religious anti-choicers, that he wrote:
Problem with women like you, you just need a good fucking from a real man! Living in Texas myself, I know you haven’t found that real Texan yet. But once your liberal pro feminist ass gets a real good fucking, you might see the light. Until then, enjoy your battery operated toys b/c most real men wouldn’t want to give you the fucking you deserve b/c the shit that would come out of you ears.
Reminder: Donohue was claiming to be so hurt by my “bigotry”. Yet, for some reason, his supporters write me and they are more interested in telling me that my womanhood is repulsive to them. Interesting—-almost as if his claims to speak for Catholicism were in fact dog whistles to scare people about women’s equality.
As I told some close friends in the days that Donohue was on the news, spraying code words about “get the feminists” (which explains why he roped Shakespeare’s Sister into this, even though she really had nothing to do with any of this—-except she’s pro-equality, which is what is really what offends Donohue and all the people who gave that anti-Semite airtime), a good half of my hate mail could be summed up, “You have a pottymouth, you stupid cunt.” An example, from Paul Bernard of Scottsdale, AZ:
i like the way you trash talk i don’t particularly want to have sex with you but i would like a blow job.
Right wingers right now are pretending like sexism has nothing to do with me, which is an argument that works if you think a) men get emails about how they need to suck a dick on a regular basis and b) that there’s nothing whatsoever sexist about allowing men to curse but hitting the fainting couch if a woman does.
Bud Phelps, another person who opposes “bigotry”, as defined by right wing shill Bill Donohue.
It’s just too bad your mother didn’t abort you. You are nothing more than a filthy mouth slut. I bet a couple of years in Iraq being raped and beaten daily would help you appreciate America a little. Need a plane ticket ?
Time to wake up and smell reality—-real bigots follow the siren call of the fascist right wing. Why would they even bother with liberals and all our equality and human rights and other tedious ideas?
Romanco De Leone was also moved by Donohue’s poignant claims about insulating the Catholic church from legitimate criticisms.
YOU RACIST WHORE. FAT UGLY BITCH. SUCK MY LONG COCK ASSHOLE I HOPE YOU KIDS NEVER LIVE AND YOUR PARENTS DIE A TRAGIC DEATH YOU ASSHOLE BITCH!
I HOPE YOUR WOMB IS BARREN AND YOUR CAREER PLUMMETS TO HELL YOU BITCHBut I shan’t belabor the point. I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of the hate mail the Bill Donohue’s “Christian” campaign against me has inspired. This is all stuff from days ago—-I’ve gotten more than 100 since. Hell, from the looks of my email from last night, I’ve had more than 100 in the past 12 hours from self-proclaimed Christians who want me to know that I have hurt their feelings and this has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with their own misogyny and tendency to witch hunt.
I know worse things have been done in the name of Jesus Christ (the Crusades, the Inquisition), but aren’t these “Christian” responses deeply saddening?
You might never know it by what some people say, but Christians are supposed to evidence the fruits of the Holy Spirit through their love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Or like an old campfire song from my childhood, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
I could weep.
It’s the blatant hypocrisy (as demonstrated in Amanda’s email) that keeps me from associating with Christians. During the Schiavo debacle, I remember reading a statement from one of those so-called Christians which basically said, “We are prepared to do whatever is necessary, knowing that God will forgive us.”
Yes, blondie, they will know us by our love.
I keep alternating between anger and despair/queasy turning away. The ugliness of those emails, awful as it is, seems to me less sickening than the fact that this Donohue has been able to wage a campaign to personally destroy two young women, while the much vaunted liberal media gives him a platform and doesn’t point out his past hate speech. It’s bigotry to mock someone’s religious symbolism, but not to tell unbelievers they’re going to hell or gays that they’re “disordered.”
I actually think Amanda was making a larger point about religion with her obliquely obsene mockery of the Immaculate Conception, as I try to argue here (although maybe I’m just making it all up).
Jim Downey over at Unscrewing the Inscrutable has some interesting things to say about this. He points out that there was a very serious turning point in all this – the moment when religious conservatives now turn to silencing individual bloggers.
I think he’s hit on the real seriousness of this story.
This is not just the usual nastiness. It’s something elementally more virulent – a clear transformation in the type of danger we face.
Probably most of us have depended unconsciously on “passing below the radar� to escape such personal attacks.
That is no longer possible. You yourself, and me, anyone who blogs or comments on blogs, can now be targeted for hate mail, for threats, for online and possibly even personal attacks by the people who power this machine. Your job, your private life, your freedom of speech are now officially at risk.
Assuming hopefully that Edwards has not joined in with the rampant gutlessness of political candidates on the left, I don’t want to blame him too much for this. This was the result of a deliberate attack from rightwing religious elements, and I believe Edwards was blindsided by it. However, either he or his campaign managers have failed to understand what’s taking place, and I’m afraid there will be little help from them on this.
The media, as expected, continues to demonstrate cozy obsequiousness to the right.
Ladies and gentlemen, the core freedoms of America have once again been exposed to assault, but this time I believe we will not feel it merely in some vague and distant general terms. This time, I think it will hit us at home, and as individuals.
This is a pivotal moment when we either go down ... or we find some way to fight.
Frustrated because they can’t hate directly on Amanda while the Pandagon site is down, so they come over here. What a bunch of arseholes, plus yet another ignoramus who doesn’t know/care that free speech refers to keeping the government’s nose out of what you’re saying, not whether a private website chooses to publish your comments or not.
Also, the irony of waving “free speech” around when you’re gloating about two young women losing their jobs because of their expression of free speech obviously escapes you.
Wow, Chris, some of these posts are brilliant parody (surely no one like these people actually exist?).
No point in me reading the comments. You find similar (cut, edited, and pasted) all around. Most are just variations on what a person could hear in barrooms, workplaces, department stores, malls, or cafes for at least the last 35 years, probably longer. Sadly, common folks are more than willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces by adopting right-wing, self-defeating (for the poor slobs who buy into it) nonsense as “gospel”. Hell, that incoherent, drug-addict radio talk show guy who’s now national started off as a second rate ranter on Sacramento radio in the 80s, simply by repeating the bigotry and unsupported suspicions that working people had been expressing among themselves for years.
As far as Edwards goes, I never had much use for him. Always seemed a little phony to me. The only Democrat, I’d even consider voting for is Dennis Kucinich, and the party machinery will ensure that he won’t even get off the starting line, so another vote for Nader, if he runs again.
I would really like to see a candidate stand up against what I can only describe as Christofascism. Instead, they all pander to those freedom-haters, to the point that my tax money nowadays goes to help fund their proselityzing charities. It would take some REAL courage to shun these pretenders to Christianity, but it might pay off in the long run. A real progressive who told those sad excuses for humanity where to go might just motivate the half of all eligible voters who aren’t even registered, and sweep to a landslide victory.
You know, I don’t see much of a future for the country any longer. There was a brief, partially opened window of hope, from about 1965-1975, and it began closing almost as soon as it cracked open. Then, some of us thought we could make it better, from within. Ha! We WERE idealistic and gullible weren’t we?
Hey first-time Creek Running North commenters,
Are we to infer that you’re OK with the sentiments expressed in the messages to Amanda which Chris included in this post? Do you feel that they fit in with the religious tolerance you think Amanda should adopt?
To whom would Jesus send a profane and threatening email?
I think that that’s exactly what they’re saying, Dr. Free-Ride. To quote the most respectable MSM newman I’ve seen in my time, “I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: democracy doesn’t work, people.”
Heraclitus, was that Kent Brockman?
Yes, it was Kent. And he hadn’t even seen teh freepers!
Freepers go bye bye. You must be smarter than this stick to post here.
Conservatism is fine, freeper yahoo grandstanding is not.
The saddest (and I mean that in the makes-me-blue sense, not in the most-pathetic sense, although I suppose that fits too) thing I have seen today is Frank J. at IMAO’s post deriding Amanda’s “whining” for publishing those emails. I know most people here wouldn’t expect any better from IMAO, but stupid me, I kind of did. Frank used to be one of my original boosters. He’s been very kind to my friend Meryl. He’s even Catholic. So I thought surely, surely he’d have somethng to say about the vileness flooding Amanda’s inbox. Something like, “These people don’t speak for me, nor do they represent any form of Christianity I recognize.” I thought surely, given the choice between siding with the hateful supporters of a known anti-Semite, and defending someone he doesn’t agree with about much, he’d choose the latter. Obviously I was wrong.
Worse, he is far from the only conservative I’ve witnessed forget all about how anti-Semitism is bad awful horrible wrong bad in order to heap more scorn on Amanda (although it has been mordantly fun watching Darleen trip all over herself trying to be both pro- and anti-Donohue at the same time).
The best part is that when I point out that this eagerness to overlook Donohue’s bigotry in favor of forcing Amanda and Melissa out of their jobs just might indicate an irrational hatred of women, I’m still going to get former friends gently trying to “reason” me out of that c-c-c-craaazy idea—as though there were anything reasonable about what’s happened these last two weeks, or as though there were anything reasonable about Bill Donohue.
I’m just so fed to the teeth with it all I don’t know what to say, but thank you for summarizing everything so neatly.
He’s got a right to his opinion, of course. But Donohue soon started making the rounds of the media, actually being granted air time to make his case, a spectacle not unlike CNN inviting Jeffrey Dahmer to speak for a few minutes on the Atkins diet.
I honestly didn’t think I would be able to laugh at any aspect of this idiocy, Chris. Thanks for proving me wrong with that outstandingly apt analogy.
I like Mr. Stick. His eyes are wide open, his back is to the wall, and he keeps his own counsel.
Chris, I’m laughing too. I just clicked on the link to “this stick” and I’m dyin’.
Chris, this post rocks. I’m glad you got rid of the poo-flinging monkeys. They belong in a zoo.
(My apologies to actual monkeys.)
Hi Chris,
I followed you over from Pandagon and have been enjoying reading your blog archive (you are a beautiful writer).
I love the stick. The stick made me snort my tea through my nose.
The Dems really need to grow a spine and stop apologizing to fundamentalist meatheads.
All they have to do is point out a few hideous examples from Donohue and others of his ilk (or should I say ick) and that should be the end of it. The man defended pedophiles for Christ sake…surely that’s worth reminding the idiotic press.
As someone else has pointed out, Edwards’ caving on Amanda… just shows early on how pathetic he’d’ve been once elected.
Yup. Add in his unwillingness to speak up on her behalf, or on behalf of Melissa of Shakespeare’s Sister (who has had people come to her house as a result of this!) and it’s pretty clear that his willingness to stand up for progressives or progressive issues is, well, zip. He’ll stand for things when he thinks they’ll get him elected, or at least won’t hurt his chances, but one loud yell from the right, and he caves.
Remind me why I’m supposed to vote for Dems instead of Greens, again?
Damn, looks like I missed all the fun.
Not that I haven’t been having similar fun of my own, of course.