Free to yell "Jeebus" once again

Poor Amanda Marcotte, now former blogger for John Edwards. All she did was mock Catholicism endlessly with a vivid, colorful vocabulary, using "motherf****ers" to describe orthodox Catholics and the term "Jeebus" to refer to Jesus Christ. Yet she remained misunderstood and, as ABC News reports, "targeted". And so, she resigned, albeit with a snarl:

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.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. None of this makes sense, of course. If the complaints of folks such as Donahue and others (including myself) were just the baseless whinings of Edwards' ideological enemies, there was no reason for Marcotte to resign. What apparently angers her so much is that the majority of Americans, including most Democrats, don't agree with her language, methods, or beliefs. More importantly, they aren't willing to turn over much political power (not to mention a presidential nomination) to someone who tacitly supports such filth. So, blog away, Ms. Marcotte, as is your right, but don't be so surprised when deserved criticism comes your way.

Diogenes has some of the best commentary on the entire affair, writing this prior to the resignation:

In spite of their hatred, it's a mistake to call Marcotte and McEwan bigots in the strong sense. True bigotry involves irrationality, i.e., blurring of distinctions that the bigot himself deems important, whence bigots treat all Jews or all blacks under the same description of opprobrium, whether a given individual exhibits the despised quality or not. Further, the bigot will cheerfully indulge his bigotry even if his own interests suffer therefrom, as when the anti-Semite hires a less-competent gentile salesman in preference to a more competent Jew. There's no indication that the Edwards bloggers succumb to either sort of irrationality (as McEwan says, she voted for Kerry -- unquestionably her kind of Catholic). My sense is that if these gals and I were conducting a prisoner exchange, they would place the correct tags on the correct people and assign to each the proper level of utility or harm: "Ratzinger's your guy; Cawcutt is ours; Sam Brownback's your guy; Nancy Pelosi is ours." Like the hatred C.S. Lewis describes in the quote above, Marcotte and McEwan's is not hot and diffuse but cold and well-targeted -- too cold to arraign them for bigotry.

For these reasons the usual exchange of complaint and concession disguises the key factors in this controversy. Those Catholics for whom extracting an apology is important can only get one by playing along with the identity politics game, and that means feigning (or exaggerating the centrality of) hurt feelings -- feelings, that's to say, that libs are willing to concede Marcotte and McEwan may have wounded. But to my thinking this ploy is largely disingenuous. A man's feelings are hurt not by injury simply, but by injury where good will is expected. Five minutes' browsing on the damsels' blogs suffices to show there's no good will to abuse. And, paradoxically, when one belligerent openly declares war on another, it can thereafter hurt everything pertaining to its enemy except its feelings. Marcotte and McEwan may be "offensive" in the military sense of aggressive, but for Catholics to complain of being offended by their antipathy is to imply a human bond that isn't there. In sum, it's to pay them a compliment they don't deserve.

Michelle Malkin has tons of additional info, commentary, and comments.

Comments

[Cristina A. Montes]

"Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills"

"Right wing"...as opposed to "wrong wing", I suppose? :P

[Brian John Schuettler]

If it is of comfort to anyone, I promise never to say "Jeebus".

[Carl Olson]

And I promise to never vote for John Edwards.

[Celestial SeraphiMan]

Sometime you need to ask Diogenes to address his approving citations of Joseph Sobran, who was fired from a conservative magazine for constantly villifying Jews and has recently addressed a Holocaut revisionist group. By the way, is he aware the white-supremacist right can disguise its hatred as reason--and consistently does? Are you?