Yeah--It's About Bill Donohue

- - Amanda Marcotte Language Alert - You Were Warned! - -

Amanda Marcotte resigns from the Edwards campaign. Apparently Bill Donohue's fault.

It had nothing to do with her

Clear position on national security:

Scott Lemieux has a great post on the conservatives running around raising an alarm about the imaginary threat of impending worldwide domination by Muslim terrorist sorts (who are indistinguishable from everyday Muslims in the wingnut worldview).

Her positioning as a a uniter, not a divider:

Red Staters reveal themselves to be human, if a tad stupid at times

Her outreach to religious constituencies:

An empty uterus (inside a white woman) makes Baby Jebus Cry

Her track record of thinking "outside the box":

DT, my general rule of thumb is anyone obsessed with population who hasn’t noticed certain ecological issues has racist and/or sexist motivations. I can’t possibly imagine how you could track population growth without noticing the major overriding issues (that we’re making more people total than the planet can reasonably sustain being the biggie) unless distracted by sick prejudices.

Her revolutionary proposal to simultaneously eliminate overpopulation and racial tension:

I firmly and thoroughly believe that if white people quit breeding altogether, the world would be a better place. Why not? It seems to solve a couple major problems in one generation.

Her ability to synthesize economics and culture:

Now that Wonkette and I have teamed up to make sure as many men as humanly possible are deprived of their male birthright to penetrate a be-hymened vagina at least once in their lives, the market value on your daughter isn’t going down but going up. This is simple supply and demand. Frankly, if you want your sheltered and boring daughter to gain currency on the market for being a virgin, you should support the bloggers’ war on virginity. The less virgins out there, the less competition for the shot at being the bride of the nice young virginity-fetishists in your church. Of course, I do see Charmaine’s concern. There is the very real problem that we porn liberals are not driving the virginity market up in that we are questioning the very idea that a man should really want to marry a virgin. It flatters my ego mightily to think this is a concern. Yes, the nice young men in your church used to pop boners at the mere idea of fucking a terrified teenage bride and staining the sheets with blood, but now that they’ve been reading Wonkette, they’re more interested in having sex with a woman who knows what she’s doing.

I won't even repeat what she wrote about the Holy Spirit. But her resignation has nothing to do with it.

And it absolutely had nothing to do with a post she up this week--after she survived the first wave--that took another shot at the Virgin Mary and the patriarchy. Which I can't show you since her site is down.

But it had nothing to do with that either.

It was Bill Donohue. And the right-wingnut noise machine.

You're welcome.

Update: Since her site is down (she says spam, but it could also just be massive linking), I have a full copy of her announcement below the jump--click "Continued." It includes sort of a veiled threat to look into the tax status of Donohue's Catholic League. Whatever.

Link swarm at Memeorandum. Best hed: Potty-mouth fembigot down by Brian at Hot Air

This is the "Announcement" Amanda Marcotte Posted On Her Site:

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.

Bill Donohue doesn’t speak for Catholics, he speaks for the right wing noise machine. You guys pointed this out, you made a stink, you refused to walk into the same stupid trap that is laid out for liberals and Democrats by the right wing noise machine and I think you made a difference. While loyalty played into the pushback some, the real story is that we liberals are not taking this crap any longer and we’re pushing back. And now that I’m attached to only myself again, I’m ready and eager to join in the pushing back with you. Like Lorraine say, Jesus did not say to shut your piehole.

Obviously, I’m scatterbrained right now.  But I’ll be raring to go soon.  In the meantime, I want to share this letter Evan got from Frances Kissling, the president of an organization I adore called Catholics for a Free Choice. She wrote a letter defending free discourse and her religion from being hijacked by the likes of Bill Donohue and other people who dress their reactionary politics up in faith’s clothing. She sent it to the NY Times, and for some reason they didn’t run it.

It’s come to my attention that Donohue’s attempts to separate the Edwards campaign from their employees that were chosen for our skills and talents may in fact be in violation of the tax laws. 

Another thing—this has doubled my committment to reaching out and helping highlight when the religious left fights the right wingers who have falsely claimed to speak for all religious people.

(She put the Kissling letter above the second-to-last graf. That screws up my coding, so here it is (click to enlarge). Marcotte being hailed by Kissling is the fringe calling to the fringe.