Working the Refs

Oh for god's sake...just shoot me:

Two bloggers hired by John Edwards to reach out to liberals in the online world have landed his presidential campaign in hot water for doing what bloggers do — expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language.

The Catholic League, a conservative religious group, is demanding that Mr. Edwards dismiss the two, Amanda Marcotte of the Pandagon blog site and Melissa McEwan, who writes on her blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, for expressing anti-Catholic opinions....

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said in a statement on Tuesday, “John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots.”

Meanwhile, the ever-reliable Nedra Pickler has a story headlined Catholics Slam Bloggers Hired by Edwards. No, Nedra, you pathetic fucking nitwit, 'Catholics' don't object; one ultra-right anti-Semitic homobigot who happens to be Catholic objects.

The fact that the NYT and AP are actually printing stories about this monumental stupidity is just way beyond disheartening. It means that even now, with the Bush administration such a train wreck that even the Washington press corps has noticed, the wingnuts are still successfully working the refs. They can get their exterminationist ideologues onto chat shows with nary an objection and still gin up phony outrage over bloggers' comments that may be intemperate in tone but also happen to be absolutely true.

This is the first test of the Edwards campaign. I hope he understands that surrender is not the way to deal with these people. If not, then he'd probably be hopeless in the general.

[That's all, folks]