The Bloggers

Melissa McEwan has now resigned, hard on the heels of Amanda Marcotte's resignation yesterday. I don't like McEwan's decision, but I do like her announcement.

I regret to say that I have also resigned from the Edwards campaign. In spite of what was widely reported, I was not hired as a blogger, but a part-time technical advisor, which is the role I am vacating.

I would like to make very clear that the campaign did not push me out, nor was my resignation the back-end of some arrangement made last week. This was a decision I made, with the campaign's reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign, and making me increasingly uncomfortable with my and my family's level of exposure.

I understand that there will be progressive bloggers who feel I am making the wrong decision, and I offer my sincerest apologies to them. One of the hardest parts of this decision was feeling as though I'm letting down my peers, who have been so supportive.

There will be some who clamor to claim victory for my resignation, but I caution them that in doing so, they are tacitly accepting responsibility for those who have deluged my blog and my inbox with vitriol and veiled threats. It is not right-wing bloggers, nor people like Bill Donohue or Bill O'Reilly, who prompted nor deserve credit for my resignation, no matter how much they want it, but individuals who used public criticisms of me as an excuse to unleash frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation.

This is a win for no one.

I simply don't know enough about the inside dealings to know whether she's being entirely accurate here, but I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. And before anyone starts screaming that "Democrats get a free pass," let me point out that I'm willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt until I know better. That means that people like Bill Donohue don't get the benefit of the doubt. I know he's a liar. I know James Dobson's a liar. I know Bill O'Reilly's a liar. I'm not about to give them the benefit of the doubt. I don't know that Melissa McEwan's a liar. Q.E.D.

Considering the kind of comments she's likely to have gotten, I can't really fault her.

Speaking of comments, I particularly liked this little gem:

This whole story broke because Bill Donahue and Michelle Malkin happened to look up the things these two bloggers posted on their blogs.

Happened to look up? Excuse me? You know as well as I do that they had every resource available to them combing the internet archives for dirt. Unless, of course, they were fed the news by the RNC.

The problem is that the actual writings, offensive and out of line as they may have been, are largely a sidebar to the real issue here, which, let me repeat, is Donohue's use of dirt that is essentially irrelevant to Edwards' campaign to try to tar Edwards. Suddenly Edwards' judgment is in question? Bullshit. Donohue's tactics are in question.