As I spent the better part of the day pondering Amanda's resignation from the Edwards campaign and the death threats and other hate mail from so-called Christians, and what it meant to progressives as well as Edwards bid, as well as the varying responses. In the midst of all this, Melissa announced her resignation.
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.
Whether you agreed with Edwards hiring Amanda and Melissa, or disagreed with his support of them, what ultimately happened, with both of their resignations, is a small vocal group has controlled our entire political discourse. They set the precedent.
Pandagon has literally been under attack, that they had to pull it offline. The attack is by Christians. Kevin suggests posting her redirect site, so that all can see just how Christian some Christians are behaving, but the site seems to be back up. While I wont repost the original post, you should go take a look at it, if for no other reason than to view the hate and vitriol spewed forth by so-called Christians.
Hate and vitriol have taken the place of discussion. Yet, the media is silent on this aspect. They were silent on William "Bill" Donohue's own bigotry. Nothing was said about Mitt Romney's decision of where to announce his candidacy.
What this episode, from beginning to now, has shown is the complicity of the media to bow to extremist views, and allow extremist views to shape what we are told. there are no more discussions in the true meaning of the word. How do you have political discourse, or discussion on any issues that are so important, when one side is demonized and the other is not truly represented?
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