Malice, Spite and An Eye To The Bottom Line

UPDATE:

Shortly after I posted this Edwards released a statement:

The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte’s and Melissa McEwan’s posts personally offended me. It’s not how I talk to people, and it’s not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it’s intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I’ve talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone’s faith, and I take them at their word. We’re beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can’t let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.

Mealy-mouthed, but Malkin loses as it seems they’re not fired after all – advantage liberal blogospshere. And my comments below still stand – the right set the agenda again, and the Democrats were caught on the back foot, again.

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Leaving aside the fact I consider Amanda Marcotte a friend (though I disagree with her on many things) the vicious public attack on the Edwards bloggers, led by rightwing media-slime Michelle Malkin, is interesting both as an object lesson for political campaigns on how not to handle bloggers and as an insight into the pathology of right wing female pundits.

This story has been all about how personal spite, a minor media figure’s fading popularity and a last desperate attempt by Malkin to get hers before it all goes to shit for the Republicans have co-incided, to produce the early derailing of the Edwards campaign amongst its own supporters.

It couldn’t’ve worked better had it been planned.

First a little backstory. It seems Ms. Michelle “I resent women unless they’re me” Malkin is not unaquainted with the indignity of being let go herself.

A Virginia newspaper recently got rid of her from its pages because she has, according the paper’s ombudsman“…a long history of poorly supported polemic” and because of her propensity to spout rubbish “…regardless of its factual basis or lack thereof”. Nicely and politely put, but the meaning’s clear. Malkin is a proven liar and bigot and was fired for it, simple as that. The difference between her firing and that of the Edwards bloggers is that Malkin got the boot for barefaced, easily debunked lying and no hysterical whipping-up of bloggers by liberals was required whatsoever. It was all her own work.

Malkin’s words spoke for themselves, and they screamed “Liar!”

Wherever did this harpy come from and how did she get to be so prominent? David Neiwert of Orcinus knew Malkin professionally in her early career; she left Seattle under a cloud after issues with her reporting. Her trademark viciousness was apparent even then. This is her parting shot to the city:

The Cattle In Seattle: You Guys Had It Coming

Michelle Malkin

Creators Syndicate Inc.

WASHINGTON – As I watched fire, tear gas and mass chaos consume Seattle last week, one wicked little thought crossed my mind: It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving city.

Nice.

But that kind of vitriol won her notice, the nascent rightwing attack media lapped it up and it became a successful schtick. The rightwing money men saw the acceptable face of hatred in Malkin, and in them Malkin saw fame and money and popularity. No more outsiderdom for Michelle.

Unlike Malkin, who lies shamelessly and gets paid for doing so, Edwards two campaign hires appear to have have been dropped from his team for the sin of being non-journalists telling the truth in their personal blogs – but using unladylike language and sarcasm. You know, the stuff we all hear and/or use every day. Edwards seems to have failed to have the courage of his convictions and has caved in to the Right at the first sign of criticism.

Because of course, being a lying, genocidal self-loathing sucker-up-to-power like Malkin is the most refined and delicate thing a lady could do. But if a woman saysfuck…. it’s all “Waaaaaaah! These nasty girlies are hurting meeee! Get them, boys! Bad girls, atheists, FEMINISTS! Attack!”

Even though Malkin’s nasty little pastiche was swiftly taken up by Michelle-fanciers and Bush-sympathisers in the mainstream media (that’s you, New York Times and ABC), underlying all the attacks on the Edwards bloggers has been Malkin’s almost pathological desire to be popular. This fuels her self-hatred, insecurity and personal malice against other women.

She’s certainly got form for it: who can forget her and her flying-monkey horde’s sickeningly gleeful pre-and post suicide hounding of a lesbian Santa Cruz professor and her continuing vicious personal attacks on Cindy Sheehan?

But now personal animus is affecting her market share. Bush-supporters are getting thin on the ground, it takes that much more manufactured outrage these days to hold onto your demographic and Malkin as a media brand may have jumped the shark with this latest.

Her most recent Technorati webstats paint a picture of a blog on the slide:

So not only has Malkin been losing influence all over the place because of her increasingly extreme eliminationist rhetoric, her webstats have been dropping.

But the video in which she screechingly parodies Amanda Marcotte got the most hits ever of any of her lame ‘Hot Air’ podcasts. Fancy that. Couldn’t’ve been planned, oh no. She must be hugging herself at her own cleverness and basking in the post-prandial glow of viciousness satisfied and advertisers appeased. But she should enjoy it while it lasts. It’ll be brief.

Even the medium-batshit wingnuts won’t touch Malkin now:she’s reduced to relying on the support of the fringe of fringe white supremacists, online stalkers and the worst kind of wild-eyed religious conspiracy theorists.
Malkin may still have the gig as guest on O’Reilly at Fox, but I wonder for how much longer? Fox News’ ratings have fallen 24% this past year. O’Reilly’s ratings have been dropping too and Rupert will only tolerate a loss for just so long.

So she had to do something drastic, and quick, and hitting Amanda and Melisssa in that puerile way was it. That the mau-mauing co-incided with the right’s ongoing desire to scupper Democrats was a juicy bonus to get her the attention of the jocks in the GOP. This confluence of the last gasp of a shrinking Righwing blogosphere and the stale exhalations of a fading career has been interesting to watch, A] for the way it illustrates just how quickly the news cycle runs these days and B] for the way it shows the porosity of the boundaries between blogging, paid journalism and cheap demagoguery.

The most interesting thing of all, though it must have been a hellishly unpleasant 48 hours for the bloggers involved, was seeing exactly what happens when a citizen blogger with some history joins a big political campaign’s staff. It’s a new phenomenon and you’ve got to give Amanda and Melissa some credit for being outliers. It’ll be useful to know too, when they feel ready to write about it, what it was like to be caught in the crossfire. Lessons need to be learned for future campaigns.

But it may be too late. The lessons should’ve been learnt first.

It’s a shame that neither the bloggers nor the Edwards team gave much apparent thought to the swiftboating that was almost bound to happen, given the whole civility thing and the history of rightwing pile-ons.

Edwards not only handed ammunition to the wingnuts but failed to protect his employees, exposing them to the full media glare and leaving them swinging in the wind as Malkin gave her patented rabble-rousing performance.

It’s not as though the campaign or the bloggers’re dumb or lack media-savvy, so did why on earth this easily-anticipated debacle happen?

Because of a lack of foresight and media planning. the Rightwing’s task has been accomplished for it: progressive bloggers participating directly in politics are now irrevocably smeared with the ‘unhinged’ tag, yet again. Not only that, the Democrats have lost the agenda-setting and the framing to the wingnuts – yet again.

The only good thing I can see that’s come out of this is that Malkin shot herself in the foot by driving so many to Pandagon to see what the fuss was about, but really that’s small comfort to the Democratic netroots.