Melissa McEwan has now also resigned:
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.
You can see a sampling of the kind of email she is talking about over at
Pandagon. I received droves of the same type of stuff during the Googlebomb campaign, so I know where she is coming from on that. Back in October,
I pulled the media plug on the googlebomb campaign because I thought the way it was being reported would reflect badly on Democrats in the 2006 elections, and the sheer number of media requests I was receiving had the sense of a feeding frenzy. I imagine she feels like she is in the same circumstance, and the only way to pull the media plug is to resign.
Clearly, the right is able to attack us with impunity. Japanesse internment justifying Michelle Malkin goes on the air to bash Marcotte and McEwan, while the people who read Malkin's blog send death and rape threats to them. And even the media reports on the matter make the Michelle Malkin's of the world look like the sane hero in this situation, while Marcotte and McEwan are evil. And then a bunch of Democrats, including a few commenters at MyDD, will give Malkin, O'Reilly and Donohue cover for this by saying that Marcotte and McEwan were out of line. Rinse and repeat.
You know what? I don't want Hillary Clinton to apologize for her war vote anymore, because I am sick of Democrats apologizing. You know what else? I think someone, maybe BlogPac, should produce some sort of guide for independent bloggers with no experience working on statewide or presidential campaigns both what they should expect and what they should demand when they are first hired. Clearly, this wasn't something that Amanda and Melissa wanted to do. Then again, this entire experience might make such a guide moot, considering how much publicity this received online.
And yes, even though I know both Amanda and Melissa made the sort of decision that feel was right for them and true to themselves, I do feel let down. But I'm not going to ask her to apologize for it.
