If I had known there was going to be a witch hunt, I would have ridden in on my good broomstick.
UPDATE: Because I’m a moron, I forgot the most important part of the post: Contact the Edwards campaign and voice your support of Amanda and Melissa. Do it now.
As Zuzu says, the conservative attacks on Amanda and Melissa have gone way too far. It is amusing, though, to see people who support interning American citizens and people who are loud-mouthed anti-Semitic bigots complaining about Amanda’s supposed hostility towards Constitutional rights and religion.
One thing is clear: The people who have problems with Amanda and Melissa’s employment are not moderates. They are among the most hateful, foaming-at-the-mouth, low-IQ, bottom-feeding maggots in this country. They are people who openly support hate groups. These are not people who are going to vote for any Democrat, or who Democratic candidates should be taking seriously.
So let’s clarify a few things. First, the Duke case. Half-witted conservative bloggers ’round the sphere have been accusing Amanda of violating the civil/Constitutional rights of the Duke lacrosse players who were accused of rape. They point to this paragraph of Amanda’s as evidence of her supposed harassment of these fine young men:
In the meantime, I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good f*** god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and f*** her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.
Conservative bloggers are quick to note the “innocent until proven guilty” standard as evidence that Amanda has done something horribly wrong here. Newsflash, kiddies: Amanda is not a court of law. A stunning revelation, I know. Individual citizens can say that they believe someone accused of a crime is guilty without violating the accused’s Constitutional rights.
Now, I have a particular bias when it comes to these issues, not only as a feminist who recognizes that women who report being sexually assaulted should be believed just as automatically as people who report being robbed or otherwise victimized, but as a liberal law student who believes very strongly in the rights of the accused, and as the daughter of a criminal defense attorney. Had the accused lacrosse players been given an unfair trial, or had their Constitutional rights violated, or been, say, detained indefinitely, I’d be the first one raising hell — even if I thought they were guilty. But the Duke men did not have their rights violated by Amanda or the courts or anyone else. Is there an argument to be made that charging the men was a political move? Yeah. I don’t buy it, but it can certainly be made. Is there an argument to be made that the Duke lacrosse players are innocent? Well yeah, obviously, since the charges were dropped.
The Duke case caused a national media frenzy. We all weighed in. I stand by my earlier comments that the case does raise important issues about race, class and privilege — after all, according to the facts on which we all agree, a mostly white team of men who attend an elite college paid for a black woman, who was a low-income student at a less elite local school, to strip for their entertainment. The next night, one member of the lacrosse team sent out a deeply disturbing email, using his Duke student email account, referring to the strippers at “bitches” and fantasizing about killing them, “cutting off their skin,” and ejaculating in his Duke-issued spandex.
Does that make him guilty of rape? Of course not. But it does make him a sick individual who is well worth criticism. It does contribute to an over-all view of Duke lacrosse players as misogynist assholes who eroticize sexual violence. I’m sure it informed Amanda’s opinion that the lacrosse players are privileged white boys who victimized a black woman.
And for all the conservative hemming and hawing over Amanda’s characterization of the lacrosse players, I still haven’t heard any of them defend the woman against right-wing slander. Has she recanted? Has it been proven that she wasn’t raped? Not as far as I know. What’s been shown is that the charges were dropped, and that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the three arrested players. If we should “wait for the facts” before we assume the players’ guilt, shouldn’t we do the same before we say that the woman is:
A ho
A vindictive ghetto-fabulous slut-whore
A drunken slut-stripping whore
A woman who sluts herself out for a living
An old nigger whore
etc etc?
The conservative bloggers and commentators argue that Amanda is unfit for her position with the Edwards campaign because she made it obvious that she thought the Duke lacrosse players sexually assaulted the woman they hired to strip — or at the very least, that the woman who reported being raped was telling the truth. Those same conservative bloggers call the woman who reported the rape a liar. Well, geniuses, false reporting of a crime is a crime. A crime that the woman has not been found guilty of, and, as far as I can tell, hasn’t been charged with. In other words, their argument that bloggers should assume the innocence of the criminally accused — and the criminally un-accused — only applies when we’re talking about privileged white men accused of rape.
Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot. Talk amongst yourselves.
Amanda-related issue #2: The potty mouth. I really have nothing to say here, since I curse along with the best of ’em, and I’m of the opinion that hand-wringing over a swear word is pretty silly. But if a few f-words on a personal blog are enough to get a lady fired, then perhaps we should reconsider the employment prospects of our fine vice president.
Issue #3: Amanda and Shakes’ supposed anti-Catholic bias, as evidenced by the fact that they criticize the Catholic church for their regressive reproductive health policies. If Amanda and Melissa are anti-Catholic, then perhaps this organization should be qualified as a hate group.
Pathetically, even bloggers for the New York Times are jumping in — and linking to the looniest proto-fascists on the right, including Michelle “Intern the Arabs” Malkin. When people like Malkin pass for credible commentators, you know you’re in trouble.
Salon says that Amanda and Melissa have been fired. I haven’t seen this reported anywhere else, so I doubt its accuracy. But at the very least, the campaign does seem to be “reconsidering” their employment in the face of right-wing backlash.
Hiring Amanda and Melissa made me re-consider Edwards as a candidate, and pledge my early support to his campaign. He was, I thought, the candidate who represented my primary concerns — poverty, women’s rights, the war, the environment — and the candidate who purposely reached out to human rights advocates like Amanda and Melissa, and chose wisely when he asked them to join his staff. I hope he doesn’t make a decision that will make me reconsider my opinion of him. Because if a candidate isn’t even loyal to his own hand-picked staff, how can we expect him to be loyal to our interests?
And, not that Mr. Edwards cares, but should Amanda and Melissa’s employment with his campaign go the way of the Dodo, I’ll certainly be working extra hard to make sure that someone else takes the Democratic primary.