Marcotte-Obama: What's Going On Here?

Amanda Marcotte's resignation as chief potty-mouth anti-Christian biggot (a neccessary post for any aspiriting Dem prez candidate, apparently) has created a bit of a blogstorm: Some 60 news and blog posts at the top of memeorandum this morning, and almost 8,000 hits on Google blog search.

Before I get to the point of this post, let me say that her response was emblematic of what's wrong with the Left:

I was hired by the Edwards campaign for the skills and talents I bring to the table, and my willingness to work hard for what’s right. Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills, and pretended that John Edwards had to be held accountable for some of my personal, non-mainstream views on religious influence on politics (I’m anti-theocracy, for those who were keeping track).

See it? It's by the playbook: Fall back on feminism, right-wing conspiracies and minimization of personal obnoxiousness.

Marcotte could have been a man, a eunich or a typing chimpanzee and the response by those offended by her vulgar degrading of religious beliefs would have been the same. She blames the right instead of asking herself if behavior such as hers -- "non-mainstream" barely covers what was wrong with her posts -- is becoming to a presidential campaign staffer.

But here's the point: The uproar in from the right and left side of the blogosphere over Marcotte has ended the Edwards campaign, while a major gaffe by Barack Obama yielded only nine stories on memeorandum, 450 Google blog hits and about a dozen hits on Nexis. The quote, of course, is:

We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged and to which we have now spent $400 billion and has seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted. (source with video clip)

Wasted. On a scale of things, this was a much worse error than Edwards' bungling of the blogosphere. The latter showed a candidate incapable of handling even a minor crisis; the former showed a candidate's hidden disrespect for the military and incredible insensitivity to the widows, children and parents of our fallen soldiers.

But Obama skated away from this scandal with a response that's as good as dodgin' Bill Clinton at his best.

We can blame it in part on MSM, but the lack of traction in the blogosphere tells another story: Obama has some teflon, some halo effect, about him. Can it last? Will the people be duped? The next few Obamagaffes will tell.

Related Tags: Politics, Edwards, Obama, 2008, Democrats, Marcotte