John Edwards and blogging. Getting tough. Not.

Chris Knudsen pointed out that the John Edwards’ campaign bloggers have gotten him into some hot water for saying some mean stuff about Catholics.
Edwards keeps embattled bloggers.

What was said?
Edwards campaign blogger Amanda Marcotte wrote that the Cathlic Church wants to “force women to bear more tithing catholics.” Melissa McEwan wrote that the pope is one who “regularly speaks out against gay tolerance.” - via Time.

A few Thoughts on The Situation
- Bill Donohue is the guy who got mad about it all. He’s president of the Catholic League, which counts 350,000 members. These members are probably spread throughout the country and are likely not all active members, so in the real light of things they won’t make much of a hill a beans difference when it comes to vote counts.
- The fact that the word “Catholic” exists in the story is what makes it different because of the number of Catholics in the U.S.
- Barack Obama announced he is officially running for pres today, so that’ll help it go away.

Just One Problem
I’ve been meaning to write a post on the use of “web 2.0″ in the elections this year, and I just haven’t yet. The thing is if two of Edwards’ campaign staffers had written something nasty anywhere else it wouldn’t matter, but in this case they are being coined as his campaign bloggers. This is going to be a problem down the road because it’s what the media will turn into a story. Mark my words, you will start to see a lot of talk in the news about campaigns using YouTube, blogs and other things that were not as widely used four years ago and when they do, they’ll bring up Edwards every time.

A Final Word: Edwards Shows He Isn’t Getting Tough
“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,” Edwards blogged in a response.

What he really told us was, “that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign unless their name is Amanda Marcotte or Melissa McEwan.”