Even after the Edwards Blogger Scandal, a commenter here said,
It would be interesting to see a formal study where someone took a random sample of diaries on Dkos and analyzed how many of them are anti-religious. Or, some other scientific approach.
I’m not convinced that being atheist or agnostic necessarily means that one wishes to declare jihad against people who have faith.
Perhaps a broader study would provide a better sense of how many of these 69% are actually antagonistic toward people of faith.
Such academic discussions are irrelevant to the politics of blogger atheism. None of it matters, because the Senator John Edwards Blogger Scandal, with Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen at its vortex, was not based on statistics. Instead, it was based on the highly inflammatory anti-Christian statements of just two (2) bloggers. Multiply that scandal by the number of bloggers at DailyKos and you begin to have only the vaguest sense of what we have awaiting us when DailyKos/YearlyKos corrals ALL of the Democratic candidates together for an activist atheist-sponsored candidates forum in Chicago this August.
Here is what is looks and feels like in John Edwards’ Blogger Hell:
After personal phone calls to the bloggers from the candidate, the Edwards campaign has rehired the bloggers who were fired yesterday, according to sources inside and close to the campaign.
Salon reported yesterday that on Wednesday morning the Edwards camp fired Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen, the two bloggers whose hiring had sparked an uproar by conservatives. That information was confirmed by sources in and close to the campaign. But almost as soon as the decision had been communicated to the bloggers, a struggle arose within the campaign about possibly reversing it, the sources said, as the liberal blogosphere exploded. Salon
Chris Bowers of MyDD.com, wrote that “Republican attempts to make Democrats look bad though guilt by association with us crazy bloggers were a miserable failure.” WaPost
Boy was he wrong! Boy was his judgement poor! Worse still, he and his arrogantly insular group of blogger friends have learned nothing at all from the experience, proving that those who cannot learn from history are condemned to relive it, over and over again. And they want take the whole Democratic Party and all of its presidential candidates along for the ride.
In the “progessive” blogosphere, no group has done more to advance the cause of godlessness than has DailyKos and its Supreme Atheist Leader Markos Moulitsas. One member went all the way to the US Supreme Court to take the words “under God” out of the United States Pledge of Allegiance.
As one DailyKos commenter declared, people who talk about their faith “gives me the shits”.
While Marcotte and McEwen were just two bloggers whose ability to spew anti-religious bile was limited by the hours in a day and the speed of their typing, DailyKos has thousands of atheist and agnostic members whose anti-religious statements – past, present and future – are virtually limitless, to be mined and focus-group tested to see which will offend the public more and serve the best in 30 second Republican wedge-issue commercials.
30-Second Republican Attack Ad: “I was going to vote for Candidate X, but then I saw him among the atheists of DailyKos/YearlyKos. They say my faith gives them diarhea! Now, I just wonder what Candidate X promised the atheists in order to win their support.”
Hmmmm. In this election cycle, every Democratic presidential aspirant so lacking in foresight as to connect himself with the DailyKos/YearlyKos candidates forum has an “Edwards Anti-Religious Blogger Hell” awaiting him, with candidates caught between the jaws of the online atheists and America’s church-going Christians, and the mainstream media as referee. I wonder who will win? Certainly not the Democratic Party and certainly not our candidates’ reputations.
Cross-posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog.
Mr. Holland has been banned at both DKos and MyDD, and I would be happy to see him banned here as well. I’m not sure there’s a principled case for that, so I’m going to ignore his relentless self-promotion and bigotry against my religious/spiritual tradition.
<
p>
Mr. Holland, I’d appreciate it if you would find another sandbox to urinate in, if you are not satisfied with your own blog. The people here might leave you around for a while, or they might not.
This IS marginally better – it isn’t a teaser post.
If you don’t like the posts, don’t read them.
and you win because it’s your blog, fine. I’ll shut up now, and hope that ignoring Mr. Holland eventually induces him to go away.
How do the crazy rantings of random diaries have ANYTHING to do with Kos? If you have one instance where Kos personally bashed religion in general, please offer it up. Otherwise, to put it nicely, this diary is intellectually dishonest at best.
<
p>
To put it simply, Kos isn’t any more responsible for the thousands of people who write dairies on his site than David, Charley and Bob are for this substandard post.
Marcotte and McEwen had blogs full of anti-religious statements just like the ones I’ve linked to and cited in this diary. Those statements raised a compelling inference of anti-religiousness.
<
p>
In addition to being an atheist himself, Kos has THOUSANDS of atheists at DailyKos who everday are writing anti-religious statements and publishing them at DailyKos! Just search for the terms “atheist” and “agnostic” among the diaries and comments posted at DailyKos.
<
p>
http://www.dailykos….
<
p>
http://www.dailykos….
<
p>
You will find that for every anti-religious statement that embarrassed John Edwards with his bloggers, there are THOUSANDS of such statements at DailyKos, if only because there are so many more bloggers there.
<
p>
If these statements were a public relations problem at Pandagon, could thousands of such statements be a problem at Dailykos when DailyKos hosts and lobbies our presidential candidates? We all hope not, but we’ve seen in Iraq that hope is not a substitute for foresight.
<
p>
Kos said, “I see no more value in religion that what I got from my grandmother”. The links are above.
<
p>
The crazy rantings of diaries representing the 69% atheist/agnostic majority are relevant because the represent policy positions dominant among the group, just like the crazy rantings of Klan members are relevant to understanding the goals and purposes of the Klu Klux Klan. If that seems incendiary to you, just consider that in the case of Edwards the crazy rantings of his bloggers WERE going to be imputed to him unless he fired them. And I think that’s appropriate.
<
p>
One of the “crazy ranters” (as you put it) at DailyKos said he wanted to “squeeze at least some of the religion out of public discourse”. That’s not just a crazy ranting, that’s a policy goal. Perhaps the purpose of hosting the Democratic candidates in the first place is to further the policy goals of the group, one of which is to reduce the evidence of religion in American public life.
<
p>
That seems unremarkable in a conversation here, because many of us agree with the positions of the ACLU. But the ACLU has never been so intemperate in the WAY it expressed this goal as have the participants at DailyKos.
<
p>
Biden and Kerry ended their campaigns by the way they expressed themselves. How many campaigns will be ended in 2008 because of the way Democratic bloggers expressed themselves?
<
p>
“Due diligence” is “the level of judgement, care, prudence, determination, and activity that a person would reasonably be expected to do under particular circumstances.” The Edwards case showed us that there are inherent risks in the relationships between bloggers and campaigns. Now, if we do not engage in a due diligence investigation of those risks in each case where bloggers interact with our candidates, then we are being negligent. Such negligence can be very costly in politics.
<
p>
Should a candidate speak at Bob Jones University? That depends on (1) what Bob Jones University is about and (2) what the candidate is about. This is analogous. DailyKos is a very important blog for progressive issues, but it is also a very atheist/agnostic blog where very intemperate and potentially embarrassing statements are published daily. “A word to the wise is sufficient.”
and please, try to answer concisely.
thousands of religious people posting on his website You’ll remember I’ll let you in on a little secret: the first progressives ever were exceptionally religious and their faith compelled them to progressive views. Furthermore, progressives are still a huge part (plurality?) of the progressive movement.
<
p>
Your innuendo, guilty-by-association rants are… well… amusing. Please, step away from the kool-aid.
<
p>
btw –
sn’t negative in anyway whatsoever. Kos neither promotes nor condemns religious people on his website; he just doesn’t think you need to have religious faith in order to be a good or well rounded person. He’s right, you don’t. As for his commenters, he has no control over them and gives relative free speech on his website, be you religious or not.
One, he (or his campaign staff–but he’s responsible regardless) apparently didn’t vett them before hiring them. That shows a lack of attention to detail, which may be problemmatic in a malAdministration.
<
p>
Two, he (or his campaign staff) doesn’t have the backbone, cojones, whatever, to stand up for their decision to hire them after being attacked.
<
p>
Neither are reasons to completely discount Edwards’s candidacy, but they are issues to be considered. Apparently, Edwards did acquire a set of cojones in the latest dust-up regarding Ann Coultergeist, which set is promising.
The godless communists are fluoridating our water supply in an attempt to contaminate our precious bodily fluids.
when a person points out a recent challenge and suggest that we develop a strategy for confronting the same challenge in the future, there are those who insist that no problem exists at all. These deniers are not unlike those who insist that global warming either doesn’t exist as a problem or need not be dealt with.
<
p>
Let’s face it: The reason that some insist that there is no blogger embarrassment problem is that they are either (1) siding with the bloggers, or (2) siding with the candidate who was most recently embarrassed. I would urge such people to consider the interests of the Democratic Party and ALL of its candidates. People who think they Edwards Blogger Fiasco cannot happen again are people with their heads in the sand. Even with their heads in the sand, their asses are exposed to the elements.
<
p>
The watch phrase is “due diligence”. The diligence that was due before the Edwards Blogger Scandal is still due today.
found a new issue?
Best comment of the day. Worth reading through the whole thread.