This is how I roll.
(Click for larger image.)
The sad part is, my contribution to this picture is the “vase.” The flower came from our waiter, at our cheap-Mexican-restaurant Valentine’s Day dinner, which my wife paid for. I’m quite the romantic, no? Truly, I am my father’s son.
So Shakes resigned. The anti-Semitic Bill Donahue — a man perfectly willing to defend true anti-Catholic bigotry when its coming form people on his side — deliberately smeared Shakes as anti-Catholic. No one with an ounce of honesty in their bodies could read anything Shakes wrote and believe that she was bigoted against catholics. But that didn’t matter, did it? The anti-Semitic Bill Donahue hated the ideas that she stood for, so he set out to destroy her personally and professionally. At his core, not oly is he a bad Catholic, not only is he a bad man, but he is deeply, deeply anti-American. Only a man who hates the things this country was founded upn — openness, tolerance, equality, and free and open debate — would stoop to false accusations of bigotry to shut his ideological opponents up.
I don’t fault Shakes personally for this decision; based on the hate mail that Amanda Marcott got — vile, vicious stuff — I imagine there was a very good reason for the resignation. But it makes me less likely to vote for Edwards. Not only did the Edwards campaign apparently initially want to fire Shakes, when they eventually did the right thing under pressure, they did so tepidly and in a manner that made it clear that thy were not prepared to go to the mat against the anti-Semitic Bill Donahue, which left an opening for the smears to continue. Something Shakes said in her resignation is telling:
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.
Me emphasis. It is the job of a campaign to fight ideological battles. That Edwards’ campaign was not willing to do so tells me that he either thought that what shakes did was wrong and anti-Catholic — in which case he is an idiot — or he wasn’t willing to defend the ideology of feminism and equality for all — which makes him a man I would not choose to support — or he wasn’t willing to go toe to toe with anti-Semite Bill Donahue — which makes him a bad standard bearer for the party. Regardless of the reason, the Edwards campaign made an enormous mistake in their handling of Shakes. They are going to need to do a lot of work to make up for it.
In all of my interactions with her, Shakes has been a good person. In everything she has written, Shakes has been on the side of right, even if I don’t always agree with her reasoning or tactics. She did not deserve this smear, and she did not deserve the Edwards campaign leaving her to face that attacks essentially undefended.
Title of the post taken from here.
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: "Kings. What a good idea." Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
-- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
