User:Hoping To Help/AmandaMarcotte

=Article=

Amanda Marcotte (born September 2, 1977) is an American blogger best known for her writing on feminism and politics. Time magazine described her as "an outspoken voice of the left" and said "there is a welcome wonkishness to Marcotte, who, unlike some star bloggers, is not afraid to parse policy with her readers" -- while also describing her blogging as "provocative and profanity-laced".

Background
Born in El Paso, Texas, she was raised in the small town of Alpine in the west of the state. She went on to study English Literature in St. Edward's University in Austin. While an employee of the University of Texas at Austin, she began a blog called Words, which focused on both music and feminism. Having won the Koufax award for Best New Blog of 2004 for her work on the site, she began to write for Pandagon, one of the first feminist blogs. She has written about political differences with her small-town family. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York and writes for Slate and The Guardian.

Edwards campaign controversy
On January 30, 2007, the John Edwards 2008 presidential campaignhired Marcotte to act as the campaign's blogmaster. Soon afterward, many bloggers began to quote Marcotte's blog, especially posts in which she attacked the Catholic Church's position on birth control and access to abortion. One Marcotte blog post that was criticized, included: Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit? A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology. Columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote, "Her hostility to religion and in particular the Catholic Church should alarm Edwards." Journalist Terry Moran wrote, on an ABC News blog, "her comments about other people's faiths could well be construed as hate speech."

Marcotte's most outspoken critic was Bill Donohueof the Catholic League, who publicly demanded that the Edwards campaign terminate Marcotte's appointment, claiming that she wasanti-Catholic  and calling her a "vulgar trash-talking" bigot. An Edwards campaign press release on Thursday, February 8, 2007 stated that while Edwards was "personally offended" by some of what Marcotte wrote, her job as the campaign blogmaster was secure.

On February 12, 2007, the Catholic League denounced Marcotte's review of the film Children of Men as "anti-Christian". Later that day, Marcotte announced that she had resigned from the Edwards campaign, and accused Donohue of a sexist perspective in the calls for her resignation. The campaign accepted her resignation. She returned to her work on other blogs.

Statements on Duke Lacrosse Case
Reason contributing editor Cathy Young has described Marcotte as a "leader of the cyber-lynch mob in the Duke University rape hoax". In "Marcotte's eyes, the real crime of the 'independent feminists' is helping preserve the idea that the presumption of innocence applies even in cases of rape and sexual assault."

Marcotte declared on her blog that people who defended the wrongly accused Duke students were "rape-loving scum". Time reported that in "late January, more ethics charges were heaped on the District Attorney in the Duke University sexual-assault case, and Marcotte attacked the news with her usual swagger and sarcasm:" In the meantime, I've been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good fucking 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 fucked 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.  The New York Times'' and others made so much "hay" over what she wrote that she ended up deleting the post entirely. In an article that she wrote for Salon.com, she referred to this as the first in a series of "shitstorms" that caused her to resign from the John Edwards campaign

It's a Jungle Out There
thumb|right|150px|One of the controversial images from It's a Jungle Out There In 2008, Marcotte published her first book, entitled It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. Jill Filipovic of AlterNet described the book as a "how-to manual for feminist-minded women to take on a sexist society and have a good laugh along the way." In August 2007, Marcotte posted an image of the chosen book cover on her blog; the image "was a retro-Hollywood pulp cover of a gorilla carrying a scantily clad woman." The image immediately came under fire for perpetuating racist tropes, and, consequently, Marcotte and Seal Press changed the cover image.

When the book was finally released, it again set off controversy in the feminist blogosphere for use of images that many saw as racist. To illustrate the volume, the publishers used images taken from the 1950s Joe Maneely comic,Lorna, the Jungle Girl, which was chosen for its retro comic art look. The illustrations used included stereotypical images of "savage" black Africans being beaten up by a white, blonde, superhero, described as "racist cartoons of 'natives' in a jungle setting." Marcotte subsequently issued an apology, adding that a second printing of It's A Jungle Out There will not contain illustrations.

Life v. Reliable Sources
The wp:blp article on Amanda Marcotte seems overly contentious. There seems to be more information on her mistakes then Amanda Marcotte. Should I do anything? ThanksJim1138 (talk) 09:55, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Add positive reliably sourced claims is what WP:NPOVsuggests. Collect (talk) 15:01, 31 August 2011 (UTC)


 * While the article does focus on her "controversies" --and it isn't a holistic picture of her life. It does appear to be an accurate picture of the parts of her life as they are covered in reliable sources as required by WP:Verify.


 * I've tried to find some additional "positive" things to include from reliable sources but I'm not having much luck. I was able to add this to the lead:Time magazine described her as "an outspoken voice of the left."


 * But the challenge is that the Reliable Sources have covered her critics and their comments -- and not her supporters. Even when Marcotte herself writes about her biggest controversy -- she links to many RS that have negative things to say about her (or quote her critics) -- but her only link to something that supports her is a blog post that quotes other blogs. Nothing that is usable on Wikipedia.


 * Also, the nature of the beast is that Reliable Sources are much more likely to cover bloggers' posts that blow-up ... than their posts that are lavished with praise.
 * Hoping To Help (talk) 17:53, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Contentious versus WP:WEIGHT

 * Also, I don't think anything included in the article is contentious. I imagine even Marcotte would agree that everything there is both WP:Verifiable and true. (As in: verifiable and true that she was criticized -- not that the criticism was necessarily valid.)


 * The article cites reliable sources (including Marcotte herself) that describe people criticizing her for things that she published. Everyone agrees that she wrote/published these things -- and that she was then criticized. So the WP article isn't making any contentious claims.


 * I think the issue is that when one reads the article it appears to violate WP:Weight -- because it focuses almost exclusively on her controversies. So the solution, as User:Collect pointed out above, is to find positive reliable sourced statements to include.


 * But I think we're likely to find that the article does at least come close to reflecting the WP:Weight of the information found in reliable sources. While still giving an unbalanced picture of her life as a whole -- but given WP policies of WP:Verify and WP:NOR there really isn't any way to fix that.
 * Hoping To Help (talk) 18:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Interview with Frances Kissling
The fracas began last week when former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards hired two outspoken, potty-mouthed feminist bloggers, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, to be his campaign bloggers. It took no time at all for Kissling's longtime adversary, the conservative Catholic bellyacher William Donohue, to crank up the whine machine to full throttle in protest of the bloggers' role in Edwards' campaign.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/13/kissling/

Other sources
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/219898/unholy-hire/kathryn-jean-lopez Unholy Hire The anti-Catholic rants of John Edwards's blogospherically famous staffer.

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit? A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020601388.html

Catholics Slam Bloggers Hired by Edwards Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, demanded that Edwards fire Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.

"John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots," Donohue wrote in a statement. "He has no choice but to fire them immediately."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/12/AR2007021201632.html

A Blogger for Edwards Resigns After ComplaintsDays after Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards decided against firing two liberal bloggers with a history of inflammatory writing, one resigned last night with a blast at "right wing shills" for driving her out of the campaign.

Amanda Marcotte, whose writings were assailed as anti-Catholic, wrote yesterday on her blog that the Edwards camp had accepted her resignation. She blamed her most vocal critic, Bill Donohoe, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, writing that he "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," which Marcotte described as being "anti-theocracy."

Marcotte charged that Donohoe had been running a "scorched earth campaign" against her and that he "made no bones about the fact that his intent is to 'silence' me. . . . It was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. . . . Bill Donohue doesn't speak for Catholics, he speaks for the right wing noise machine."

In a statement last week, Donohoe said: "John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots."

On her blog, Pandagon, Marcotte posted a letter from a group called Catholics for Free Choice, assailing Donohoe as, among other things, anti-woman and anti-gay.

Word of Marcotte's resignation came as Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly was leading his program with a full-throated attack on the two bloggers.

Fox
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250927,00.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,251009,00.html

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/2007/05/17/disrespecting-jerry-falwell

And finally, this revolting statement from former John Edwards employee Amanda Marcotte. "The gates of hell swing open and Satan welcomes his beloved son. Jerry Falwell's dead. Guess god [sic] — notice the small 'g' — liked the ACLU better after all.

Now Ms. Marcotte symbolizes the hateful far left in America. Same people who celebrated when Tony Snow announced he had cancer. This group, ladies and gentlemen, doesn't deserve respect. They are shameful. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,251620,00.html Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, a group that supports a woman's right to choose in matters of sexuality and reproductive health, called Donohue's criticism a "cheap shot."

"I believe that spirited, provocative criticism of powerful people and organizations, including the Catholic church, is part of democracy," Kissling said. "I don't always like what people may say but I really think they have a right to do it. Often the sharpest, most provocative critiques are the most on target."

Kissling sent Marcotte a letter of support, which was posted on her blog.

"I wanted to send a message to the Edwards campaign that they should not cave to that sort of bullying," Kissling said about her lette

.... In the blog about her resignation, Marcotte said she was attacked because of her "personal, non-mainstream views on religious influence on politics."

Earlier in the day, she had written: "The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where ... women are nothing but vessels."