Says Melinda Henneberger at Huffington Post. Interesting considering that Huffington Post and the author are on the left side of the isle.

Okay, I admit, it is a VERY slow news day. Oh aside from that whole Pentagon says admin manipulated intelligence thing and the 24/7 wall to wall Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

A very good summaryfrom Massimo Calabresi of the Marcotte/Edwards Blog story and the issues surrounding campaign politics & blogs.

(Though the corrections at the bottom are a welcome admission of a previous story being inaccurate it is a disappointment after reading a really good article)

Update: The two bloggers are safe (for now?). The sad thing for the girls is that they just came into this job and will now spend a good amount of time living this down and knowing they hurt their candidate personally and possibly professionally. As I said in a previous post it was Edward’s job (the job of his campaign) to actually read the blog posts of the people they were hiring.

It is neither of the girls fault, what they wrote was public record, but it is a lesson for them and all bloggers that it is easy to sling arrows and share your personal life’s details from behind the LCD. It is a whole other thing to have to live with what you put out.
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I am kind of surprised the John Edward’s blogger scandal (posted about here and here and here) has blown up this much. CNN reported on it and now Salon is reporting that Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, the two bloggers at the heart of this thing, have been fired. Or possibly fired and re-hired. They aren’t sure and the Edwards campaign appears to be silent on the subject.

I am sure more will come out today. I pretty much chuckled when I first heard the term scandal associated with this but in election season I guess pretty much anything can blow up to a whole, as the West Wing would frequently coin, “thing”.

As blogged yesterday John Edwards choice for blog master, Amanda Marcotte, has been under some fire recently. Here is some of the latest. Michelle Malkin vlogs and rips into Marcotte using her own profanity laden words against her.

Meanwhile upon feeling the heat over her past posts it appears Marcotte began cleaning up her past posts which is chronicled in stunning detail at OverLawyered, The Locker Room and if you want to see what other bloggers are saying about the issue checkout The Beltway Blogroll.

I don’t necessarily think I would call it that yet BUT there are some interesting questions coming up. I mentioned last week that John Edwards had hired two bloggers to staff his campaign blog. One of those bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, has been feeling some heat as others in the blogosphere sift through her personal site and pull up some interesting comments from the past.

As a blogger myself, who took down several older sites I wrote in my late teens/early twenties, I understand what it’s like to have your own words thrown back at you. Not in such a public way but the nature of blogging (writing quick rants and opinions) is bound to cause problems.

I also understand the precarious position you are in when you use this medium as a means of political argument and you trash someone. Then when you work in a job that pits you right in that persons office for one thing or another you have to sit there knowing your name is now signed in AND also attached to a bunch of blog posts trashing that person. Will they make the connection? Will they care? Chances are no, until your own name is public at which point someone is bound to start looking.

As more people blog the risk of being Dooced or simply of offending the people you love or work with rises. As bloggers are hired onto campaigns or corporations to do what they do best, the risk is pretty high that what made them credible to the public can now make them a liability.

imho, I believe it is the job of the campaign managers and the corporate managers to actually read the blogs of the people they hire (to blog and perhaps otherwise) just as they would vet their own candidate. Blogs are about immediacy, throwing your deepest thoughts out and not looking back. It makes for captivating reading but it also makes for potential problems, not just for the organization for the individual.