Melissa McEwan Resigns

Marjorie Campbell, marjorie@marjoriecampbell.com

With a stunningly different tone, and raising an evil that crosses all ideological lines, Melissa  McEwan resigned John Edwards' campaign yesterday.

There will be some who clamor to claim victory for my resignation, but I caution them that in doing so, they are tacitly accepting responsibility for those who have deluged my blog and my inbox with vitriol and veiled threats. It is not right-wing bloggers, nor people like Bill Donohue or Bill O'Reilly, who prompted nor deserve credit for my resignation, no matter how much they want it, but individuals who used public criticisms of me as an excuse to unleash frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation.

"Frightening ugliness" on the Internet - on which I've personally overdosed after a week visiting radical feminist blogs and commentary - reminds all of us that evil does not discriminate, compromise or rest.  It emerges - like slimy scum from the bowels of the earth - with no invitation and exploits the slightest license to proceed.  The vicious emails, for example, that Amanda Marcotte reports receiving post-resignation seethe with a violence and hatred that I find as alarming in content as inappropriate within any policy debate.

But we all have this delusion.  We cruise the Internet leisurely, for entertainment and exchange, only to stop suddenly short, our hearts pounding, like taking a picnic lunch to a public beheading.  This is the public bathroom - where we must enter with caution, expecting to find the worst behaviors being acted out in the semi-dark cloak of potty privacy.  There are no boundaries here - and I truly feel for the McEwans and Marcottes who, of a sudden, can't stand the severing of head and body and run frantically home clutching their uneaten meals. 

Yet, the rumpled sensibilities of these radical feminists, too, stun me.  Their own willingness to use profanity, discuss women's sexuality with utter vulgarity (very offensive language at this link) and invoke their gender and God-given bodies as the battleground for earthly power surely beckon others to respond in kind, nay, to up the ante with mounting venom.  I am not saying they deserve the HatEmail they are receiving - no one deserves an inbox filled with threatening attacks - but their surprise and outrage truly puzzle me.   Could they possibly believe that their own vulgarity falls within some bounds of "responsible discourse", while escalation in response does not?  Do they expect that their own distorted, boundary-testing, offense-giving content provides the "limits" which others can divine and will respect?  Are they that naive?

I just don't get it.  Honestly, I don't think they do either.