Hate Mongerers - 1; Progressive Ideals - 0

Color me profoundly pissed.

It's with profound sadness I report that it is true, that Amanda Marcotte, long-time blogger at Pandagon (the site is currently down although you can find a note there from her) who was asked and accepted a spot on the John Edwards campaign team for his 2008 Democratic presidential bid, has resigned.

I've written about my reaction to the nastiness stirred up by the Catholic League (see my previous post here), an organization that seems to exist solely to stroke the ego of hate-brimming nasty men like William Donohue who can say just horrible things about others but who will brook NO criticism themselves, over past personal blog postings by Amanda and fellow Edwards campaign blogger Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister. With it, I voiced my dissastisfaction with John Edwards himself for comments he made about their posts, something I would think he and his team certainly should have familiarized themselves before asking Amanda and Melissa, two extraordinary women, to join the team.

To allow Donohue and his miserable crew to "win" is too much. But I'm trying to keep my anger in check at the Edwards' side of this issue because I do believe Edwards has worked hard on poverty issues in the last few years and his position on universal health care is certainly promising.

Yet there is one more thing I want to say: I am tired of progressives/liberals/lefties and anyone else (like 85% of America and 90% of the rest of the world) who exists to the left of the most extreme right feeling obligated to capitulate to the worst of the hate-mongerers. If we truly believe what we stand for, we should not always be so willing to step aside to appease people for whom nothing but the total annihilation of those different from themselves will ever be acceptable. Such people don't want a dialogue; they just want to spew rabid monologues upon which no one is allowed to comment except to applaud them.

::kicking soapbox back under my desk but in no way pretending to be a happy camper::