Katha Pollitt mirrors many of my thoughts about the recent spat over Edward’s bloggers over at TPMCafe. Her question? How did many others not see the problem?

“The man is running for president, not king of the blogosphere, and he’s running now, not in some putative future when words like [add your own Pandagon/Shakespseare Sister expletives] have lost their punch. He wants — he needs — the votes of people who have never looked at a blog in their lives, who are deeply religious, culturally staid, and easily offended in about a thousand ways.”

It is a well reasoned and interesting read not just because I agree but because it touches on some very basic principals of campaigning.

“We liberals would certainly make a fuss about a Republican campaign hire who had written posts that could be interpreted as racist, sexist, boorish or the like. (We might not be as successful as Wm Donohue was with Amanda and Melissa, though, because the MSM might not amplify our complaints.) If the blogger tried to explain that the remarks were taken out of context, were making some subtle political point, were typical blogspeak and so on, we would just pile on the more ferociously.”