Amanda Marcotte

Amanda Marie Marcotte ^[2] (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".^[3]

Background

Born in El Paso, Texas, she was raised in the small town of Alpine in the west of the state. Around 2004, she began to write for Pandagon. She has written about political differences with her small-town family. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and writes for Slate and The Guardian.^[4][5]

Edwards campaign controversy

On January 30, 2007, the John Edwards 2008 presidential campaign hired Marcotte to act as the campaign's blogmaster.^[6] 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.^{[7][8][9][10]} 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.^[11][12][13]

Columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote, "Her hostility to religion and in particular the Catholic Church should alarm Edwards."^[14] Journalist Terry Moran wrote, on an ABC News blog, "her comments about other people's faiths could well be construed as hate speech."^[15]

Marcotte's most outspoken critic was Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, who publicly demanded that the Edwards campaign terminate Marcotte's appointment, claiming that she was anti-Catholic^[16][17][18] and calling her a "vulgar trash-talking" bigot.^[7] 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.^[19][20][21]

On February 12, 2007, the Catholic League denounced Marcotte's review of the film Children of Men^[22] as "anti-Christian".^[23] 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.^[24]

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."^[25]

Marcotte declared on her blog that people who defended the accused Duke students were "rape-loving scum".^[26] 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:"^[27]

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.^[28][29]

The New York Times^[30] and others^{[31][32][33][34][35][36]} made so much "hay" over what she wrote that she ended up deleting the post entirely.^[37] In an article that she wrote for Salon, she referred to this as the first in a series of "shitstorms" that caused her to resign from the John Edwards campaign^[38]

Print publications

In 2008, Marcotte published her first book, entitled It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.^[39] 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."^[40] 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."^[41] The image immediately came under fire for perpetuating racisttropes, and, consequently, Marcotte and Seal Press changed the cover image.^[41]

When the book was finally released, it again set off controversy in the feminist blogosphere for use of images that many saw as racist.^[42][43] To illustrate the volume, the publishers used images taken from the 1950s Joe Maneely comic, Lorna, the Jungle Girl,^[44] 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."^[40] Marcotte subsequently issued an apology, adding that a second printing of It's a Jungle Out There will not contain illustrations.^[45]

In 2010 Marcotte's second book, Get Opinionated, was published.^[1]

References

See also

• Jessica Valenti

External links

• Pandagon blog
• Why I had to quit the Edwards campaign article by Marcotte in Salon