Pandagate Fallout Continues

Fidelis ("a Catholic-based advocacy organization established to help elect pro-life, pro-family and pro-religious liberty candidates to public office") has announced that they will be using the resignations of Edwards' bloggers (the second as of today) as a springboard for a series of ads, designed to draw attention this pressing issue:

Cella said: “This whole episode calls into question whether Edwards has the decisiveness and moral courage to lead our country.”

If having the "moral courage" to fire intemperate bloggers is the new Presidential litmus test, I suggest Obama go on a hiring spree over at Fleshbot.

That this blogger brouhaha has morphed into some resembling an actual news story (covered by the New York Times, ads, press releases) still kind of shocks me. While this narrative could be twisted to serve as evidence of the blogosphere's growing power, it's really a testament to the power of rage as a communications strategy (something bloggers know a thing or two about). Bill Donohue is a paranoid loon who would be right at home under a tin-foil miter -- now the Edwards campaign has a black eye that is enormously disproportionate to the error it made: I'd say their mistake wasn't hiring Marcotte so much as it was not doing the due diligence that either would have weighed against her employment or (having hired her with full knowledge of her past writings) at least would have prepared them for the outcry that was to come.

Speaking of due diligence, will news organizations in the future please look up some of the incendiary things Donohue has said in the past before quoting him about bigotry? At the very least, they should put his "anti-Catholic" slur in context. He's used the term so much (against such noted enemies of faith as Bill O'Reilly and Ann Landers) that at this point, it's what he shouts during any moment of ecstasy, religious or otherwise.