War Room - Salon.com

Wednesday, Feb 14, 2007 00:22 EST

Second blogger resigns from Edwards campaign

Melissa McEwan says "frightening ugliness" from critics prompted her decision to step down.

By Tim Grieve

A second progressive blogger subjected to attacks from the Catholic League's Bill Donohue has just stepped down from the John Edwards campaign.

In a post up at Shakespeare's Sister, Melissa McEwan says she decided to leave her job as a part-time technical advisor because "remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign, and making me increasingly uncomfortable with my and my family's level of exposure."

McEwan says that neither Donohue nor right-wing bloggers should get "credit" for her resignation. Rather, she says she decided to resign from the campaign after "individuals who used public criticisms" of her unleashed " frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation."

McEwan's resignation comes just one day after that of blogger Amanda Marcotte , who announced Sunday that she had quit the Edwards campaign because Donohue's attacks were "creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign." Not all of Marcotte's coughs were involuntary: Even after Edwards released a statement last week in which he said has was "personally offended" by some of the previous writings of Marcotte and McEwan, Marcotte posted a movie review at Pandagon in which she said the "Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels."

Donohue -- whom Marcotte subsequently called an "anti-Semite, right wing lackey whose entire job is to create non-controversies in order to derail liberal politics" -- renewed his call for Marcotte's firing after her movie review posted. Donohue renewed his call for McEwan's firing after Marcotte stepped down. He didn't get exactly what he wanted in either case -- both women say they resigned on their own volition -- but he's got to be thinking that he's two-for-two tonight.