To have the courage of one's convictions

I've been loosely following the Edwards campaign dust-up over his ninny bloggers, and am suitably impressed by the candidate's inactions. It's early in the season yet (good gravy, the season oughtn't really be starting for another eight months, if this were a sane land!) , and already we see the rust all over the armor of John Edwards.

This man is supposedly vying for the seat as Commander in Chief of the strongest military in the world, as leader of the free world. Still, he can't make a solid decision which might, in the long run, benefit not merely his campaign, but the tone of conversation in this country. In fact, his judgment comes into question even before his courage does, if he and his team thought that hiring Amanda Marcotte, specifically, was a good idea.

On the one side, we have a pair of nitwit leftist bloggers (one in particular) whom his team invited aboard the campaign bus, as it were. On the other side, we have... rational people.

And, despite what the MSM is trying to sell us, the trouble doesn't lie in the language -- although there are enough "f-bombs" in the Marcotte material to make an old English teacher swoon. The trouble lies in the double-standard demonstrated by a blogger who thinks that a person who says that, according to his teachings, homosexuality (or extramarital sex at all) might be a sin is plainly a bigot of the worst sort, and yet she finds nothing wrong with insulting the largest Christian group in the world today, by referring to their beliefs in pornographic terms. She finds nothing wrong with using her soapbox to encourage miscarriages of justice. She finds nothing wrong with objectifying others, while calling herself a liberal and a feminist.

And this person was chosen by the "Two Americas" campaign team as the perfect internet voice of the candidate. This appears to prove their point -- there are two Americas, and one of them is where the leftwits are king.

I sincerely hope that this will, ultimately, cost John Edwards his chance, and perhaps, even his senate seat. If he can't decide that a foul-mouthed vitriolic, hate-filled bigot doesn't speak for him in any way, shape, or form, then he doesn't deserve to hold public office at any level.

But then, he is in the Democratic party, and they've already set the standard awfully low on that issue, these past few years. They've already sunk level with -- and then surpassed by miles -- the Republicans.