One of my favorite writers is Melissa McEwan, who hosts a group blog called Shakesville – which I link to all the time here, so you should be at least familiar with it if you follow along with what I write at all.
Melissa is one of the most eloquent, intelligent writers I’ve ever run across. She seems to have some of the same ideas I do, but where mine are half-formed notions that cross my mind, she examines them in detail and depth that would never have occurred to me. She is, in a word, brilliant. I’ve thought for ages that she should be writing on a national level – for a major paper or magazine, so when I heard she was hired by the John Edwards campaign I was ecstatic – finally, she’d get her due. I hope every one there realizes how extraordinary she is — please.
However, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue and some other right-wing attack groups like Michelle Malkin have started publicly criticizing the Edwards campaign for hiring Melissa, based on feminist posts she’s made in the past on her blog, criticizing the Catholic church for being the homophobic, misogynist bastards that they are.
The story has shown up in major papers like Salon and now the New York Times, and there are rumors that the Edwards campaign is considering firing Melissa.
I hope to goodness they don’t succumb to pressure and do that, because that would be the indication to me that Edwards doesn’t have the stones to be my president in 2008.
I’m going to make a list of all the angry things I’ve ever written about the Catholic Church on this blog — and you know I grew-up Catholic, so there are dozens of inflammatory things I’ve written — and post them all in one place, so if there’s ever any question, they’ll know right where to look.