Second blogger gone

It’s official, offensive blogger Melissa McEwan has left the John Edwards campaign.

A second blogger working for Democratic presidential prospect John Edwards quit Tuesday under pressure from conservative critics who said her previous online messages were anti-Catholic.

Note how the Associated Press writes this. She was “under pressure from conservative critics,” which makes her a sympathetic target. Critics “who said” her blog “messages were anti-Catholic.” Well, that shifts the responsibility to the real targets of what was clearly hate speech. And McEwan appears to be assuming not a repentant role, but one of a stricken martyr.

Melissa McEwan wrote on her personal blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, that she left the campaign because she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the level of attention focused on her and her family.

So she left because the attention her Catholic bashing was drawing made her “increasingly uncomfortable.”

“This was a decision I made, with the campaign’s reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign,” she said Tuesday night.

The campaign was reluctant to support her resignation? John Edwards wanted to keep a spokesperson on his staff who was public with bigoted, ugly comments aimed at the Catholic Church? And she’s the target of “sustained ideological attacks”? She’s not even good at spinning. She simply was a liability to the campaign, all on her own.

McEwan’s resignation comes just one day after another blogger, Amanda Marcotte, left the Edwards staff for similar reasons.

And similarly, by resigning, and not fired by the presidential  hopeful. Some prominent Catholics have been calling for the removal of these two loose cannons since their vitriol hit the public radar last week.

The national Catholic based advocacy group Fidelis also called on Edwards to fire the staff members.

Joseph Cella, the head of the group, said the decision not to fire the staff members would likely hurt Edwards’ ability to draw Catholic support.

“Keeping such an anti-Catholic staffer on his payroll will do significant damage to John Edwards as he seeks to court voters in the heavily Catholic states like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Michigan,” Cella said.

It’s puzzling. Because most political candidates wind up in some sort of firsthand or secondhand scandal somewhere along the way, and they’re usually quick at troubleshooting. Edwards may be oddly silent about this, but his actions are speaking loudly.