Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister wasn't hired for blogging. It sounds like she was sort of a go-to online communications consultant kind of person.
Bryan spots an upside and a downside for the blogosphere in the incident:
Blogs in general have a collective new dent thanks to the promotion of two of its worst to positions where they would attract mainstream coverage and attention. The credibility of better, more reasonable bloggers on both sides will suffer for this episode. And to the extent that the two actually received threats, it’s deplorable and unacceptable. Around here at Hot Air, we know that feeling all too well.
More: There may be one silver lining in all of this. If being a potty mouthed bigot limits one’s blogging career opportunities, maybe there will be fewer potty mouthed bigots among the blogs. That, I would consider a substantial win.
Here's McEwan's announcement, which is much more sane than Marcotte's was.
No one need clamor for credit because Marcotte and McEwan and Edwards brought this all on themselves. Edwards had a responsibility to check them out and consider this backlash before he hired them, and if he wasn't smart enough to do so, they should have realized it themselves and warned him.There will be some who clamor to claim victory for my resignation, but I caution them that in doing so, they are tacitly accepting responsibility for those who have deluged my blog and my inbox with vitriol and veiled threats. It is not right-wing bloggers, nor people like Bill Donohue or Bill O'Reilly, who prompted nor deserve credit for my resignation, no matter how much they want it, but individuals who used public criticisms of me as an excuse to unleash frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation.