In a typically unbiased article, Salon.com’s Time Grieve reports that the right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps.

The right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps — John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach, Salon has learned.

The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare’s Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan “anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots,” and an accompanying article on the controversy in the New York Times this morning, put extra pressure on the campaign.

Speculation from sources that the two bloggers might be rehired was bolstered by Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, who said in an e-mail that she would “caution [Salon] against reporting that they have been fired. We will have something to say later.”

Notice how Grieve sets up the victimhood theater; if Edwards chooses to distance himself from these creeps (bad publicity this early in the race), it must be the fault of “the right-wing blogosphere”—not the vicious, hate-filled words Marcotte and McEwan been writing for years.

UPDATE at 2/7/07 11:57:04 am:

Glenn Reynolds makes a good point:

A lot of the lefty bloggers are up in arms that this has become a scandal. (The desperation is apparent in posts like this one, especially when you follow the links back and compare the actual posts with Marcotte’s blogging). I suspect that this is because a lot of them would like to join the establishment, and now fear that their prior anti-establishment rantings will get in the way. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s more Pandagon-like airbrushing of blog archives over the next few weeks.

Indeed.