Last Wednesday I noted a story by the WaPo “Sleuth” blogger showing that John Edwards’ campaign was harvesting the names of people sending emails of support to Edwards’ cancer-stricken wife for Edwards’ campaign fundraising list. Andrew Sullivan linked to my post, with a post consisting entirely of the following text:
A swipe at Edwards and a defense. Count me among the latter.
Bizarrely, Sullivan linked for “a defense” to the very Sleuth article I linked to. I have no clue what he’s talking about – the Sleuth item contained the Edwards campaign’s terse response, but not any sort of real denial.
Anyway, today the Sleuth reported that Edwards has modified the form to include what the Sleuth describes as “an “opt-out” option” but actually appears from the factual description to be an opt-in option; either way, a tacit admission that they couldn’t defend the prior practice. Sullivan hasn’t responded, so I still have no idea what he was talking about or why he thinks it’s OK to hit people up for campaign cash when they are just offering sympathy.
No worries, whatever reason he had for doing it is probably outdated & a new one has taken its place by now.
“whatever reason he had for doing it is probably outdated & a new one has taken its place by now.”
As good an assessment of Sullivan as I’ve heard. No worries, indeed.