Friday, November 2, 2007

Tbogg vs. Megan

for real.
Vote for tbogg, and for Sadly, No!, yah bastards.
Or, since tbogg is easily winning, use your vote to make sure Megan comes in last in her category. She's only two votes ahead, as of this writing.

Update:
Scratch that, vote for tbogg. An Israeli blog got several hundred votes since I posted this last night, thanks to the Sabbath ending and its readers being allowed to use computers again.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, I check in here for amusement, but now I'm beginning to wonder where you get this anger and..is it..resentment...? C'mon, let's here why you're really 'gunning' for Megan. What is it that so offends...? You can run down to the corner and get a copy of the NYT if you want to read about people with a bigger sense of importance than their intelligence indicates and they all far outweigh McArdle in influence. Sooo..I doubt you'll come clean, but hey, it might make for interesting reading.

brad said...

heheheheheh. Thanks, e-m.
Come clean? I'm a grad student in philosophy, a rich 'kid', n not attracted to her. Where, exactly, does resentment come in?
Maybe, like I said in the very first post here, I'm being a jackass? (And procrastinating on real work.)

As for anger, 2 points. First, I loathe Megan, not hate. I try to avoid hate whenever possible, and generally manage not even to hate folk such as Cheney.
Second, I'm angry because she calls herself a "left libertarian" and is part of a ever-growing trend of co-opting left leaning media and putting in faux, Clintonite centrist, liberals such as Yglesias. Yeah, more than a few have asked why not focus on Yglesias, then. He puts more effort into his work, meaning so would I, and he's not so offensive as Megan, or blatantly unqualified. I think Yglesias is wrong and a genuine, non-hawkish, liberal or lefty should have his position, but at least he's trying.

brad said...

Oof. I have to stop posting comments without reading them.
"...and generally manage even to *not* hate folk such as Cheney."
I know, I know.

Anonymous said...

brad - Interesting reading. I'll keep reading, not because you're contributing to the dialectic (much) but because it's kinda fun. Interesting point though about "left leaning media", and the hiring of "Clintonite centrists". Well, that's the effect of the net...the more 'voices' you have, the more the publication is going to feel compelled to find people 'challenging' the status quo. If nothing else, you could say she forces her opponents to develop better arguments and I think the comments section is revealing. So, with Sullivan, McArdle, Yglesias, Ambinder, Douthat, and Fallows it's hard to say the publication is "leaning" in any direction. No one can say there's any shortage of voices out there; in the meanwhile....fire away.

Anonymous said...

Its "leaning in the direction" of dumbing down the discourse. Fallows is a JOURNALIST. All caps, he deserves them. He uses his blog to fill in the spaces of his REPORTING. All caps because he actually goes out and reports. Megan, is the dumbest and shrillest, of course, but none of the others demonstrate the professionalism or the (classical) liberalism that has been the trademark of the Atlantic. Andrew Sullivan is just a methed up self-hating queen who has mastered the medium and who (occasionally) echoes the faux Oxbridge stylings of fellow jackass Hitchens. Yglesias, well watch talking blogging heads, or whatever utterly ridiculous site it was that had Matt and Megan talking, for an hour or so about nothing in particular. Beyond the sheer spectacle that was his man-child squeaky-voiced screen presence, he has a serious jones for Megan. It was like watching a real life Jonh Hughes movie where the geeky guy just can't quite bring himself to tell (the equally geeky but not realizing it) Molly Ringwald that he has always loved her. Anyway, my point is, what a mess.

Anonymous said...

ohhh, you almost had me until "Andrew Sullivan is just a methed up self-hating queen...."

Sorry, Andrew may be lots of things which include being occasionally self-righteous. Speaking as a gay man, and having met my share of "methed up self-hating queen(s)..", I can definitely say he ain't one of them.

Andrew does have a voice, backed up by a pretty lengthy history of books and articles explaining how he arrived at his political philosophy. I may not agree with much of what he has to say (especially on religion), but he is consistent and without a doubt has a point of view. I'm thinking he isn't wearing the tiara when he's writing those biting blog entries attacking every end of the Bush administration (yes, yes, one he voted for). At least he admits his errors.

Speaking of the bloggingheads appearance (you actually watched all of that????), I'd say Megan's preening was more obvious than Matt's obsession.

Just sayin'.

Alright..back to balancing my checkbook...

M. Bouffant said...

Let me submit my 2¢, as brad shouldn't get all the blame.
There's no reason for The Atlantic to have an "econo-blogger." I'm sure all the Atlantic readers who need investment advice are able to get professionals to lose their money for them, while said pros take a nice commission. The Atlantic is not The Economist, & shouldn't have its bandwidth wasted w/ this sort of thing. Ms. McArdle essentially links to the posts of actual economists, adds a few lines of her own, and then steps back to watch her commenteriat dispute the statistics, & how they were gathered, & blah, blah, yada, yada, etc. When she's not wasting everyone's time w/ the dismal science, she posts trivial, inane crap, or makes like Jonah Goldberg & asks for personal advice, like "What's a good title search co. in the D. C. area?" And she's a lazy writer & blogger (doesn't even check her links when posted, for example, & leaves awful typos) & a crummy writer besides (no one should have to read a short item more than once in order to comprehend it, for example). Not to mention how horrid "libertarianism" is.
Other than a link or two to her Jane Galt site from Sullivan (who truly has mastered the medium, as anonymous said, though I suspect w/ the assistance of interns, & a sad lack of comments) I'd never really given her much thought until Sadly, No! brought her to my attention, under the heading
"Attractive Ivy-League Woman Gets Job." I resent the living fuck out of privilege, & after reading a bit of S,N! & visiting Asymmetrical Information to see for myself, resolved to use my time to post a comment (pro or con) on each of her items. Well, that didn't last long, but I was happy to jump right in & work w/ brad in his quixotic quest to purge McArdle. I used to enjoy The Atlantic @ dentist's & doctor's offices. Now it's ruined for me.
Anon has done a fine job summing up why Megan as opposed to the others @ "Voices." (And she's the newest, & easiest to nip in the bud.) brad's recognition of the faux-liberalism trend is important to our political discourse.
And I'll add that the more I read Megan, the more disgusted I become, though I didn't really set out to be more than a smart-ass w/ this effort. Combined w/ my inability to be convinced by anything I write that's complementary, I must express myself in forms of anger & revulsion. At least I'm taking it out on someone better off than I am, rather than my target, who likes to pick on the poor, swarthy & powerless.

Anonymous said...

In support of my position, exmanhattanite, I would offer Andrew Sullivan's recent performance on the Bill Maher show... I have seen my fair share of tweaked out persons, and Andrew was most certainly tweaked. "Self-hating" because he refuses to surrender the most fundamental point of his right wing heritage, namely that we are all fundamentally equal. Andrew clings to the notion that there is a basis to prejudice... only now it is race that separate us rather than sexuality (his desparate attachment to the James Watson wing of race and IQ). Sorry, but the act of recognizing how bitterly you have been oppressed (on account of his sexuality) does nothing to excuse your oppression of another.

Adam Eli Clem said...

Brad, I think the next poll question ought to be "Who's the Biggest Methed-Up Self-Hating Queen?"

a) Megan McArdle
b) Andrew Sullivan
c) Andy Dick
d) Tony Blankley
e) John Fund

...et cetera.

Anonymous said...

anonymous says:

In support of my position, exmanhattanite, I would offer Andrew Sullivan's recent performance on the Bill Maher show... I have seen my fair share of tweaked out persons, and Andrew was most certainly tweaked. "Self-hating" because he refuses to surrender the most fundamental point of his right wing heritage, namely that we are all fundamentally equal. Andrew clings to the notion that there is a basis to prejudice... only now it is race that separate us rather than sexuality (his desparate attachment to the James Watson wing of race and IQ). Sorry, but the act of recognizing how bitterly you have been oppressed (on account of his sexuality) does nothing to excuse your oppression of another.


OK, now you're off into wingnuttery. I've read his statements on James Watson and he hardly seems attached at all. When you can't have discourse on a controversial subject like race, then you know your political correctness is showing. Wouldn't be much of a blog if that were the case, now would it?

"...oppression of another."...? Hmmm, you're going to have to square this with his very vocal support of Obama, but I suspect you'll have to get even further into wingnut-land to do that.

OK, getting back to Megan.....