Time-Traveling Blogger Beats Dead Hippie

By David Gutcheon|McClatchy Newspapers

A blogger in the employ of The Atlantic Monthly magazine traveled back in time to beat a dead war protester, it was discovered today.

Users of the internet noticed an alteration in a famous image of the May 4, 1970 violence at Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio. That Pulitzer-prize winning photograph, taken by John Filo, showed the body of Jeffrey Miller, one of the four students fatally shot by National Guardsmen during a campus protest, lying on the ground beneath another, distraught youth, Mary Ann Vecchio.

In the altered image, Ms. Vecchio's visage has been replaced by that of Megan McArdle, who blogs for The Atlantic Monthly and is shown brandishing a length of 2" x 4" pine lumber over Mr. Miller's body.

At press time, Ms. McArdle had not responded to numerous press inquiries and is believed to be under questioning by Federal authorities. Her employer issued a brief statement, expressing some concern for the alteration of the historical record and apparent mistreatment of a corpse.

The question of how Ms. McArdle was able to manipulate the space-time continuum remains unanswered, but a colleague of Ms. McArdle claimed that he'd recently overheard her talking about a "time belt" while in the Atlantic Monthly's men's lavatory. "Ever since that [Village Voice] column pegged her as a lipstick libertarian, she's been [a] persona non grata in the ladies room," said Andrew Sullivan, author of "The Soul of a Conservative" and a frequent guest on political talk shows. "She said something like 'Time belt, check,' then just a lot of muffled grunting."

Early speculation that Ms. McArdle's appearance in the photo was an elaborate hoax was shunted aside when it was discovered that John Filo's original negatives registered the change, as well as the negatives for images taken by another photographer on the day. The 2" x 4" shown in Ms. Mcardle's hand has apparently been recovered from the living room mantle of her Washington, D.C. area home. Preliminary analysis of human tissue found on the weapon has linked it to Jeffrey Miller.

Friends and professional acquaintances of Ms. McArdle were notably unified in offering up an explanation for her behavior. "She's wanted to beat a hippie with a 2" x 4" since she was 7 years-old," said one libertarian blogger, who, like others interviewed, asked to remain anonymous. "I presume she thought that this was the least harmful, and least legally actionable, way of going about it." Others agreed, with one liberal blogger adding, "She must be disappointed that she couldn't find a dead black hippie. She thinks that black people smell funny."

Dr. Jennifer Stumpf, a theoretical physicist at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies, suggested that Ms. McArdle might have manipulated time by some combination of technology and an abstract concept known as the Loop of Infinite Self-Regard. "Basically, LOISR posits that an individual could, conceivably, travel backwards through time by shutting out all sensory input and focusing on themselves, generating a singularity of consciousness." Some guidance system would be needed to limit the traveler's range and number of destinations, otherwise, "They'd be all over the past all at once," said Stumpf.

Megan McArdle's colleague Andrew Sullivan, for one, finds Stumpf's theory plausible. "Talk about a loop of infinite self-regard. That's why Megan was grunting: she was shoving her head up her ass."