Monday, August 25, 2008

Brief, but stupid

The death of a city:

This statistic from Matt Feeney at The American Scene is truly stunning:
Over the last 50 years, Detroit has lost almost a million of its former 1.85 million people. About three-quarters of those one million people were white.
Bzzzt, paging Steve Sailer, Steve Sailer, will you please come to the WHITE courtesy phone? Thank you.
Quick thoughts. Megan is stunned to find out about white flight from Detroit? No one tell her about sundown towns, she'll have an an aneurysm. Also, 75% being white means that the folk leaving roughly mirrored the population breakdown of the US as a whole. Yes, the demographics of the city changed a lot, but this simple number suggests that wasn't because of white flight so much as black migration. I have no idea what the truth is, but then I also have no idea why Megan seems to find this statistic problematic. I guess she's afraid of a black planet.

The silly season continues:
The political stories just get stupider. Don't we have anything substantive to talk about?
Apparently you don't, Megan. You linked to a story you think is too stupid to deserve notice. You effectively said "Don't look at THAT, RIGHT THERE, THAT THING! No, to your right, don't look at... yeah, you've got it now, don't acknowledge it exists."
This is the same journalistic principle that leads Fox News to run specials on the threat of young sexuality and its expression that feature entire episodes of Girls Gone Wild in the background. It's shocking and distressing and horrible, and they have footage.
Expect a great deal more clutching of pearls while linking to sludge. Megan is entering her Peggy Noonan phase.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Substantive stuff, like recipes for macaroni and cheese, links to pretty dresses Megan wants to buy at Banana Republic, one minute Youtube jokes...if only everybody followed her example, the internet could cure cancer.

Then again, this is a person who is stunned to learn about white flight from Detroit. We should go easy on her. Her definition of "substantive" could be off kilter due to having an extreme case of the stupids.

Anonymous said...

Megan is half Peggy Noonan, half Kathleen Parker, and half David Brooks. Which is to say, she's horrible.

spencer said...

Come on, guys. We all know what Megan's getting at. That other 250,000 actually should only be counted as about 166,667 people, which means the statistics are overinflated and someone is clearly trying to commit some waste, fraud and abuse. Duh.

Anonymous said...

The Sailerite influence at the Atlantic site is heavy and sickening. Disparage Sailer and hordes of his worshipers show up and go nuts. But I guess you can expect that since Ross Douthat is Sailer's bosom buddy and occasional backrub partner.