The worst part is over

I've watched the whole fucking "diavlog", in installments, and I'm going to put up three posts on the fun (Nutella will probably join in on the religion section later). The first post, which you're reading, is general thoughts and highlights from the first 45 mins or so. The second will be an in depth examination of the 15 minutes MM and AA spent discussing "trolls" and why they both engender such frequent and heated criticism. This will run long, n might have to be broken into two parts. The final post will be an as brief as possible somewhat serious response to the self-serving critiques MM and AA offer. I'm not particularly phased by their assertions, but they give the ground to reinforce a few points that are worth making periodically, such as why this blog isn't titled "Shut up, Megan McArdle".

On then to general reflections and the first half. Let's get the mandatory lookism based assaults out of the way first.
Megan looks like a little boy with her hair pulled back that way, and not in a theoretically flattering androgynous way. Ann Althouse (who I am not and will remain in a state of not existing as for the duration of this post, thus not requiring me to repeatedly state the fact) seems to have found the perfect distance from her webcam for her face to look like it's in focus without actually being in focus, saving her a great deal of prep time.
The lookism requirement met, we can move on to note that Megan says "sort of" in every other sentence she utters in the entire fucking hour of dual monologists pretending to have a conversation. Every 10th time or so she substitutes "kind of", but there's always a qualifier, a weasel word left in so she can back out of damn near every single assertion she offers in the whole session in case anyone ever brings it up later. Ann appears to be engaged in at least two other activities during the hour, at times clearly not actually listening to Megan in favor of typing on a computer. Watching this makes me understand much more clearly how Ann has survived and even thrived in academia. She knows which motions to go through, how to seem like she's paying attention to something she doesn't give a shit about, and how to condescend in a way that seems almost caring. Urgh.

There's lots of stupid in the first 45 minutes, of course, but I only have it in me to relive a few greatest hits right now. Ann has a great line around 2:40 in where she claims Obama is kind of boring when he speaks "if you think about it the wrong way", and another good bit at about 14:15 where she talks about how people call her crazy and a drunk, to which Megan responds "don't give in to the haters".
Later the ladies bring up the Edwards affair, agree they shouldn't talk about it out of respect for Elizabeth, then proceed to talk about it for 3-4 minutes.
At 36:04 Megan says "fucking moron". She wasn't actually calling anyone that, I just want to note she swore and thus now automatically loses all future debates.
At 38:25 Megan claims a large number of evolution advocates "just don't grok the scientific method". I would make a joke about this if I wasn't exhausted.
Better snark in the morning, right now I'm drained.