Shorter:Why Marriage?
I am not being contrarian by needing a note from the gov't. telling me w/ whom I may sleep. Also, Mr. McSudelman (of the spotty employment history) has figured that if I haven't been fired by now I never will be, so I'm kind of a cash cow. Mooo.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Cheap Shot At Non-Contrarianism
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20 comments:
This blog makes me sad. The authors are clearly intelligent, yet waste their time on this childish drivel. I don't even get why this blog exists. Petty sniping, personal attacks, grammar corrections, discussions of Megan's marriage preferences... whatever happened to constructive and nuanced arguments?
Do you think you're adding to the debate with what you've written? Do you think you've helped a single person keep a more open mind with your polarizing posts? Do you even think you've changed a single person's opinion of Megan McArdle?
Megan is not perfect by any means, but she's not the ideologue you make her out to be. In fact, taking a quick look at both your blogs, I think most centrist observers would label yours the more ideological of the two by far.
Please stop and write something constructive. I promise I'll be the first to read it.
What argument should we start with--the organ harvesting or the hand-waving of 10 million uninsured? The argument that people are incapable of losing weight? The satisfied nod at seeing homeless people tossed out of shelters, which may be necessary but is not exactly a cause for rejoicing?
Automatically giving someone respect and power because they seem important is utter foolishness. Having constructive and nuanced conversations with idiots is a waste of time.
(Although sometimes one does it anyway.)
Dimitar, that comment makes me sad. The author is clearly intelligent yet wastes his time on this childish drivel. I don't even get why this comment exists. Complaints about accurate insults, denigrating the person whose denigration is intended, discussing a topic that its target repeatedly blogs about. Whatever happened to understanding mockery instead of demanding boring, didactic crap.
Do you think you're adding to this blog with what you've written? Do you think a single person on this blog wants to help anyone "open their mind?" Do you think cataloguing someone's failures doesn't change a person's opinion of that someone?
You may not be perfect by any means, but you sure don't your description of what our writings attempt is not what our writings are made out to be. I think most observers fluent in writing and its styles would label you who as the person who criticizes something whose intent is completely misunderstood.
Please, stop and write something relevant. I promise, I'll be the first to parrot it in mockery.
Hey, wait a minute, NOT. You already ARE first to parrot it in mockery.
I get it!
I don't understand why anyone at Megan's blog cared enough about whether or not she should get married to comment on it. Amazing stuff.
I really shouldn't have expected anything different. Sad.
Shorter Dimitar: CONCERN TROLL IS CONCERNED
And since (as I believe Susan of Texas noted), they are getting married so that he has health insurance, we know that he (although relatively young) is Not Well, and will be damaging the Atlantic's coffers. Now that would be an Economics post that McMegan could write.
But she should already be worried. Via Felix Salmon, I see that her successor is already auditioning.
"What argument should we start with--the organ harvesting or the hand-waving of 10 million uninsured? The argument that people are incapable of losing weight? The satisfied nod at seeing homeless people tossed out of shelters, which may be necessary but is not exactly a cause for rejoicing?"
Or "anti-war protesters should be beaten to death with 2x4s." Or "waiting in line overnight for an iPhone is the same as being a refugee." Oh, we could go on and on.
Well, Dim., she ran an item about why she was getting married. That's why I had something to type about it.
If we thought there was a chance of reasoned debate, we'd all be in her comments section, waiting for her to delete us when we came up w/ a powerful argument.
However, since she can barely argue anything when there's no one disagreeing w/ her, we are reduced to petty sniping, personal attacks, grammar corrections, discussions of Megan's marriage preferences... & the like, in our Quixotic effort to improve the editorial content of a once great magazine.
P. S.: Anyone who has seen the stark choices between the "left" & the forces of fascist repression & feudalism that Ms. McArdle espouses, but can't perceive those differences, & needs to have his mind made up for him in some sort of "debate" is a fucking idiot.
I didn't expect anything different.
And I am happy.
Okay, I wanted to give these guys a chance to step up for themselves before I wrote anything, so here goes...
This blog makes me sad.
Dude, if any blog "makes you sad," you either need therapy, a thicker skin, or a combination of both.
The authors are clearly intelligent, yet waste their time on this childish drivel.
Yeah, a whole thirty minutes a week, down the drain. They're big boys; I think they can decide what is or is not a waste of their time.
I don't even get why this blog exists.
Brad posted a mission statement. It's in the sidebar to the left.
Petty sniping, personal attacks, grammar corrections, discussions of Megan's marriage preferences...
Funny, you could almost have been describing Megan's blog to a tee. The funny thing is, people shouldn't have to point out grammar and spelling mistakes on a daily basis on what is supposed to be a professional journalism site. As for Megan's marriage, she's the one incessantly bringing it up on the pages of the Atlantic - a publication that used to be a pillar of American intellectualism. Now it's all about what kind of flowers Megan wants at her wedding. Sorry, but nearly anything a person leaves for public consumption is fair game for ridicule.
Do you think you're adding to the debate with what you've written? Do you think you've helped a single person keep a more open mind with your polarizing posts? Do you even think you've changed a single person's opinion of Megan McArdle?
Do you think that's what this site is even trying to do? Could you be more condescending? Could you maybe go find a blog that does those things if that's what your looking for? Can you at least agree that isn't the kind of thing everyone who blogs is trying to do? Can you admit that maybe sometimes people just want to have a little bit of snarky fun?
I think most centrist observers would label yours the more ideological of the two by far.
In my experience, most people who consider themselves to be "centrist observers" are anything but.
Please stop and write something constructive.
How about the guys who run this site write what they want and if you don't like it, you go somewhere else? Who do you think you are, telling other people what they should or should not be writing on their own damn blog?
I promise I'll be the first to read it.
Believe it or not, I'm pretty sure the guys writing this aren't doing so with the worry that you'll read it or not in mind. I know, sit down and take a minute to absorb it. It's not all about you and what YOU want, Dimitar. The blogosphere is a huge place. Go look for your self-important, constructive, nuanced debate out there. I promise you'll find it if you search hard enough.
In the meantime, I hope these guys continue to snark and mock the fact that Megan can barely string together a grammatcially correct sentence without mispelling at least one word - an English major at that! - at least once a day. She's got a ridiculously provincial, black-and-white world view. She's arrogant, pretentious, self-important, and an insufferable braggart to boot. This is professional journalism we're talking about, not some boondock blog written by an unpaid amateur. She's out of her league and has no business calling herself a journalist. It's absurd she's being paid for what she does. Anything noting as much should be equally absurd. Megan truly has the critics she deserves. I'm shocked anyone takes her idiocy seriously.
M. Bouffant, applause for your P.S.
Forget about the troll, guys, what about "A Long, Long Post About My Reasons For Opposing National Health Care"? Jesus Hieronymus Christ, she hits the George Carlin trifecta on every fucking line. I mean, come on:
But the reason that people in Britain know about things like herceptin for early stage breast cancer is a robust private market in the US - Or could it be, I dunno, the media or teh intert00bz, since we're actually talking about "knowing about"? But forget that and let's focus on the irony - wasn't it the UK private insurance giant AXA PPP who initially refused to cover herceptin, even after NICE approved it? Oh and by the way, Genentech (who developed herceptin) is owned by Hoffmann-La Roche, a Swiss company. Where does the robust US private market come in?
So in the absence of a robust private US market - OMFG Obama is totally gonna destroy the private US market!1!!
...theoretical innovation is not the same thing as product innovation ... An academic identifies targets. A pharma researcher finds out whether those targets can be activated with a molecule. - She really doesn't know jack squat about science, does she? And I luv the way she says "an academic" instead of "a scientist". Servers them well, those pretentious elitist assholes sitting in their ivory towers performing experiments without any practical purpose whatsoever!
The government is not going to price to some unknowable socially optimal amount of pharma market power. Ah yes, another vintage Meganism - to argue against something no sane person would suggest ("uknowable socially optim..." what the fuck does that even mean?). The government is going to do one simple thing any large entity does: buy in bulk with a discount wherever it can. That's what everyone wanted Medicare to do back in /add date/ when Dubya and his cronies put a stop to that.
I was uninsured for more than two years after grad school, with an autoimmune disease and asthma.
Someone who's been reading her much more attentively than me (God bless you, btw) remind me: doesn't she have rich parents? Didn't she go travelling or something?
And a final one that REALLY pissed me off:
When you listen to obesity experts, or health wonks, talk, their assertions boil down to the idea that overweight people are either too stupid to understand why they get fat, or have not yet been made sufficiently aware of society's disgust for their condition.
Would it be too much to ask for one, just one, example? I thought so. And in case anyone is interested, it's not so much the food, as the lack of exercise that's the real problem.
... any of the overweight people I have ever known ...
They either didn't care, or felt powerless to control their hunger.
Because as everyone knows, fat people are fat because they eat all the time because are hungry all the time. Quick, lock the fridge, fatty's coming!
What does another public campaign about overeating have to offer them
And once again, she is arguing against something no one suggests (A campaign against overeating - what, PSAs aired next to Snickers commercials?) while displaying absolute ignorance of the subject at hand. Seriously - stupid, full of shit and fucking nuts. Fucking waste of fucking air.
I keep my livejournal where I write about puppies, ponies, and unicorns private for friends only, Dimitar.
Sorry.
I can't believe McArdle's fat posts. People can't lose weight? Tell that to a mother--I see a hundred slender women with kids every school day. Idiot. She reads a book by a quack and wants to believe she's genetically superior, so that means fat people can't lose weight.
Okay, I just read some Paul Campos. Paul Campos is an effing moron.
Susan,
hoooooly Mayan microwave, I must have missed those. On second thought, thank God.
I read Campos' book. He has some good points, especially his main one that the real problem is lack of physical activity, but the rest of it is just like any other book attempting to solve any major problem our society has: a bunch of anecdotes, a whole lot of generalizations and no real solutions.
*slaps forehead*
Of course! All those comments about how fat people just can't stop eating and "appetite is more powerful than willpower for almost everyone", now I get it: projection.
Move along, nothing to see here. Just another day at McArdleville.
Now excuse me, it's breakfast time.
Is "Dimitar" Peter Sudermann?
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