Friday, September 28, 2007

She's on a roll today

I have to begin with an admission. I own a copy of The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, but I haven't read it yet, and I still haven't gotten around to No Logo. *insert mandatory Chait/TPM Book Cafe reference here* That said, I'm inclined to like Naomi Klein, if only for her willingness to question accepted truths, and her success in doing so. Megan, apparently, hates Ms. Klein, for reasons that are 100% divorced from professional jealousy and resentment. Naomi Klein is one of those dirty hippies who try to make people aware of the realities underlying the policies people like Megan blithely support. Megan has lived 37 years without a fully developed conscience, and damned if she's gonna start on one now. Plus, Megan should be the one writing books. She, like, totally could document white people coffee cafe culture.
Now, I could try and respond point by point to Megan's little diatribe against Klein and in defense of Greenspan. (It's totally coincidental that Greenspan was a member of Ayn Rand's inner circle, btw. Megan was being ironic with the choice of Jane Gault, and the whole libertarian/Randroid connection has nothing to do with her defense of the sacred Alan here.) But I'm not trained in economics, and Megan's responses seem to amount to "Oh no she diiiiiiiiii'int!", so there's not a hell of a lot to respond to on any front. Instead, I'd just like to point out that rather than an expansive post, enumerating her problems with Klein's positions and providing arguments for why those positions are mistaken, she put up something that reads like a transcript of a sports fan yelling at their tv during a game. For non-economists, like myself, there's nothing to be learned here, except that Megan thinks the west coast offense is a gimmick.
This is one of those cases where the politics can be put aside, and the simple sloppiness and lack of professionalism Megan displays is ample cause for her termination.
FMM

3 comments:

Fishbone McGonigle said...

I heard part of the interview she's referring to. And Megan's right about one thing; Klein did seem to imply that an increase in the number of government contracts issued was indicative of crony capitalism, which of course isn't necessarily the case.

Still, the rest of that post was incredibly unprofessional and nutrition-free, just like you said. I'd forgive this if she were "live-blogging" something important, like the Miss America pageant or something.

For someone who is supposedly so well-versed in economics, she doesn't even bother to try to explain why she takes issue with Klein, thus leaving her readers in the dark.

RJM said...

Megan wrote: "also, none of them [including rising income inequality] have anything to do with Alan Greenspan's job at the Federal Reserve"


I'm afraid Megan has no idea what she is talking about. and she is talking about economics!

See: Created Unequal by James Galbraith

http://www.amazon.com/Created-Unequal-Crisis-American-Pay/dp/0226278794/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-3922252-1807229?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191011832&sr=8-1

J— said...

I learned two things, or two things became clear to me reading that post. First, neoliberalism is a matter of faith for McArdle. Second, the commitment to and application of alternate economic paradigms are for her signs of ignorance.