Reprieve

You know who's a lot better than McMoron?

The Talking Heads, that's who:
Update: The actual heads now.

Talking Heads Girlfriend is Better
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Better than that?

Free Association

I have been doing this for far too long. I've realized that McArdle's writing no longer represents poorly written and thought out articles, but actually has a voice in my head, associated with a personality. It always takes me a long time to develop a sense of someone's self when I only interact with them over the nets and when I do it's always as sort of a vague quasi-persona. I'm consciously aware of the fact that my impressions of my online companion's personality is just a caricature. Somehow, Megan has transcended that. Her voice has a full on presence in my head now. I realize this when I started reacting internally to her writings from the very first sentence, rather than having a chance to actually hear her arguments, much in the same way that someone who has come to take the slot of "annoying person" in your brain makes you antsy just by saying "Hey, how ya doing?"

Obviously, this makes me biased towards her musings. I don't really care. It's been clear for, what, a year and half (how long have I been doing this?) that nothing that comes out of her head and onto the screen is worth an old, dull green pixel of an Apple 2E. So, let's try some free association. That is, I haven't read the following piece, save the first sentence and headline, but I already KNOW it's going to be annoying. Let's see how right I am.

"I'm a big proponent of the transformative power of failure."

See, this is what I'm fucking talking about. This is the "hey, how are ya doing?" of Megan's idiotic voice. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to say, yet it I immediately wanted to smash my head into the wall when I read it. How the fuck can someone who does nothing but ignore her most persistent critics actually fucking claim to think of failure as "transformative." She thinks of failure as something completely beneath her. She ignores her current failures and blames her past failures on chance and circumstance. Her ideology has wreaked complete destruction on our economy and her brilliant leader has whistled away while the country burns, yet not a god damn thing in her god damn head has changed. The only transformation that failure hath wrought unto Megan is to make her look ridiculous. Seriously, wtf.

"Failure is nature's way of saying "Don't do that any more!", and is therefore a necessary part of achievement and innovation. And so I'm inclined to like this speech very much. "

And here comes the idiocy and mixed metaphors. How the fuck can failure be "nature's way" of doing anything? We're not talking about lightning, pain or gravity here you fucking twit! Failure isn't natural at all. It's a fucking social construct! That's like saying "theater is nature's way of putting on a show!"

Plus, who does she think actually needs to be told that there are valuable things to be learned from failure? Has she never heard the expression "if at first you don't succeed, try and try again?!?!?!" Or how about "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it?" Fuck, I'm free associating here and I can think of trite ass shit that everyone knows representing what Megan's trying to be all original and wise about. I bet there are better expressions that I'm not recalling, but the nature of this task would be made untrue by Googling, so we press onward.


"On the other hand, something niggles me about the end:"

"Niggles," Megs? I'm not even.. what the... holy fucking shit! What kind of writing is that? You sound like a fucking idiot. OMG, stop. In the words of Joe Mathletes: Everything you create is cancer and madness. JESUS FUCK STOP IT!

So here is the point: you are going to meet the dragon of failure in your life. You may not get into the school you want, or you may get kicked out of the school you are in. You may get rejected by the girl of your dreams, or, God forbid, get into an accident beyond your control. But the point is, everything happens for a reason. At the time, it may not be clear. And certainly the pain and the shame are going to be overwhelming and devastating. But as sure as the sun comes up, there will come a time on the next day or next week or next year when you will grab that sword and tell him "Be gone, dragon."

This is what "niggles" that wretched big woman? Standard crap about things happening for a reason and persevering through adversity? What, does she think she owns the fucking copyright to bullshit platitudes and overwrought no-fucking-shit-isms.

"This seems like a pretty safe bet when you're talking to Buckley students, who have an ample safety net underneath them to allow them to bounce back from nearly any failure. But would he really say this to, say, a 55 year old man who'd just been fired from his sales job? Bad things--persistent bad things--happen to good people, and while it's comforting to think of them as merely a waystation, for lots of people that isn't really true. It only seems true to people who have been spectacular successes, because for them every failure actually just one more step towards the happy place they enjoy today. Sure, you can always rise over adversity. But a significant number of people will never again rise to the level they previously enjoyed."

OMFG. No, wait, acronyms do not do it justice. OH MY FUCKING GOD! WHAT THE FUCK! WHO THE FUCK DOES SHE THINK THAT SHE IS?!?!??!!?!?!? Can you believe that a woman who calls herself a libertarian wrote this? The woman who wants social security destroyed, medicare chopped in half and to take the very safety nets she tragically laments the absence of in her thought experiment and burn them to the fucking ground so she can sell the ashes to some millionaire who likes an authentic looking fireplace but doesn't want to get the room all smokey with an actual fire?

Can you believe that she thinks people actually need to be told that some tragedies cannot be overcome through will power? How the fuck did she ever convince anyone she has anything interesting to say?!? She's like the fucking See Spot Run primer for fucking philosophy. Tell me Megs, is the world a concrete reality or merely how we choose to interpret our perceptions? Is it OK to steal bread if you're starving or is stealing a universal wrong? Does the fact that I think prove that I fucking exist? Oh, please enlighten me on these subjects which are beyond the grasp of my feeble mind!

She just completely tosses away the context of the fucking speech. I don't know why she even bothers to acknowledge it in the first place. It's like "well, it's fine to say the sky is blue, but what if we're on the moon and the sky is black, huh?" This man is talking to NINTH FUCKING GRADERS! What the fuck should he say? Don't fucking bother kids, cause you might get hit by a truck? Of course he's going to tell them to persevere! They're not 55! They haven't lived their whole life hand to mouth without any marketable skills and now find themselves destitute and old without a shot at a comfortable retirement. They are fif-fucking-teen year olds! If they lose their sales job, they can, in fact, find another fucking job and start saving for retirement! They have time to go to college or trade school! Fuck, they are IN FUCKING SCHOOL! You're arguing that failure is good because you learn from it, and then pointing out that a man who fails late in life without ever having planned for it can't learn from failure? NO FUCKING DUH YOU DIPSHIT! He has already failed to grasp this lesson. It's not that it's not a good lesson to learn. Your example is exactly why this is a good fucking lesson to learn early in life!

And thus ends that. I think if I ever met Megan in person and she spouted this kind of crap at me, it would be all I could do to prevent myself from pushing her down the fucking stairs. Every sentence she writes screeches across my brain like a fucking flat line alarm. I think I wouldn't have the energy to push her down the stairs, as I'd be too busy clutching my head in agony and screaming at her to please, leave me alone and go bother some fucking 6 year olds with her bullshit ass meditations on dumbass philosophy. She hurts too much to exist. She hurts more than is physically possible. Oh, I wish she had the empathy to feel the hurt she produces in me, so that she might be her own penance for her own, horrible, horrible words.

FUCKKKKKKKK

I DON'T WANT TO SEE THIS IN THE MORNING:

Good friend and uber-talented journalist Conor Friedersdorf is going to be blogging for us for the next six weeks in conjunction with the Atlantic Ideas issue, and the Aspen Ideas Festival. The blog is, of course, utterly terrific, and if you don't check it out, you're missing a good thing.

We're behind enough as it is. Motherfucking fuckity fuckaroo.

Oh, yeah, and "journalist", Inigo Montoya joke about words... blah blah laugh your ass off internet.

Fuckin' bloody whore in a hand basket. Shithead in a scarf. Asshole in an air brace. Cock sucker in a comfy chair. I can't take this shit anymore. BLAHHHHHHHHH! THE INTERNET IS STOOOPID!

A Letter in Which I Explain Someting Rather Obvious

Dear Megan McArdle,

It has come to the attention of Fire Megan McArdle that you have recently written a piece about the bankruptcy of General Motors Corporation. Your intent was noble as even the most uneducated surely realizes how the financial situation of one of the country's largest employers affects us all. It was noble of you to attempt to glean from these proceedings those pieces of information that will be relevant to the common consumer and society at large.

However, I would like to take issue with one aspect of your post. You mention that the fate of GM's credit card "rewards points," which, while seemingly sealed from a cursory inspection, is, after a more probing look, actually somewhat ambiguous. While this may or may not be true, I would like to point out one sentiment that you fail to capture which Fire Megan McArdle feels is likely held by the public at large. That sentiment is: WHO THE FUCK CARES YOU IDIOT?!?!? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? MILLIONS OF PEOPLE MIGHT LOSE THEIR JOBS AND YOU THINK PEOPLE GIVE A FUCK ABOUT FUCKING REWARDS POINTS TOWARDS CARS THAT NO ONE WANTS TO FUCKING BUY?!?!?! BUY A FUCKING CLUE YOU WORTHLESS SACK OF SHIT! TRY, JUST FUCKING PLEASE TRY, TO BE RELEVANT! GOD YOU HURT! YOU HURT SO BAD! I HOPE YOU FEEL THE HURT YOU CREATE AS ACUTELY AS I DO BECAUSE YOU FUCKING DESERVE IT! GO FUCKING BANKRUPT YOURSELF YOU WORTHLESS SACK OF SHIT! DIE DIE DIE! OMG PLEASE DIE!

All other aspects of said blog post about the effects of the GM bankruptcy on the general public are valid points. In the interest of completeness, we wish to thank you for all of those insights as well as for those useful pieces of information which can be remembered from previous posts on your blog. We shall conclude this paragraph with a list of such points to balance the critical tone of the preceding paragraph:.

Sincerely,
The Fire Megan McArdle Team

Why Must they Ruin Everything that I Love

When I was a freshmen in high school, my brother was a freshmen in college at U Pitt. He discovered Michael Chabon and introduced me to The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. It has been one of my favorite novels ever since. 6 years later I ended up transferring to Carnegie Mellon and found myself living down the block from the "cloud factory" (A major plot point in the book). It's actually the steam plant for CMU.

Pittsburgh is an awesome city with the shittiest weather I've ever experienced (300 days of clouds, literally, but hardly ever more than drizzles).

I was fucking PYSCHED when I found out they were making the book into the movie. Then I saw the movie. Movies are almost never as good as the book (Fight Club being the sole exception I've encountered) but this went far beyond that. Ignoring the fact that entire characters disappeared and that the peripheral characters (who represented much of the MYSTERY) were suddenly the only characters in the fucking movie, it was fucking horribly executed. Ridiculously overwrought and pretentious--with Art Bechstein walking around permawearing the same expression of half confusion, half trying to squeeze out a turd that made Keanu Reeves famous--I had to force myself to watch the entire fucking thing.

It made me think of the time that Megan completely mischaracterized the town I live in now, Berkeley (Pittsburgh's polar opposite-nice weather but, god, do I want to burn this place and its inhabitants to ashes).

The writers and directors of this movie fail entirely to capture the essence of the city. Its total fucking shame because the movie is set from June to August, the only three months of the year da 'Burgh can be cast in an entirely positive light. Why would you do that? Why would you write about something of which you are completely uniformed? Why must these people ruin things for me?

Why, God, why?

Because OT Posts are SO MUCH More Interesting than MM These Days

Two things:

First, I was thinking this morning in the shower about how Obama and Bush pare kind of similar in a way.

(ducks)

No no no, NOT LIKE THAT. What I mean is, in 2000 Bush played himself as a "compassionate conservative," essentially trying to say "yeah, I'm conservative but not too far out there" all the while sending signals to his base that he was, in fact, way way out there.

Obama has also presented himself as a left-leaning centrist, but, me, I'm pretty optimistic that he's a lot more liberal than he's been campaigning on and that upon entering the Oval Office Obama will rip the mask off and show the world just how liberal he really is, just like Bush did in 2001. I'm guessing a lot of other people further to the left feel somewhat similarly.

The fact that I hated Bush for pulling that shit but am almost banking on Obama to do the exact same thing is one of the biggest bits of hypocrisy I've ever noticed in myself, and I'm going to spend most of today thinking about it, I guess. (Update: I wrote the draft for this post this morning and then spent the rest of the day preparing my cryostat for a bake-out and pump down, completely forgetting to my early morning revelation. Damn you, grad school!)

Second, in a bid to become the next big "political analyst" I'm going to make this prediction about the election. I STAKE MY REPUTATION ON on the declaration that almost all of the polls will be wildly wrong. It's hard to say in which direction, but I'm guessing that Obama wins by an even larger margin than anticipated. Note my reputation is staked on the first claim. I'm not so sure about the latter claim.

If I'm right, I expect to be hired by the New York Times by the end of the week.

OT-Hijack-Bleg Just shoot me now I suck

Hey, Megan's being boring and I'm tired of dead end google searches and fruitless scans of blogrolls so here's my bleg:

Where the hell are the actually intelligent, not snarky, political blogs from ANY perspective? I really want to find an intelligent republican or libertarian blog (or anything that I'd disagree with) that isn't written by some partisan nit-wit because I like to challenge my own beliefs, but for all my searching I've never turned up crap

I'd also like a voice of reason from the left that isn't some douche bag who can't type and who thinks that pointing out that news anchors are stupid is a brilliant insight. I mean, alicublog and Sadly, No! are great for a laugh, but is there anywhere on the freaking net that has some substance?

Anyone who suggest Matt Yglesias or Ross Douthat gets shot in the face - fair warning.

I know. This post is gigantic lameness. I'll be extra awesome next time to make up for it. That, or I'll curse a lot. It's a toss up.

Good morning!

It's time for stupid! Gotta start the day off right! Let's to turn to our econo expert to see what insights into the markets she has!

Oil falls free

Twenty dollars to whomever can tell me what in the fucking hell that title is supposed to mean. And, to go back to an old haunt, when the fuck is she going to start capitalizing titles? She finally got brow beaten into knocking off the obnoxious "block quoting herself" shit (You're welcome Megs), so there is some hope. But the shift key.... it's really not that far away. Right there, by your left and right pinkies. Come on, baby, give it a whirl!

I think we can officially say there was a sizable speculative premium in oil, given that major troubles in one of the world's major oil-producing regions did little to halt its fall.

Really, queen dipshit? That's how we know? I thought it was because oil surged upwards like 1000% in about 4 days and then plummeted downwards another 500% like two minutes later. No, that's not speculation? Hmm, okie, I guess it's a good thing there is another war in the Caucasus. Those are always the best economic indicators.

On the other hand, if that speculative premium was $40--the mid-to-high range of analyst estimates--then we're close to having wiped it out at this point. Don't start pricing minivans just yet.

Wait, you mean the speculation didn't just start on it's own as if by magic? Are you telling me that people started betting that oil was going to go up in price because it was actually going to go up in price? GOD DAMN IT WOMAN! HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU TO SLOW DOWN AND STOP BLOWING MY MIND!!!

She is such an idiot. She is telling us now -weeks after it became clear that oil was overpriced- that there was speculation involved. Just like when she told us it isn't is isn't a recession(that's the current diagnosis, right?). Plus, Mrs. Insight is telling us not to get too excited, cause oil is still pretty expensive. THANKS MC BRILLIANT. We all fucking noticed that oil is still FOUR FUCKING TIMES HIGHER than it was like, 6 years ago, and that gas is still AN ARM AND A FUCKING LEG PER GALLON.

Even if oil were to miraculously go back down, it would still be idiotic to go back to our gas wasting mentality. Have you noticed how we got hit the hardest by the recent price increases? You think that might have something to do with the fact that other countries learned their lesson in the 70's??!??!?!?!?!!?

SO....FUCKING....STUPID.... AHHHGHHGHGHGGHGHGHGHGHGHGHHGGHGHGHGHHGHG!!!!

I hate economics and I could do her "econoblogging" better than she does. Who the fuck was in charge of hiring her? They need to be fucking hung.

Oh those whacky black people

Note, there are a lot of run-ons and typos below but this brought me to such a rage there's no way I can revisit it in order to neaten it up. Other contributors are welcome to it.
(brad adds: Done and done. You might want to make clear to Megan you weren't threatening her, even implicitly, lest she seek you out and shoot you in preemptive self-defense.)

Oh no, here we go again. Hasn't Megan learned not to talk about black people yet?

Is there reverse privilege?

I think it's safe to assume that minorities and women know more about life in the dominant group than the reverse--if for no other reason than the ways that media centers around their experience.

Yeah, you totally know what it's like to be a man, Megan. Afterall, you've seen a football game or two. Similar, I'm keenly aware of gay culture from having watched a handful of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy episodes. More on this later and by later I mean her next sentence:

But that can be tricky. Have you ever noticed how Europeans think they know way more about life in America than they actually do, because they watch our television and movies? I'm pretty sure that I know more about men's world than they know about mine--but I'm also confident that I don't actually know what it's like to be a man.

Gotta love Megan. Make a point as your topic sentence, then use your supporting sentences to refute that point.

While we were at Aspen, Ta-Nehisi and Kenyatta and I talked about the fact that most white people have some older person--a relative or a family friend--who is an extremely good person, and also says racist things. Most of us don't confront those people, except perhaps in a "Now, grandma, you know you shouldn't say those things*" kind of way.

Actually, I usually loudly sigh and facepalm AT THE LEAST whenever my ultra-rightwing older brother talks about the "sandniggers", but then again, I have a conscience.

That most of us have concluded that we can't raise an 85-year-old might be cowardice, but to me it feels like choosing my battles

And why battle racism when there's so much more pressing issues, like the lack of soy milk at Megan's local grocer.

Rather, I'm continuing what I tried to say in this post: that both communities, because they have a less than perfect understanding of the others' [sic] experience, are more suspicious of each other than they need to be.

No Megan, white people crossing the street when they see a black person coming is oversuspicious. Black people getting denied an interview because their name is Aiesha is fucking racism and is something to get VERY FUCKING LEGITIMATELY pissed off about.

Ending racism: are we there yet? Huh? Huh?
Dear lord she is such a bitch. Nothing like making your title a comparison of complaints of continuing racial tension to bratty five year olds in the back seat of your minivan. Sigh. Why wasn't she the one that got shot?

Meanwhile, Julian Sanchez had a very good post in response to Ta-Nehisi. You should read the whole thing, but I've been thinking hard about this piece:

She says. You know that this means the quoted post is in fact the biggest piece of shit ever.
Julian says:

There are still, of course, sectors of American society where the crude racism of the epithet and the noose is casually accepted. But, happily, this sort of thing largely is beyond the pale in polite company

Well Julian and Megan are some sheltered motherfuckers. I lived in Pittsburgh a mere three years and spend most of that time in the admittedly sheltered world of the undergraduate. Still, I heard more than once public declarations about how horrible gays were and how you couldn't trust black people. I even had my liberal and "enlightened" friend tell me once that she does, in fact, cross the street when she sees a black man coming. This wasn't some subtle, subconscious thing either. She actually argued that it was a reasonable step to take in order to avoid getting raped.

But no, racism is totally on the back burner these days. Just ask Jesse Helms. His career went to total shit because of his stroke overt racism.

Julian goes on to argue that racism is subtle these days. I'll skip it for now and get back to our muse, who loudly applauds her compatriot in not really caring about black people. (It's okie though, because neither of them has ever called anyone a nigger.)

While I think Julian's onto something important here, I wonder if this is even relevant for most of the white community. Most people just don't seem very interested in battling subtle bias.

Really? I'd love to battle that. I think most progressives (of which there are an ever increasing number) would love to battle it, too. Moreover, I'd love to battle the still largely present beat you over the head racism. I think it'd be awesome if penalties for crack and cocaine were similar. It'd be great if there were genuine public outcry for the labeling of black New Orleans residents scavenging for food as "looters." I think it'd be fucking terrific if Kanye West's speech would've been treated as the ballsy, needed to be fucking said, slap in the face of continuing, unabashed white racism that it was rather than the "OMGZOR HE DIDN'T READ THE TELEPROMPTER" travesty it was treated as.

The earlier anti-racism movements had clear goals. Free the slaves, change the Jim Crow laws, tell people they ought to treat black candidates the same as all the others. The new battle is against an endless battle against one's own thoughts. This sounds fine for people who are professional intellectuals, especially if they are focused on race or gender issues. I think that when feminist blogs say, "Everyone is sexist--we are not blaming you, but we need your help to stamp it out" they think they're extending an olive branch. But to most people, I suspect it just sounds exhausting.

Seriously, we gave the darky the vote! Does he really expect us to do the horribly tiring self reflection it would take to genuinely eradicate discrimination in all its forms? I mean, c'mon people, Survivor! is on!

And, to tell it true, the newer forms of sexism and racism aren't as bad as what proceeded them. With civil rights, we were asking people to slay dragons. Now we're asking them to spend the rest of their lives exterminating mosquitos. It may be true that a swarm of mosquitos is almost as bad, in toto, as a single dragon. But they don't summon the same sort of emotional energy.

First off, mosquitos are a horrible fucking analogy as malaria kills shitloads of people every year, but of course, they're not white people so of course Megan wouldn't think of that. Second off, FUCK YOU, YOU STUPID RACIST CUNT. You honestly think that racism today is some trifling thing? Yeah, it's just those damn niggers being uppity. So what if they can't get a cab in New York? Let em fucking walk! And hey, when the store clerks follow them around that's just an opportunity to have a knowledgeable employee around to ask questions about the merchandise!

She continually outdoes herself. This is why I hate libertarians. They can write entire tomes about how terrible it is that young people have to pay for the health care of old people, but dismiss racism as so 1968. Fuck you, Megan. I hope you die and join Jesse Helms in the gang rape circle, you self-entitled, racist piece of shit.

Oy Vey

So, kathy g weighs in on my recent post about her fight with Megan.

First of all, to blogger NutellaonToast who characterized the exchange between Megan McArdle and me as a "catfight": cut out the dumbass sexist bullshit right now, please. It's insulting, dehumanizing, and very, very cheap. And it reveals your anti-McArdle crusade in the worse possible light, because it really does make you look like a gender-obsessed freak who's flipping out at the idea of an outspoken woman who publicly advocates opinions very different from your own. You'd be far more credible if you spare us the sleazy sexism and argue your case against McArdle strictly on the merits. Trust me, fella, it's not that hard.

My first impulse was to open both barrels at kathy but she doesn't really deserve it. I assumed the women bashing vein of that thread was over the top enough to make it clearly sarcastic. We here at FMM may hate women, but we're not misogynists. I thought it was funny. If it wasn't it just means that I'm not very funny.

There are an awful lot of modifiers here about what was, at worst, a failed attempt at snark. I'll grant "dumbass," "bullshit," and "cheap" as that's pretty much all we're capable of here at FMM, but "dehumanizing," "sexist," and "insulting," is taking things a bit far. I made a joke that was sarcastically sexist, and kathy throws a fit. Who, exactly, is the "gender obsessed freak" here? The idea that I'm attacking women for having a different opinion is absurd. I'm pointing out that Megan doesn't know shit about economics. There are no opinions involved. Even if there were, since I'm clearly taking kathy's side I can hardly be accused of insulting her for having a different "opinion."

With regards to credibility; I can't speak for other posters but I'm not really looking to be credible. Any blogger who deems themselves credible is a self important jackass along the lines of a graphic novelists. It's blogging, people. It doesn't matter.

Spare us the righteous indignation and learn to take a joke. Trust me lassie, it's not that hard.

In her second paragraph, I'm gonna have to pull a Megan and point out that kathy completely failed to grasp my point. She says:

Secondly, contrary to what NutellaonToast says, neither I nor Megan McArdle are economists

I don't know how this is contrary to what I think considering I make a direct joke about how neither kathy nor Megan are trained economists:

What did one untrained economist say to the other? "You can't say that. You're not a trained economist"

But, whatever, kathy was clearly blinded by rage at this awful awful posts which points out how right she was. I forgive her. In fact, I'll be so magnanimous as to clue her into my Jewish and Quaker ancestry. She now has permission to call me a kyke and make as many quaker oats and Nixon jabs as she wants. You're welcome, Kat.

brad adds:

Let's everybody relax a little. Nutella has a point insofar as we're not meant to be taken seriously here, Kathy has a point in that there are legitimate reasons for some people to not find some jokes funny. Both of you are upset because your sensibilities have been offended, but there's no real reason to get into a back and forth on this, or foreseeable gain from doing so. I don't want this blog to turn into a front for internecine warfare. That'd make us all war criminals.

Nutella concedes:
brad is right.

Fire The Atlantic or, Follow The Money

Before recent (& radical) changes in my "life-style" (hate that term, being sarcastic here) the chances of my coming across a copy of The Atlantic, let alone opening it & thumbing through it, were slim to totally non-existent. However, I find myself in public libraries more often of late, & while I find it very easy to ignore on-line advertising (other than those epileptic fit inducing strobing ads that were running w/ Asymmetrical Information for a while -- I 've no recollection of what they advertised, by the way) my medieval obsession w/ print makes me pay attention to the adverts in the dead tree Atlantic.

And we all know that no matter what the editorial side may claim, the sales dep't. & the ads tell the story of who is being reached & why. W/ that in mind (& a tip of the Bouffant chapeau to fellow contributing editor NutellaonToast, who invented the "Fire The Atlantic" label) let's look through the April 2008 issue. That's the one w/ Brittany Beavers, the international pop star, on the cover.

And the advertisers are (in order):

ABB (International construction corporation, may be Swiss-based, may also manufacture munitions. Do your own research, things may have changed since I first heard of them. The ad itself is a two-page spread of a gargantuan fully-illuminated refinery at sunset or dawn.)

Altria Group, Inc. (Phillip Morris, the people who bring you tobacco.)

Credit Suisse

ConocoPhillips

Wiley (Publisher, advertising a book by Fred Kaplan, Daydream Believers, subtitled "How a few grand ideas wrecked American power.")

Honda (Not advertising a specific car, but touting their CAFE #s.)

BASF

University of Florida

Calvert Group, Ltd. (Mutual Fund.)

Mercedes-Benz (C-Class. Not a specific car, but not just a corporate image move.)

The Vanguard Group, Inc. (Rollover your retirement funds.)

Siemens

Subaru Forester

Pfizer

UBS (IBM when I CBS.)

GM Corp./Chevrolet (Touting environmental joys of a Chevy, no specific model.)

Aspen Ideas Festival (Produced by The Atlantic & The Aspen Institute. 30 June - 6 July. Are you all ready for Megatron's posts from there?)

Nissan Murano ("The All-New 2009 Nissan Murano" It's bloody April 2008!! Where do they get 2009? Something to do w/ the International Year Line? No wonder they lost WWII, they didn't know what yr. it was.)

Goldman Sachs Funds

General Motors ("It's just one part of GM's commitment to energy diversity...")

Suddenly (a few pp. before the staples) there is a distinct drop in advertiser quality. Bose noise-cancelling headphones. Mail order shirts ("Free Monogramming! An $8.50 value"). Fisher Investments (The 15-minute Retirement Plan. Features picture of Ken Fisher, "Chairman & CEO." Vanity advertising.) Three book ads. Rosetta Stone.

Here the full page ads stop & we are suddenly in radio country. The Bose cans & RosettaStone were just the start, we are confronted w/ shortwave radios & hand-cranked radios, exercise machines (this one costs $14,615, I kid you not). Coffee. Imported tea. Teach yourself calculus; open a new world for yourself(?). Books. Cunard. South American Emeralds. And a bunch of column by 3/4 inch ads for various crap. I'm a bit surprised there aren't any pitches for GotoMeeting.com or for gold & precious metals w/ pictures of Megan, Sully or Yglesias telling us to "buy now before it goes up," (Those of you who, like me, are forced to listen to the radio all day so we can ignore our thoughts will understand.)

So The Atlantic is essentially intended for investors. It's the same crap you'll see on the Sabbath gasbag shows, if you're that much of a masochist. Most of the one page ads in the front of the mag, as we saw above, were corporate image pimpers, or from investment services/mutual funds. So there's the target audience, or the audience they're getting. Bad enough, & a good indication of why they'll never fire Free Market Megan. Even more insidious is that magazines, pundit-filled talk shows & the like are dependent on these large corporate entities, & if anything that truly goes against the corporate/capitalist/globalist/you-name-something-else-bad grain appears in The Atlantic these cos. can pull their ads & put any non-conventional wisdom enterprise out of business. It's not merely the corporations that advertise that must be appeased (because advertising in these magazines & on those programs makes no difference to GM's bottom line) but the very concepts behind big business that must be honored, in order for any advertising to keep the publisher's bottom line going. However, don't think you'll ever hear anything but "Oh, we're all journalists here, the advertisers have no influence on us," from any of these toadies.

Don't Be Sorry!

Sullivan demolishes McArdle.

Sully quotes Megan's defense of war crimes:

...when you choose war, you choose war crimes--and that this is true regardless of why you are choosing the war. You may be going to war for reasons that even the staunchest of libertarians would support, like defending your territory from violent attack. Just the same, if the war grinds on for any length of time, you will get people violating the Geneva Conventions, doing obscene things to enemy soldiers (dead and alive), and launching attacks that would horrify the population if they were watching a third party do them. By the time you're a year or so into it, the public and the soldiers are reacting to the last attack and the mountain of dead, not to who started it. Dresden would have been unthinkable in 1939; by the time it happened, anything was justifiable if it saved Allied soldiers.[...]

The point is, these things are part of the cost of war, not of the cost of "wars started by the Bush administration" or "wars with bad motives" or "wars we don't like".

Sully responds:

I'm sorry but this is preposterous, uninformed, ahistorical. The United States has managed to go to war for two centuries without the president authorizing and monitoring the torture of prisoners. The Bush administration's legalization of torture and withdrawal from Geneva is unique in American history. Yes, wars will lead to individuals committing war crimes in the heat of battle. Yes, it carries a horrifying logic. But an advance, pre-meditated decision by the president to engage in war crimes is new and unprecedented. Bush really is uniquely awful as a president in this respect: an indefensible war criminal, who has permanently stained the country he represents and betrayed the soldiers who expect decency and lawfulness in their commander-in-chief.

Don't be sorry, Sully, you misogynist. Of course McArdle's argument is preposterous, uninformed, and ahistorical. That is the sin qua non of her writing. This has got to be pretty embarrassing for Megan. Sully really didn't pull any punches. Has he ever said anything good about his colleague? No, I don't think so. No wonder he's paid about five times her salary--its the only way Mr. Harvard Ph.D. could stomach being on the same roster as Megatron.

I feel, in some small way, that we are winning.

(Note: My typical writing style of constructing egregiously long sentences full of daisy-chained clauses has been replaced by a poor imitation of Andrew "staccato" Sullivan's prose. I assure you my next post will have more semicolons, dashes, and commas than this.)

I need to stop looking in the mirror.

"I recall reading an interview with a film critic (which I’m unfortunately unable to find) who said that, for all practical purposes, he now considers himself a citizen of the web."

Says one of our guest bloggers.

People actually CHOOSE to live on the internet? My god, I rue every second I spend treating this place seriously. I really am starting to feel sorry for these shit-wads.