Really, Megan?

Figurative Curb-Stomping:

I notice it much more on left wing sites, but that's because I basically refuse to read angry right-wing sites, so I don't know what's going on there.

Can not soil her precious mind w/ any of those angry right-wing sites.

It's one thing to be angry; it's another when anger is the main force that binds a group together. Call me a vaporing language nanny, but I thought it was pretty creepy when Jon Chait described another liberal journalist, Michael Kinsley, another journalist, as "curb stomping" economist Greg Mankiw for, yes, daring to suggest that higher marginal tax rates might have incentive effects. Woo-hoo!

But why stop with curb-stomping? Wouldn't it be fun to pile ten-thousand gleaming skulls of supply-siders outside the Heritage Offices?  We could mount Art Laffer's head on a rotating musical pike that plays The Stars and Stripes Forever!  Then, in the most hilarious surprise ending of all, the mob could turn on Jon Chait, douse him with gasoline and set him on fire, and then sack the offices of the New Republic!

Somehow, that's not actually funny. Neither is curb stomping, as Ezra Klein pointed out.

When anger binds a group. Tea Party, anyone?

Actual curb-stomping, & not just men shoving each other, falling down & moaning.Here's an angry right-wing site that thinks this is the funniest thing since, we'll guess, Emmett Till.

Do the Kentucky Head-Stomp!

Posted on | October 26, 2010 | View Comments

It’s the dance sensation that’s sweeping the nation:

How many of your mealy-mouthed words are these pictures worth, McArdle? Who's angry here?

A Tale of Two Conspiracies

In the left corner we have:

I have no idea what to think about the accusation that an NBC producer responded to a blast email from Americans for Limited Government by writing "Bite me, jew boy!"

It's so bizarre that I simply can't believe that an NBC producer did this. But it's also so bizarre that it's not actually all that much more plausible that Americans for Limited Government made the thing up. It's not like they're playing to the common stereotype that the television world is hostile to Jews.

This is a pressing question! I hope Mrs. Super-Sleuth is on it:

The most likely explanation is that someone punk'd them. But who? And how?

Ashton Kutcher, you devious fucker! How did you know how to intercept an NBC producers email at exactly the right time to create such madness?

In the right corner:

Also in the "too bizarre to accurately categorize" is the murder of a part-time census worker in Kentucky, who was found hanged in a remote area. He had the word "fed" scrawled on his chest, which suggests anti-government loons.

Browbeaten into submission by commentorsIn the interest of bipartisanship; Our fair heroine turns her discerning eyes to the case of the "something actually happened and figuring out motive is actually worthwhile." A mere several days after his murder, McDetective cracks the file and puts on her thinking cap.

But the census is not a traditional bugbear of said loons, who don't generally regard apportionment as an unpardonable blow against liberty.

Initial investigations reveal fowl play, but the magnificent magnifying glass in the mind of McArdle sees more! Michele Bachmann is just a red herring, and not part of traditional bugbears! She's on about atraditional bugbears and hence has no bearing on the case!

It sort of defies the imagination that a resurgent militia would decide to start its reign of terror by kidnapping a schoolteacher in his fifties who happens to do census work on the side.

You see, this murder defies rational thought, making it suspicious. Most men who take lives are well reasoned, meticulous and cunning. McArdle knows this because she knows the mind of the criminal like the back of her head.

Was this man murdered and humiliated while canvassing for the census by a paranoid right-wing fanatic spurred on by hateful calls to resist a completely benign government operation, or did a drug dealer find him, kill him, strip him naked, bind his hands and feet, gag him, drag him to a cemetery and hang him from a tree in order to throw the police of his tail?

Tune in next week for the dramatic conclusion of "Willful Ignorance: The Partisan Detective!"