McArdle in microcosm

Meg's post on the Jena 6 (so ably dissected by clem and M.Bouffant below) is a perfect example of why she has no business blogging for the Atlantic, or indeed any organization that wishes to protect its good name. It's not her blithe indifference to the injustice of the situation (yeah, the white kids who stomped some of these black kids at a party got probation instead of being charged as adults, but whaddaya gonna do?), nor is it her complete lack of interest in actually trying to put forth a solution she would consider fair (I don't know what the answer is, but those black kids should do time). No, it's her eager willingness to pontificate on a hot-button current event far outside her alleged area of expertise . . . without first having the goddamned common courtesy to do even a modicum of research into the event itself.

This kind of behavior is appalling. It's lazier than Glenn Reynolds, which is saying a lot. And it is far, far below the standards of The Atlantic (or at least, below the standards they seem to want everyone to think they have).

Fire Megan McArdle.

Getaway Day

An uneventful Friday @ The Atlantic's "Voices" section. Megan McArdle regales us w/ a drug scoring story: "...on the way to meet a friend in order to pick up a little cold medicine" (never heard it called that before) that ends w/ her in a bit of a tizzy: "I stomped out in a huff, proclaiming that 'this is not how people in a free society should live.'" See Clem's fine take on this, if you haven't already.

Then it's on to the world of some sort of sexism, involving Elizabeth Edwards talking about Sen. Clinton. McMegan's reaction?

"There's a weird, protective, send-a-woman-to-attack-a-woman vibe about this. What's next? Des [sic] she sue Ms [sic] Clinton for alienation of affections [sic] ?"

It's not as if John Edwards has ever said anything about Senator C., I guess. Except when he's accused the Senator of being in the pockets of industry & lobbyists & all that. But it's, like, weird vibes, man. Speaking of sexism, a suggestion to Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper & all others typing or speaking: Could we put a moratorium on the use of "shrill?" I doubt if Ms. Edwards was actually strident or intemperate, & the next time the word is applied to a man, candidate or otherwise, will be the first.

But then all hell broke loose, @ 1248 EDT. See Clem just below, or look for yourself if you dare. I'm just going to note that Ms. McA. went off half-cocked, perhaps thinking that her iconoclastic, shocking title, "Jail the Jena 6" was the only work she had to do, besides linking to Instapundit. Heh. Indeed.

(Why do people think they're being so wild & shocking & radical & non-PC when they are merely mouthing the power structure line? Are they really laboring under the impression that we're living in a socialist paradise, where no hard-working honkie w/ an Ivy League degree can get ahead because of "diversity," "multiculturalism," & affirmative action hires, while the Property Police are working their way down the list of assets to be seized & handed over to welfare mothers?)

Whatever her Friday afternoon desires, she was back @ 1436 EDT, after doing some research:

As everyone notes, it's hard to get information on the case, which is trickling out and heavily influenced by where you got your facts. My understanding so far is that the Wikipedia entry is pretty authoritative, and the basic facts are as follows:

I'll accept Wikipedia for birthdates (if not years) & general non-controversial information, but if it says at the top of the page (& it does): "Editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism," I'd question any one's understanding ("So far?" What the hell does that mean? That someone told her it was "pretty authoritative," & until someone else tells her differently she's going w/ that? Trust me, there's a better way to express that. I suppose it's really just another pre-emptive weasel.) of any authority it may have. Google™ News, by the way, has "about 8,514" results for the word "Jena." There may not have as many when Megan was buckling down for her research. And the story's been national for at least a week, all over the tube & the tubes. Wait, no, it's been trickling out, & information (or the case itself, bad syntax there) is heavily influenced by where you got your facts. Or, they might not be "facts" at all if they're heavily influenced by where you got them. (Can you imagine the laughs at the literary agency if she'd actually written some fiction & sought an agent?)

We then get 43 lines of re-phrased Wikipedia entry. How do we know it's re-phrased? Wikipedia uses the word "principal." Megan?

A black kid, who may or may not have been new to town, asked permission to sit under the tree. The principle said "of course you can sit anywhere you want.

The way to tell which one to use, if you're not sure, is that the "principal" is your "pal." My sixth grade English teacher thought that was pretty funny, if not ironic. Maybe Ms. McA's confused by principal (which you don't touch, while living on the interest from your trust fund) & the "first principles" so popular w/ people who think they're principled. Andrew Sullivan likes the phrase a lot.
And close those quotes, it's getting cold in here.

One other difference, & we're out of here. Wikipedia says the now cut down tree in question was referred to as the "white tree." According to Megan:

Jena is a town with racial issues. There was a special tree at the high school that white students sat under to read.

I checked three sources from the Wikipedia entry & found absolutely nothing about the white students sitting under it to read. Are we just winging it here, M?

Wikipedia:

At Jena High School, students of different races seldom sat together. Black students traditionally sat on bleachers near the auditorium, while white students sat under a large shade tree, referred to as the "white tree", in the center of the school courtyard.[3]

It's not explicit anywhere, but I'd suspect a lot of this has to do w/ lunchtime seating. We see who gets the shade tree & who gets the bleachers. Separate but equal, right? That is, if the bleachers are shaded, & not farther away from the main building than the "white tree" in the courtyard.

OK, final note:

The Wikipedia entry consistently refers to those involved in the various incidents as students, black students, or white students. In the Fair Barn party incident, the participants are identified as black youths & white males or white men.

In Ms. McA.'s recap & final paragraph there are two mentions of "white student(s)," two of "white kid(s)," three of "kid" (whom we know to be white) & seven of "black kid(s)." Not once does Megan use the phrase "black students." I doubt that this is deliberate (Hell, I might not even have noticed, but I've a pet peeve about the use of the word "kid" to refer to anything other than young goats, and there are a lot of "kids" scattered about.) but it could raise some questions, couldn't it?

Megastats:
# of items: 4
Posted between: 1154 EDT & 1536 EDT, w/ comments @ 1428 & 1512 EDT.
Nice work if you can get it. Another late night @ the Wonderland bar trivia w/ Ezra Klein?
Line Count:
McArdle: 113, including comments & 43 lines of re-worked Wikipedia entry
Copied & Pasted: 33
Ratio: Better than 3:1 in favor of Ms. McA.

"But...but it was Friday night!"

Until yesterday's posts about the Jena 6, McArdle's blog had been a fairly quiet place. Comments tended to come from her dedicated coterie, whose comments were often better informed and more literate than the posts that inspired them, with regular incursions by a few detractors. Some of us have posted there, with one or two still enjoying the dubious privelege of being allowed to comment; I was banned for questioning her claim to have read a certain book, Fishbone was banned for some other infraction and Brad was, presumably, banned for starting this blog. Though it is The Atlantic's property, Asymmetrical Information is McArdle's fiefdom and she has the right to run it as she sees fit. For the most part, she's run it well and kept it clean.

The barfight that erupted in her comments section yesterday was ugly, with open expressions of appalling racism, calls for vigilante violence and at least one entreaty to McArdle to commit suicide. The brawl spilled from her first Jena post to the second and didn't slow down until the evening. As of 12am Saturday, none of the comments had been deleted, the worst offenders were still posting and, despite a few pleas for moderation, McArdle was nowhere to be found. Never one to engage frequently with the hoi polloi, she's decided that discretion is, truly, the better part of valor, and run away.

For all of McArdle's faults as a writer, I'd always assumed that she would have some atavistic regard for her employer's hallowed reputation, and that even if that reputation didn't inspire her to become a better, more disciplined and engaged writer, she would at least honor that reputation by not falling asleep at the switch. Failing to take note of one racist's trolling because she'd taken ill was excusable. Allowing Sambo-speak, apologies for vigilantism and exhortations to suicide to go unchecked would be considered negligence from an independent blogger; for it to happen under The Atlantic's aegis is a bloody disgrace. The excuses she may cook up for her inattention will, in all likelihood, be as pathetic as the defenses she offered for her ignorant, lazy posts on the Jena 6; on a matter of lesser import, they might have been amusing. This cock-up isn't funny, and her self-deprecatory charm, if it was ever genuine, shouldn't save her.

Fire Megan McArdle.

Now this is just disrespectful to M.Bouffant, Fishbone, Clem, and Tau*

*- Listed, I believe, in the order in which they signed on.
From the greatest thread that shall ever be, over at Janegalt.net,

Tom T. says,

What an awesome site! One can't help but wonder what drives a person to do something so laughable. Is the writer (presumably all the aliases are the same person) a jealous ex, a frustrated competitor for an Atlantic job, a paid political operative, or just very lonely? I'm sure we'll find out eventually; this sort of thing never stays anonymous forever.

I simply cannot begin to count how many ways that makes me want to marry Tom T., but I do have to insist any and all detractors refrain from tarring the rest of this blog's fine contributors with my glaring flaws as a person. Keep this in mind in the future, plz, kthxbi.

Apparently Megan doesn't read Orcinus

Shocking, innit?
Not that Orcinus is the only place one could learn about the case of the Jena 6, but, well, I at least first heard about it there, sometime last fall, not long after the case began.
But Megan needs wikipedia to tell her the basic facts of the case. Fine. She's an "econoblogger", and it'd be somewhat unfair to single her out solely for the failures of the MSM to remember race relations remain an important issue in America...
Oh, wait, singling her out for journalistic failures is what we do here. Ok.

Dear Megan,

Next time, please, at least read the wiki page before you start blogging about it.
Otherwise, you end up making very uninformed arguments that come, via right wing transmitters, straight from racists. Remember that guy who posted about miscegenation in your comments? Right now he is very, very happy with you for saying "jail the Jena 6".

Aren't you bad enough without becoming a useful idiot for racists?

Love,
brad

New Poll

As you can see.
As before, vote for as many as you please.
I'm surprised Lou Dobbs managed second in the last poll, but pleased.
Lou Dobbs is a real piece of shit. Go visit Orcinus to understand why.

McCarded

Generalissimo Megan McArdle still has a cold.

The other day, I stopped in the drugstore on the way to meet a friend in order to pick up a little cold medicine. I stomped out in a huff, proclaiming that "this is not how people in a free society should live." In order to obtain a little Sudafed, I had to produce a photo ID and sign for it. Is shutting down one of many avenues of meth production really worth the price of treating every American citizen with a stuffy nose like a drug dealer?

Megan: "Hi, I'd like a little Sudafed, please."
Clerk: "Sure, um...do you mean you want the lowest dosage or the smallest bottle?"
Megan: "Eek! What I really meant was I'd like to obtain the most economical means for discongesting my nose."
Clerk: "Alright, that'll be be $14.95, may I see your ID?"
Megan: "Excuse me?"
Clerk: "Sorry, it's the meth-heads, they use it to make meth, you know, that preacher Haggard and all."
Megan: "MY FREEDOMS ARE BEING TRAMPLED! GRRAAHHHH!"

(Stomps out in a huff.)

Megan: "THIS IS NOT HOW PEOPLE IN A FREE SOCIETY SHOULD LIVE!"
Homeless woman on sidewalk: "Oh, thank you Dear, bless you, you're beautiful."
Megan: "I DON'T BELIEVE IN HANDOUTS!"

(Stomps into liquor store.)

Megan: "I''d like a little Absolut Watermelon, please."
Clerk: "That's $32. Can I see some ID?"
Megan: "WHAT!? OH, COME ON, I'M OBVIOUSLY OVER THHHhank you, sure, here you go."
Clerk: "Alright."
Megan: "Yeah, I get carded all the time. Must look really young."
Clerk: "Here's your change."
Megan: "I write for The Atlantic. Do you snore?"

Foreign Policy, The McArdle Way

For all I can determine, "Jane Galt" may be be the greatest "econoblogger" of all time, although the term "econoblogger" makes me think cut-rate, shoddy, or, "You get what you pay for." So let's examine her foray into foreign policy, or world events, or whatever "Osama Bin Laden declares war on Pakistan" is. First, proving once again that the political is personal, she brings her college paramour, Scott, into it. (See brad's item right underneath this'n.) Or was it John, the college boyfriend referred to in "Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse?"

Since I just know we would have hit the big time had we not been torn apart by the fickle hand of fate, I suppose I have to thank said boyfriend for saving us both from a life of glamour, hard living, and premature death.

Thank you, John, wherever you are. I think.

Perhaps she had more than one collegiate affair, & just didn't want to use an awkward phrase like "one of my college boyfriends." But w/ us stalking your every word, Megatron, you'd better start watching every one of them. Including "fickle hand of fate." It's "fickle finger of fate," or something else entirely. The concept is alliteration. Maybe one of Megan's readers can look it up for her.

...Oh, yes...makes the political personal...So either this Scott, w/ his brooding anger, was a Bin Laden in the making, or Bin Laden is just some angry college boy who's filled w/ non-specific rage & shooting his mouth off. (By the way, we have a good idea where Ms. McA. stands vis-à-vis the "white male bourgeois power structure," don't we? Or, indeed, any power structure.)

Now Osama has declared war on the government of Pervez Musharraf in the run up to the elections. This would make sense if Pakistan had any sort of reputation for being the sort of stable and open representative democracy whose government could be ousted by grand emotional proclamations. But it seems rather mad in the current circumstances.

If Megan has typing problems, it may be the result of reading problems. From the item she linked to:

Bin Laden declares 'war' on Pakistan in new tape

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden called on Muslims in Pakistan to wage holy war against the government of President Pervez Musharraf in a new audio message issued on Thursday.

See those little squiggly things on either side of the word "war" in the title? They mean something, Megan. We'll let you look it up yourself, you may remember the meaning rather than just resent our telling you.

Ahem. So OBL didn't exactly "declare war," he called on Muslims to wage holy war. And while Pakistan may not be the most stable, etc., gov't., there are open elections, it's just that the military reserves to itself the right of final decision. It Seems To Me™ that the less stable & whatnot the gov't. is, the more likely an OBL fatwa would have some serious effect. A bit more from The Link She Didn't Read™:

In another video released by al-Qaeda's media arm, Bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri also warned that Musharraf would be "punished" over the killing of leading rebel cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi in the storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad in July.
Pakistan, which became a US ally after the September 11 2001 attacks, has suffered a dramatic upsurge in Islamist violence since the siege and storming of the al-Qaeda-linked mosque, which left more than 100 people dead.

Oh look. There's already a freakin' "holy war" going on. You don't think OBL is just trying to get ahead of the trend here, do you?

But why would Osama do this? Previously, he had a fairly stable arrangement; Musharraf couldn't root him out of the tribal areas for various military and political reasons, and Osama couldn't bring on the Caliphate just yet. [...] Meanwhile, he has just given Pervez Musharraf and any waverers in his government a much stronger incentive to find Osama and his merry band of cave-dwelling madmen.

Musharraf has virtually no control over the tribal areas. If he were able to do anything against Bin Laden, he probably would have, as his "alliance" w/ the U. S. is based on financial incentives & threats made to him post-9/11 by the U. S. gov't.
And here's where Megan makes her biggest mistake. She's willing to dismiss OBL as a "cave-dwelling madman."

This is the kind of overreach that has caused every government that has ever offered him shelter to ultimately kick him out, except for Afghanistan, which didn't have much of a government. Even so, he went and found another government
to kick him out. And where will he go this time? He's running out of lawless quasi-states to hide in.

I don't know the story behind Bin Laden leaving Sudan for Afghanistan (Can Any of My Readers Help Me Out W/ This?™) but the Taliban, however much of a gov't. it may have been, was completely on his side, & lawless quasi-states are the best spot for him. But to equate Bin Laden w/ a crazy frat-boy ("I didn't need behavioral economics to tell me that people don't always act in their rational self-interest.") is foolish. Unfortunately, he is an intelligent, wealthy, person, the head of an organization skilled in propaganda & using the strengths of an opponent against that opponent (let alone the weaknesses of the opponent; note Bin Laden's recent goading of the U. S. into staying in Iraq as long as Bush can get away w/ it) who may be religiously, rather than economically or politically, motivated, but cannot be dismissed as a "cave-dwelling madman."

Gaarrrgh!! Hair hurting again.

Megastats for 20 September 2007:
#of items: A mere six.
First item: 1206 EDT
Last item: 1732 EDT
Late night?

Line Count:
McA: 153
Copy & Paste: 53
Ratio: 3:1

Silliest item:

What a snore
Oh, this takes me back, it does. To the earth shattering booms and irritating whistles, the sleep-deprived nights, the frantic rib-poking, the ever-so-temporary relief. Why is it that snorers can always fall asleep faster than you can?

Well, who was it? Scott or John? Inquiring minds want to know.

Hey, can I turn this into complaints about the poor women who've been merciful enough to put up w/ me over the years?

In defense of Scott

Scott was Megan's college bf. We also know that he dumped her right about the same time her college band got sick of dealing with her. (Yes, I realize it was 100% her decision in both cases and she still gets calls from both parties begging her to take them back and she just lets them pretend to have been responsible to salvage their piddling egos.)
Megan remains unhappy with Scott, however, to the point she quasi-Godwins him with this: "Osama Bin Laden is starting to remind me of my college boyfriend, whose brooding anger at the white male bourgeois power structure quickly disintegrated into anger at the non-Scott power structure."
Lady, Scott had the good taste to stop being in a relationship with you. That means he's better than The Atlantic, which also means he's better than Bin Laden. Radical claim, I know, but I think the logic of saying The Atlantic > Bin Laden is, even with your employment there, unimpeachable.
Now, it's true he also had the bad taste to be in a relationship with you, but let's not judge people for mistakes they've probably learned from.

Update:
This is right on the border of too mean, so let me pretend to apologize and say we (I) will focus on her professional failures from here on out.

Update 2:
I can has a fan!
He even implicitly criticizes my grammar. In a sentence missing a comma. Me likey.

The Ann Althouse Taser Challenge

Too much McArdle leads to Nyquil abuse, so let's see what Ann Althouse is up to.

Let's see, sentimental photos of Brooklyn and Manhattan, willful misrepresentations of the behavior of museum goers...causing outbreaks of "bloofer lady" sightings...sucking up to The New York Sun...failed pledge drive for a second egg-salad sandwich challenge...

I wonder what she thinks about that kid who got tase-

Speaking of upstart Taser-boy Andrew Meyer, how many Americans do you think would agree to get tased if it would get them the attention it got him? By chance, I was just listing [sic] to #340 of "This American Life," called "The Devil in Me."

[...]

There's a scene in there where American soldiers in Iraq are tasing each other for fun. You can hear them screaming and laughing in the audio. So, if guys with nothing else to do submit to the Taser for fun....

"...and, since people were willing to pay me $200 to eat an egg-salad sandwich..."




Brad adds:
Ahhhhh, Ann. Truly, she is my greatest, or only, hit.