Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Brief Notes

Oh cruel fate, that gives me work to do on such a day as this!

Megan McArdle sings the praises of crazy Bobby Jindal. Is she really that desperate for a chance to feel all hip and post-racial? Sorry, concern troll, you lost your chance when you decided Obama was disappointing you.

McArdle links to a criticism of Krugman and Keynes. Fortunately Krugman is well-qualified to speak for himself:

Why do people still fail to get Keynes, after all these years? Keynes might
have said
that it’s the inherent difficulty of the concepts:

For—though no one will believe it—economics is a technical and
difficult subject.


But there’s also the Upton Sinclair theorem:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it.


McArdle babbles about something irrelevant so she can complain about being criticized again. I suspect McArdle is about to start banning even more people.

In which McArdle gets off on exposing some poor cuckolded woman named Susan. I have no idea why she would do so.

The Jindal post is especially stupid. I hope to go mining for nuggets later.

UPDATE: Oh, wow. Sometimes she surprises even me. Megan in comments:

Keep in mind that it's very unlikely that Jindal himself believes in
creationism, or anything like it; creationism is not Catholic doctrine.
Supporting it is a political, not an ideological move. Would I rather he didn't?
Yes. But I would also rather Obama didn't support card check. Politicians cater
to the people who elect them.
Posted by Megan McArdle December 2, 2008 11:05 AM

Let's see what the man actually says:
I don’t think students learn by us withholding information from them. … I want
them to see the best data. I personally think human life and the world we live
in wasn’t created accidentally. I do think that there’s a creator. … Now the way
that he did it, I’d certainly want my kids to be exposed to the very best
science. I don’t want any facts or theories or explanations to be withheld from
them because of political correctness.


Creationism is the belief that (a) God created the earth. Jindal is a Biblical literalist. Obviously Catholics can be fundamentalists too, only someone with no knowledge of the modern Catholic Church could make such a statement. More important is McArdle's statement that she's fine with messing with children's education and hurting their chances to attain higher education and for economic gain. It's not like she or her lucky, lucky progeny would go to a public school or state college, after all. And what does she care what happens in Louisiana? She's in DC.

Next is the equating of union regulations with the destruction of a pillar of democratic society, the separation of church and state. And finally we are favored with a cynical, dismissive bit--all politicians pander, so what does it matter if a nut wants to inflict his extremist views on his state?

And this is just one comment! You should see the entire post!

Megan McArdle is the Singularity of Wingnuttia.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In that troll post, she mentions Kottke and ends the sentence with a colon, presumably to signal that she is quoting someone else. But she doesn't use quotation marks or block the quote, so at first glance, it looks like it's something she wrote and not the work of a different writer.

You guys are right. She is NEVER going to get fired for her crappy, lazy output.

Susan of Texas said...

It's amazing. She could just say any damn thing. She could advocate eating babies and her commenters would discuss the cost effectiveness of breast milk versus powdered milk. Her bosses must just avert their eyes every day.

Anonymous said...

There certainly can't be anyone with any sense running the show at the Atlantic anymore. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that every single day she has posted there since joining the staff, she has either made glaring editing typos, misspelled words, got the facts wrong, or written about something she obviously knows little or nothing about.

I'm serious. I bet if someone were masochistic enough to take the time, that could be proven to be true. Every darn day.