Tee-hee! http://bit.ly/bBXe5g
about 10 hours ago via TweetDeck
The hee! references a post by a male who appears to spend most of his time calculating how little he can spend on a woman and still get to have sex with her. His view of women as a walking, whining, brainless vagina waiting to be gifted with his member will end up being its own reward, but his venom makes McArdle think.
@m_beauchamp At some point there's ironic tension in blogging . . . folks who pour whole life into perfecting pursuit of people they despise
6 minutes ago via TweetDeck
Ironic tension is the tension created by the use of irony--the viewers know something the writer (or character) does not. Evidently McArdle satisfies the inner unease created by criticism by telling herself that she knows the truth and her critics do not. Sadly, the facts do not back her up, but in this particular case she might have a point. The author of the criticism, Chateau, assumes McArdle is a ball-busting feminist out to bag a man any way she can. Little does he know that McArdle sees herself as an exclusive club which few are allowed to enter.
But McArdle's confusion about the motives of her critics is very interesting. She utterly ignores the fact that she is a paid advocate for global corporations who is pretending to be a journalist. It's possible that she's too stupid to know she is being used, but her stupidity is usually deliberate. She and the rest of her sorry band of bankster and oil company boosters think that they should be left alone to pass on their propaganda in peace and collect their hefty paychecks, which they will spend in the pursuit of an upper-class lifestyle they can't afford. Any consequences of their actions, any suffering they cause or disaster they help someone get away with, is irrelevant. Why can't those haters just leave them alone? They're not doing anything wrong. They're noble truth-tellers and arbitrators of public wisdom. They should be praised and accepted, and instead they are fact-checked and criticized. What the hell is wrong with the world?
Chateau is worthy of a post in himself, but we are not in the mood for the bile of the self-pitying, scheming, grasping male harridan out for all he can get, who views women as self-pitying scheming, grasping harridans out for all they can get. Our feminism comes from the knowledge that women are just as smart and stupid, venal and noble, adventurous and home-loving, and creative and destructive as men.
ADDED: Glenn Greenwald:
These [government officials] are individuals who destroyed the lives of countless innocent people with gruesome and lawless "policies." Not only did they never suffer for it, they have been richly rewarded with wealth and life-long job security. And still, the only tragedy they see from everything that happened is their own trivial "suffering," i.e., the fact that they're criticized in some quarters for what they did. The term "sociopathic self-absorption" should have a huge picture of them next to it in the dictionary.
The same thing goes for the "journalists" that aid and abet them.
13 comments:
How did you ever stumble into or onto Megan McArdle?
Her ideas that I've read through your blog... unimpressive, to say the least.
However, as one who grew up in DC and knows a lot about how the Fed Govt works, including its wonkosphere and its manifold orbits of pundits and bloggers, I must say I'm not surprised that someone of McArdle's ...uh... tepid intellect and bland writing skills has a paid sycophancy position.
I just wonder, why legitimate her further with any attention. Clearly she's a moron, paid or not.
It's a good question. I think she has a lot of legitimacy in the public eye-she worked for the Economist and now works for the Atlantic, which imbues her with authority. The right uses her work to support their malicious policies--she's a favorite of the Corner and David Brooks, has appeared on NPR, CNN, the BBC, and in other places such as the Atlantic Ideas Festival. Her work appears in the New York Times and Washington Post. She's tepid and frequently wrong, but she has some power and has plenty of legitimacy, whether I follow her or not.
I started my blog mostly to have a place to put my long political jokes, but also to discuss authoritarianism, and how it shapes the choices we make. I first noted McArdle through links to Fire Megan McArdle, and then Glenn Greenwald called her out for ignoring America's acceptance of torture during war. I posted about her, and, incredibly, she linked to the post--she thought it was flattering, somehow. That caught my interest, and I soon realized that she was a perfect example of the authoritarian follower, with an interesting twist--she thought she was an authoritarian leader.
Most of all, McArdle is unable to hide the workings of her inner mind. It's very easy to see how her personal issues color her opinions, and that helps me describe how conservative opinions are usually formed--not on facts, but on allegiance to a tribe and maintenance of its boundaries.
Inner mind? Oh, Susan, that's cute! Megan is like Cordelia in BTVS in the scene where Buffy can read minds. There's almost no difference between her inner thoughts and her outer statements. I'm also reminded of the scene where Cordelia, sublimely indifferent to the fact that Giles is upset responds to his continued sharp use of her name "CORDELIA!" by saying "why does everyone always say my name like that? I'm not deaf!" revealing that she gets the same response from everyone but still hasn't figured out how she's pissing them off.
I admit that Megan has some rudimentary sense that what she is saying is false/meretricious--you can see it in her dodges and her attempts to distract some imaginary reader from faulting her for (variously): selfishness, stupidity, cupidity, venality, lies, etc...but I don't think its really evidence of much inner mind. Maybe its vestigial?
aimai
Heh. Her inner mind is her outer mind. I forgot to mention she's also fun, like watching Cordy is fun. You're half appalled, half amused. And you just know she'll end up pregnant with demon spawn.
This reminds me of this discussion--Matt Taibbi discusses LeBron James.
I thought: this is just like politics! A terrible, totally unskilled liar, telling a completely transparent lie, who then improbably gets let off the hook by the sycophantic moron interviewing him. What is it about this story we love so much?
Just got done looking at Chateau's website. God, what a pathetic creature! A total woman-hater, that's for sure. And probably dealing with some serious insecurity issues.
I would hate to go through life thinking that meeting women has to be conducted like some military operation,that one has to be total calculating phony 24/7, and that the ultimate goal in life for a man is to treat women as disposable trash.
I hope he has a dog--or at least a plastic love doll--to keep him company in his lonely, bitter old age...
Megan has to convince herself that anyone who criticizes her spends their "whole life" doing it, because anybody who doesn't see her for the perfect, infallible, always-right person that she is must not have a life with any meaning. Talk about ironic tension.
Now and then someone like CFOxford makes a complaining comment on the grounds of "this person isn't worth writing about" or the threadbare "ignore them & they'll go away" suggestion.
Most are trolls, but it is possible Mr. CEO just DUMB.
As someone responded to a similar complaint: "We ignored Rush Limbag and look what happened".
Megan and rush and all the other paid apologists for conservatism are working hard to implement the neo-fascist-corporatist State. Some are too stupid to know what they are doing, and others, like Meg, believe THEY are one of the "Elite". Huh. Dream on Ms. ArgleBargle.
They are so easily mockable because trying to rationalize the wicked vicious policies of the Banks/Brokerages such as AIG or Goldman Saks, and Corporations like BP is, well, impossible. It Can't Be Done at all by an intelligent, moral person. And the excuses she and Doughy Pantload, and all the other blowhard (paid) supporters come up with are often hilarious if not outright insane.
This should be pointed out regularly. These people should be torn down and torn apart and shown up for the sniveling quislings they are.
Roissy is a real piece of work. He came to the attention of the feminist blogosphere for writing a few sappily apologetic posts about the guy who opened fire in a gym last year, killing several women in revenge for all the ones who wouldn't date him.
"Poor guy," was Roissy's take, "if only he'd 'had game.'"
I think it was Marcotte who pointed out the flaw in his thinking: it's not the guy wouldn't have shot a bunch of women if only he'd had a girlfriend; he didn't have a girlfriend because he gave off the vibe of a guy who would one day shoot women.
And, creepily enough, the killer had connections with a "pick up artist" group...I'm sure he found plenty of fodder there for honing his rage and sense of entitlement.
Roissy is a real piece of work. He came to the attention of the feminist blogosphere for writing a few sappily apologetic posts about the guy who opened fire in a gym last year, killing several women in revenge for all the ones who wouldn't date him.
"Poor guy," was Roissy's take, "if only he'd 'had game.'"
I think it was Marcotte who pointed out the flaw in his thinking: it's not the guy wouldn't have shot a bunch of women if only he'd had a girlfriend; he didn't have a girlfriend because he gave off the vibe of a guy who would one day shoot women.
And, creepily enough, the killer had connections with a "pick up artist" group...I'm sure he found plenty of fodder there for honing his rage and sense of entitlement.
"The only slithering that night was her receiving my meaty intrusion."
Ah, love.
I don't have kids, but if this one were mine, I'd consider smothering him in his bed.
It's so funny--the men at that blog think they've found the secret to infinite sex, when they are just doing the equivalent of The Rules or The Secret.
My favorites are the men who try to have sex with as many women as possible and then are enraged when they end up paying child support.
A couple of weeks ago I tried to google info/articles on what a "real" Alpha male is: you know, consensus creating, intelligent, sensitive, etc (what Obama appears to be, but apparently is not).
All I could get were dating-advice sites for men; blogs telling guys how to act like the Alpha male (rich & nasty like Mel Gibson), they think wimmin want, and Git Gurls. Ish.
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