Comic Relief

Megan McArdle has taken down a post because her source complained about fair use of their text. Since McArdle depended heavily on their analysis for her content they must have decided that she crossed the line, although it is common for her to comment on others' analysis instead of creating her own.

But that's not the good part.

I attempted to rectify the situation by trimming down the excerpts, and naming the site from which they were drawn, but this seems to have somehow only made them madder--perhaps because this is so rare in my ten years of experience blogging that I was mystified rather than sufficiently apologetic.

In other words, she tried to pull both Such Is Blogging and I Come From A Long Line Of Academically Intimidating Intellectuals, and pissed off the author of the article she quoted. Which just goes to show that if you hire someone because she has no journalism ethics, she will tend to get in trouble for being "mystified" by journalism ethics. Some sources are much more stringent than others and McArdle does not have the flexibility and self-confidence to deal with challenges to her authority.

Thank goodness for Megan McArdle. When the future becomes too oppressive we can always read her column and laugh at her pratfalls and malapropisms.