Cooking Lessons

Isn't this a lovely cake? It's too bad McArdle's cake looks nothing like it.


Previously we have discussed how Mrs. Megan McArdle is the smartest econoblogger who ever blogged and the nicest, most moral, most superior elite of all elitedom. But Megan McArdle's imaginary gifts do not end there. Pish and tosh! McArdle is also the bestest, most knowledgeable and most gifted cook as well. And now we have the video to prove it!

For McArdle, all things are possible and all roads lead to success, so it was inevitable that she would advance to giving us little demonstrations of her expertise on video. It takes more than one medium to reveal her awesomeness, you know! Having conquered print, where she reigns as the Queen Bee of The Atlantic, McArdle demonstrates to us lucky, lucky peasants the correct and modern way to make a cake. Now we not only are able to see her words and hear the special wisdom as she passes it down the social ladder, we get to see her, nestled amongst all her kitchen things that we previously were forced to envy from afar, sight unseen.

And, best of all, we get to hear that well-bred voice imparting its wisdom. Many a time I said to myself, "You know what? The only thing that could possibly improve this Megan McArdle column would be if I could hear her read it herself, so that every inflection, every syllable, could magically transmit the nuance of her meaning." And now---I can.

Excuse me, I must compose myself.

There, that's better.

As McArdle tells us in the article that accompanies her cooking video, she is a "foodie." Foodies are not your ordinary, everyday people; they are special people who have a special relationship with food.

Foodie is an informal term for a particular class of aficionado of food and drink. The word was coined in 1981 by Paul Levy and Ann Barr, who used it in the title of their 1984 book The Official Foodie Handbook.

Although the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, foodies differ from gourmets in that gourmets are epicures of refined taste who may or may not be professionals in the food industry, whereas foodies are amateurs who simply love food for consumption, study, preparation, and news.[1] Gourmets simply want to eat the best food, whereas foodies want to learn everything about food, both the best and the ordinary, and about the science, industry, and personalities surrounding food.[2] Foodies are a distinct hobbyist group. Typical foodie interests and activities include the food industry, wineries and wine tasting, breweries and beer sampling, food science, following restaurant openings and closings, food distribution, food fads, health and nutrition, and restaurant management. A foodie might develop a particular interest in a specific item, such as the best egg cream or burrito. Many publications have food columns that cater to foodies. Interest by foodies in the 1980s and 1990s gave rise to the Food Network and other specialized food programming, popular films and television shows about food such as Top Chef and Iron Chef, a renaissance in specialized cookbooks, specialized periodicals such as Gourmet Magazine and Cook's Illustrated, growing popularity of farmers' markets,[3] food-oriented websites like Zagat's and Yelp, publishing and reading food blogs (a number of people photograph and post on the Internet every meal they ever make or consume), specialized kitchenware stores like Williams-Sonoma and Sur La Table, and the institution of the celebrity chef.

How does Megan McArdle know that she is one of these special, educated, sophisticated people? Foodies always want the best, and Megan McArdle always wants the best. So of course she is a foodie!

It has come to my attention that many of you are still using pre-ground pepper, and really, my friends, that has to stop. You might as well take what's left over in the garden ashtrays after a party and sprinkle it over your eggs--at least it would save you some money, and wake you up a bit. Almost all spices are best fresh ground, because the essential oils that give them their flavor dissipate very quickly--but pepper suffers particularly badly, turning bitter and lifeless.

I love loose leaf tea, which has a better flavor than tea bags (tea bags grind the tea finer, which means it goes stale faster).

And let's not forget McArdle's signature flavoring, the one that best embodies her refined and educated taste:

Exotic salts are the new Green Peppercorns and White Truffle Oil, and in my opinion, considerably more interesting. If you use expensive salts for flavoring your cooking (or putting on top of your food), a wooden salt keeper can keep them from getting too humid and clumping together. Right now I'm using Maldon sea salt for most things, and pink Himalayan salt for dishes that demand a lighter flavor.

Not that McArdle is a snob, dear me, no. Since she works very long hours in her demanding career of blogger for a major metropolitan news magazine, she sometimes finds herself with no time to cook, and therefore just warms up chicken nuggest in the toaster oven, or some other little bit of savory goodness she found in the freezer case at Trader Joe's. Since McArdle, and therefore all of her friends, and therefore all of the world, is caught in this terrible dilemma of spending tens of thousands of dollars on kitchen they seldom use, McArdle investigated this burning investigative issue, and shared her finding with us in her article. It seems that McArdle was unable to actually come to a conclusion regarding why she spends so much money on her kitchen while seldom cooking, but she does inform us that it's really cool to have so many more expensive appliances than people used to have in the dim past, such as the 1950s, when appliances hadn't been invented yet.

When we’re spending on leisure rather than drudgery, we think about our purchases very differently. Jobs are about cost-benefit analysis, which is why no one buys ultra-premium paper clips for their home office—in fact, many people who cook for a living make fun of amateurs like me, with our profusion of specialty knives and high-end pans. Leisure is as much about our pleasant fantasies as it is about what we’re actually doing. If you see cooking as an often boring part of your daily work, you’ll buy the pots you need to finish the job, and then stop. But if it’s part of a voyage of personal “rediscovery,” you’ll never stop finding new side trips to take—and everyone who’s been on a nice vacation knows the guilty pleasure of spending a little more than you should. [my bold]

"Leisure is as much about our pleasant fantasies as it is about what we’re actually doing." It certainly is! Megan McArdle has a very pleasant fantasy of being a New York foodie and lots of very nice men who own corporations are very happy to sell her and her friends things to make that fantasy seem real. It works beautifully. McArdle knows so much about buying kitchen equipment that she just has to be an expert on food as well.

In fact,* McArdle is such a special foodie that she doesn't even need to learn about cooking to be an expert in cooking. She just absorbs the knowledge from the elite milieu she lives in. She watches FoodTV on her TIVO and leafs through some food magazines and reads The New York Times food section religiously to follow the latest trends, and what else could an elite person need to do? Go through the day-to-day drudgery of planning menus and writing grocery lists? Spend years, decades even, cooking thousands of dinners? Pfttt! You don't know your elite very well, do you? LOL!

Enough preamble: On with the movie! I'm so excited I can't eat my Junior Mints!

"The Atlantic Presents: Megan Cooks!" by Mrs. Megan McArdle, foodie extraordinaire and sparkle princess:

(Oh my goodness, look at the walls. McArdle has at least 13 pots on the wall of her kitchen! No wonder her guests wander into the kitchen to look at all of her pans, as she tell us.)

McArdle tells us that she will demonstrate why "we" spend so much on kitchens by showing us how incredibly hard it was for Grandma to make a cake, compared to making a cake today. No doubt Granny is kicking herself that she couldn't afford a Viking range, as we all should be doing. Not buying a $10,000 range will give corporations a sad, and McArdle hates to see unhappy corporations. McArdle tells us that our great-grandmothers, whom we will call 1900 Granny, didn't have measuring cups or spoons, which is one of the reasons we are so lucky to live in modern, albeit very expensive, times. When McArdle tries to make her cake the 1900 way, she has no idea how to measure the butter! McArdle lets us know that they had to guess, and that a recipe might call for a knob of butter the size of an egg so 1900 Granny would put the butter in water and measure the water displacement to tell if the amount was correct. We are not sure why 1900 Granny didn't just scoop up some butter the size of an egg instead of going through an additional step, but we are not a member of the elite and therefor probably just didn't soak up McArdle's elite knowledge. This osmosis knowledge situation probably also explains how 1900 Granny knew how much water was displaced when she didn't have a measuring cup.

McArdle is all smiles as she shows us that she just needs to unwrap two sticks of butter and put them in a bowl. Modern life is wonderful, and pre-measured butter proves that you needed that $200 blender. Next she creams her butter and sugar together by hand, the 1900 way. It sure looks hard, as McArdle chases the butter and sugar around and around in the bowl. 1900 Granny would have pressed down on the butter, kneading the sugar in instead of scooting it around the bowl, but let's not be pedantic about it. Modern cooks don't need to know how to cream sugar because they have a Kitchen Aid, and McArdle shows us how easy it is to cream sugar and butter, and then beat in eggs. 1950 Granny would have taught McArdle that cracking an egg into a beating mixer is not too smart; if you drop in an eggshell you have to throw everything away, but that is the sort of thing that experience teaches you, and as McArdle already told us, she talks about cooking a lot more than doing any actual, you know, cooking.

We are not sure why McArdle seems to think 1950 Granny didn't have a mixer and therefore nobody used mixers in the 1950s, no matter what the history books and our own eyes (or the eyes of our parents) have told us. Maybe that's an elite thing too.

Having assembled the wet ingredients, McArdle moves on to the dry ones, namely, flour, which McArdle shows us was laboriously shifted by moving a flour sifter's little crank around and around until the two (presumably unmeasured) cups of flour are pressed through the wire bottom. McArdle tells us that this aerates the flour, which is why earlier Grannies had to sift. They also had to sift to remove impurities or coarse bits from milled grain, which is no longer necessary. McArdle does not share this bit of wisdom; perhaps she is saving it for Christmas baking stories. I just use a fork, while McArdle uses a Cuisinart to aerate the flour, which proves that she is far more elite than I. She does not show us the five minutes it takes to wash and dry the bowl and top, but perhaps elite people have servants for that sort of thing and I do not properly appreciate how lucky I am that people are able to use modern conveniences to save so much time in the kitchen.

Now McArdle is ready to add milk, and tells us that back in the '50s, milk came in bottles and had a higher cream content, while her own milk is lowfat. So we no longer have to shake our milk to mix in the bit of cream that rose to the top, which is, no doubt, a great labor-saving practice for these modern times. Unfortunately McArdle needs whole milk, so she must add cream, another step that only proves that it's better to live now, in the convenient if not time-saving era of low-fat milk.

Aren't you exhausted, 1950s Cook? I know I am just, watching her travails and labors.

Next McArdle shows off her easy-pour bowls, which have poured some of their contents on her counter but must be wonderful because spouts on bowls are a brand-new things, or at least these spouts on these bowl surely are. The nuts come next, and McArdle lets us know that in these convenient times we are able to buy shelled nuts, unlike 1900s Granny. Presumably 1950s Granny could buy shelled nuts; McArdle doesn't say. Planter's lets us know that it was selling shelled nuts in 1919, but no doubt McArdle would just say that her granny didn't have them, so nobody did. Most women probably did shell their own nuts, or (and I speak from experience), have one of the kids do it. The nuts would taste much better, but McArdle didn't promise us fresh nuts, she promised us less time in "our" expensive kitchens. McArdle cracks a nut on a handy little levered nut cracker and tells us that 1900 Granny wouldn't have even had that, although the Victorians loved kitchen gadgets and invented hundreds of them. Woops, that must not be elite knowledge either.

McArdle uses the food processor again (there goes another five minutes of cleaning) to chop the nuts, something that would take 1950s Granny a good three minutes. Then she shows us how her mother would have had to butter and flour the pan. My mother would have insisted I use cheaper Crisco, but we are not here to relive my childhood traumas. My mother, who was a private chef and a baker for part of her life, was elite for none of her life and did not know better, I suppose. McArdle uses Baker's Joy, which costs a lot more than a bit of grease and flour but saves time. That is, she uses it on one pan; the other looks unsprayed. Sadly, no amount of money can make one attentive while cooking.

McArdle tells us that 1900 Granny had big, strong arms from working in the kitchen; fortunately she herself does not seem to have that problem, and seems to find the mixing bowl heavy when she pours out the batter. McArdle explains the minutes she saved by her electric convection oven and its even browning. Our Grannies had gas, which browns beautifully, but no matter. McArdle's oven cost a lot more than Granny's and therefore it must be much better. The magic of video cuts to the finished cakes, which have been removed from their pans and left to cool on wire racks. By the look of one of the cakes McArdle did indeed neglect to grease the pan; it has breaks in the surface. I use something that McArdle does not, very modern silicone cake pan liners. I still must grease the pans but the cakes pop out of the pan perfectly every time. However the liners did not cost very much, so I suppose the real cooking elites don't know about them.

McArdle then moves on to the whipped cream filling, telling us that she will show the difference between 1900, 1950 and modern cream whipping. She tells us that "old school" Granny would have used a fork or maybe even a whisk, but 1900 Granny had egg beaters. McArdle does not describe what 1950s Granny would use.

There is a little confusion regarding 1950s Granny, we must admit. McArdle has told us that she didn't have mixers, or rather that she did but they weren't that common, or rather they were common but they don't count because not everyone had one. I know, it's confusing, but that's just what happens when osmosis is your teacher; sometimes your absorb contradictory facts and must do your best with the results. Nobody said it was easy being a member of the elite.

McArdle beats her cream with an immersion blender, which earlier Grannies did not have, although they did have standing blenders, which were invented in the 20s according to some people who are not McArdle. But obviously they don't count. The immersion blender seems to work well although the cream for McArdle's filling is rather runny. More experienced cooks would have beaten it until it was a bit stiffer but the point is to get out of the kitchen sooner, not to make better cakes!

McArdle tells us that confectioner's sugar (icing sugar) was not readily available for 1900 Granny, who would have used a rolling pin to crush the sugar. We are very lucky to have McArdle around to explain such things to us, as I actually thought that powered sugar has been around since the turn of the century! In old books I've seen it called "pounded" sugar, because it was ground with a mortar and pestle, but McArdle tells us something else and she must be right and everyone else must be wrong.

Finally the cake is filled, assembled and iced, and what a time-saving marvel it is. Unfortunately McArdle did not know enough to double the recipe--frosting recipes often make only one cup and you need at least two to frost a cake well. But one would have to bake a lot to know that, and the purpose of spending so much money on baking equipment is to spend less time in the kitchen, not more! My goodness, how many times do I have to remind you! The resulting cake is a bit uneven and messy and cost about a thousand dollars in cooking equipment to make, but it sure was quick.

*an imaginary fact, not a real fact.

If At First You Don't Succeed, Lie Lie Again

Ho hum, Megan McArdle lied about her conflicts of interest again. I noted these passages last week but I want to emphasize the lying. It still amazes me every time she gets away with this stuff.

In fact, the conversation I'm alluding to concerned a young woman who was home-schooled before attending a small Christian college, which the reviewers of her application dismissed as a place of “right-wing religious fundamentalists” that was “supported by the Koch brothers.”  

 Full disclosure: My husband works for Reason magazine, which has received some funding from one of the Koch brothers, and before we were married, he had a one-year fellowship with the Charles Koch Foundation.

To paraphrase the little Missy, I don't think "full" and "disclosure" mean what she thinks they mean. For instance "full" means all, not part of. And "disclosure" means revealing, not omitting.

How Megan McArdle sees herself and her fellow libertarians:

 

Bucaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers

The reality:

                                       Henchman 1, Moll 1, Moll 2, Bond villain, Megan McArdle


They say love of money is the root of all evil but the love of ego gratification might be even worse.

Megan McArdle, recipient of bounteous Koch largess, does not want to be known as a person who owes her success to the wide net cast by the Koches while fishing for little minions to do their dirty work. It's embarrassing and might (probably not but might) harm her job prospects at this stage in her career.

I could spend a week looking up all of McArdle's Koch ties, the ties that she is willing to lie to hide, but Yasha Levine has already done it:

Megan McArdle's Undisclosed Koch Connections (in reverse chronological order):

In June 2012, Megan McArdle spoke at a Koch-linked Students for Liberty "Women for Liberty" event held at the Institute for Humane Studies. McArdle was described as a "shining" role model that "young women in the movement should look up to." Students for Liberty is a Koch-funded youth club founded by alumni of the Institute for Humane Studies.

In 2012, McArdle served as a judge for the Reason Foundation Bastiat Prize, awarded to libertarian media pundits. Reason Foundation is closely linked to the Koch think-tank network and is funded in part by a number of different Koch foundations. (She has served in this capacity for a number of years.)

In 2011, McArdle took part in a Cato Institute panel called "U.S. Debt and the Millennials: Is Washington Creating a Lost Generation?" She described Social Security and Medicare as a "gigantic space alien that's larger, like five times the size of earth."

In October 2011, Mcardle was honored by being chosen to emcee Charles Koch's 50th Anniversary gala celebration of his flagship libertarian think-tank, the Institute for Humane Studies, featuring Charles Koch as the keynote speaker and guest of honor. McArdle and Koch were joined by hundreds of leading GOP donors and activists. An IHS newsletter wrote of her performance: "Emcee Megan McArdle wove a humorous narrative through the program." The IHS attempted to hide McArdle's involvement, scrubbing her name from the dinner announcement page.

In February 2011, McArdle was the keynote speaker at the annual International Students For Liberty Conference, where she delivered a talk titled "Building the Case for Liberty in the New Century." The conference included a sneak preview of the film Atlas Shrugged.

  In 2011, McArdle was a guest lecturer at the Institute for Humane Studies' "Journalism & the Free Society" summer seminar program. The program tackled such topics as "Is an 'objective' press possible — or even desirable?" Other faculty members joining McArdle that year included Radley Balko, then-editor at the Kochs'Reason magazine

In 2010, she was a moderator at a Mercatus conference about credit card regulation. Koch Industries funneled a combined $3.7 million to Mercatus in 2007 and 2008. The Wall Street Journal called the Mercatus Center "the most important think tank you’ve never heard of.”  

In June 2010, McArdle married fellow Koch activist Peter Suderman. Suderman spent much of his adult career on the Koch payroll, rotating through positions at America's Future Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, FreedomWorks, as well as the Moonie-owned The Washington Times. Suderman is currently a senior editor at Reason magazine.

In June 2009, McArdle served as moderator at a Cato Institute's healthcare reform conference. The title of McArdle's panel was: "Should Congress Mandate Coverage?"

In Spring of 2009, McArdle served as a judge for a Koch-funded blogger contest held to identify "young conservative and libertarian talent who wish to pursue careers as journalists and writers." The winner received a $10,000 prize. Other judges included Cato/Reason's Radley Balko, Jonah Goldberg, and libertarian economist Jonathan H. Adler.

In January 2009, McArdle was a speaker at an America's Future Foundation (AFF) event that featured "young libertarians and conservatives who have taken a leadership role in . . . re-branding the Republican party." AFF is a libertarian organization that exists to "identify and develop the next generation of conservative and libertarian leaders." It has close ties to the Koch-funded think-tank network, including Mercatus, ALEC and Institute for Humane Studies.

In September 2008, McArdle took part in a panel discussion at AFF about "who should libertarians and conservatives support." That same month, McArdle was a featured speaker at an anti-regulation event hosted by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Her talk focused on how "government regulation actually contributed" to the financial meltdown.

In March 2007, McArdle partied at Reason magazine's "Happy Hour" with David Weigel, Radley Balko, as well as The Wall Street Journal's John Fund.

In the mid-2000s, McArdle received journalism training from the right-wing Institute for Humane Studies, headed by Charles Koch since the 1960s. According to the IHS, its journalism program "places talented writers and communicators—who support individual liberty, free markets, and peace—at media companies and non-profit newsrooms" and offers "mentoring and job placement assistance." The program currently includes a $3,200 stipend, as well as travel allowance.

If McArdle were a real journalist she'd be forced to print the longest disclosure  of conflicts of interest on the face of the earth. Fortunately for her she is not and she can skip disclosures altogether and throw her husband under the bus to save herself.

The Kitchen Gift Guide Review!

Yes, folks, it's that time of year again, when Megan McArdle rummages through her kitchen drawers and makes up a list of miscellaneous gadgets that she enjoys using (or so she says). We are a bit under the weather, so let's go straight to the mocking.


Microplane grater: Evidently McArdle finds grating a lemon so difficult she ends up reducing her "knuckles to a bloody, sodden pulp." A microplaner seems like a nice thing to have, but it's not going to make McArdle coordinated or save her macaroni and cheese recipe. As McArdle likes to say, garbage in, garbage out.

Silicon Pastry Mat: McArdle laments her lost pastry mat, since its loss ruined her attempt to make gingerbread cookies. We would advise simply adding flour to the work surface--gingerbread cookies can take a lot; it just makes them fatter and chewier--but why ruin her little story with facts?

Silicon Oven Mitts: McArdle uses these whenever she wants " to plunge your hand into boiling water." Someone should give McArdle a colander before she ends up on "1000 Ways To Die" on SpikeTV. Her kitchen habits are not exactly safe.

Tongs: McArdle informs us that tongs are useful things, something that most of us realized the first time we picked them up and use them to terrify our little sister. McArdle recommends that we use them for lifting small items and putting them back down, a major stroke of genius. Unfortunately she appears to be setting them down on the burner; she informs us that they will catch on fire if you, well, set them on fire. So far McArdle is suffering from kitchen fires, shattering ceramic knives, immersion in pots of boiling water, and death by grater. Maybe she should find a safer hobby, like jumping out of airplanes.

Butter boat: McArdle likes have a little ceramic container of butter sitting out, which cools itself through evaporation. We live in a very hot and humid climate, and prefer to use the fridge to keep butter from spoiling and the microwave to soften it when necessary.

Silicon rolling pin: Maybe McArdle should just give up on pie crust if it's this hard for her. Just buy it already prepared, woman! Nobody cares. You won't lose your hipster doofus (TM Seinfeld) credentials.

This makes it just slightly trickier to roll up your top crust pastry on the pin and then unroll it over the pan, but this is a very minor inconvenience compared to not having half your dough stuck to the pin, and the rest an unusable, hole-filled mess. Really, once you try this, you will never go back to wood.

We suspect that McArdle doesn't realize she needs to chill the fat and ice the water, and rest the dough for half an hour. Perhaps she dug soft butter out of its watery boat and now wonders why the dough is sticky and won't roll. Or is she so terrified of flour that she refuses to sprinkle it on the board? We demand another Blogginheads competition so we can mock more knowledgeably.

McArdle also recommends a few items like an egg separator and cookbook holder, and tells us that she uses a burr coffee grinder but all you need is a blade grinder.

Froth au Lait: A milk warmer and frother is a nifty thing to have, since it is much easier to use and clean than the frother attachment on an espresso machine. McArdle's frother looks bigger than the Nespresso frother, which can be used to just warm milk as well which a self-professed latte drinker should prefer, but evidently she thinks it has potential.

The manufacturer maintains that you can make all sorts of custards and fancy sauces in it. I can't speak to that--though in theory, something that constantly stirs your Hollandaise for you at a consistent temperature does seem like an improvement over the normal procedure of curdling the eggs and then frantically trying to get them to un-separate.

Has anyone thought of giving McArdle cooking lessons? Or is tempering eggs like math, a skill far out of reach for our heroine?

Salt Pig: No holiday gift list would be complete without McArdle advising us to buy the most common condiment on earth. Last year she famously declared we should cook with an expensive British salt and season our food with an even more expensive pink salt from the Himalayas (which actually was rock salt from Pakistan, heh). She spent the next month or so denying she had ever said any such thing, to everyone's amusement. McArdle has learned her lesson; however that lesson appears to have been "keep lying and everyone will forget what I said in the past."

As I noted last year, I've been experimenting quite a bit with varietal salts. They're an extravagence, but ultimately, they're an affordable extravagence--my modest containers of my two current favorites, Maldin Sea Salt and pink Himalayan rock salt, have now lasted for over two years. So far the flavor shows no signs of degrading.

A salt pig is good for holding these at the table (don't bother cooking with pricey salt--the cooking process alters the flavor. Just use it for finishing, or table salt). But where it really excels is on the stove, holding your salt for cooking. Many people I know swear by kosher salt, but while I find this useful for treating meat, otherwise I don't see what you gain from throwing larger crystals into a dish where they will just dissolve. I use ordinary Morton's iodized* salt.

After being so thoroughly humiliated for her salt pretentiousness last year McArdle tries to use reverse pretentiousness this year. We said that most people are happy with kosher salt, the way God and Alton Brown intended us to be, and now McArdle must tell us all that kosher salt's flakes are too big and one can just use Morton's. We admire her flexibility, if not her ethics.

The wee little piggie has a wide-open mouth and will not keep out humidity, but we'll let her find that out for herself.

McArdle also lists a gravy boat, immersion blender, scale, waffle, corkscrew, and tea press, sprinkling her reviews with little stories of her entertaining success. She does not compare items to let us know which brand is best and why--if she has it and recommends it, evidently it's the best. We bought a Screwpull when working our way through school as a waitress and it still works very well; for $12 (now $30), it was a great bargain. McArdle's rabbit is $55.

The Soadastream is, as she says, very nice if you like seltzer available at all times, but we run through the canisters of CO2 very quickly; too quickly to get new ones through the mail. You can get them refilled at Bed, Bath and Beyond for $15.

On and on and on it goes. McArdle likes All-Clad pans but thinks Calphalon Infused Anodized pans are the best. All-Clad does better in comparison tests but let's not tell McArdle. She uses a cast-iron pan for meat but evidently doesn't know that if it is properly seasoned and kept seasoned, it can cook anything without sticking (and can always go from stove top to oven). She likes electric pepper grinders but doesn't warn us that they often are underpowered and break down. And she likes an electric tea kettle but doesn't know about the extremely handy Japanese water heaters and their imitators, which can be left plugged in at all times if you so wish.

Half-educated, underskilled, gets facts wrong--what does that remind us of?

Goodbye To You

Press play to hear this article's soundtrack.

It is with deep, deep, ever-so-deep sadness that we at the Snark note the passing of Megan McArdle from the pages of The Atlantic (online!) It seems that she and her beloved magazine have parted ways and now McArdle must bid adieu to her cushy, prestigious little Watergate office. But as McArdle told us when she bought her darling Victorian row house, she has confidence that she can always find a new job in DC, and lo and behold, McArdle was snapped up at once by Tina Brown.

This is a bittersweet post for me to write. I've missed you all terribly while on leave, and in the interim, Newsweek has come to me and made me an offer I couldn't refuse to move there.

Ah, proof positive that McArdle was not fired, as some ungenerous people might think. True, McArdle went on book leave right after lying about her Koch conflict of interest but since The Atlantic never cared about that before it could not have fired her for such unprofessional conduct. Now we know that McArdle quit to write for The Daily Beast and Newsweek instead. They must have offered her a great deal of money; while Newsweek has a bigger audience, The Atlantic featured McArdle prominently as its only female Voice. Anyone trying to find McArdle amidst the clamoring clutter of The Daily Beast will need a search engine and a microscope.

Some might quibble at the disloyalty McArdle has displayed after all The Atlantic has done for her by taking a chance on a little-known blogger and financing her book leave. Thanks to The Atlantic McArdle was also a shining star at the Aspen Ideas for Big Brained Thinkers festivals and followed those triumphs with speaking engagements and fellowships provided by allies of David G. Bradley. But, thanks to McArdle, we all know that the most important thing in the world is money and we also know that where money goes, Megan McArdle follows.

I'll still be on leave for a few more months while I finish up the project I've been working on, and then at the end of the summer, I'll start blogging and writing for Newsweek/Daily Beast.

Yes, Megan McArdle, once the Senior Editor for economics at The Atlantic, will now be one of the fine stable of bloggers at The Daily Beast and a "correspondent" for Newsweek. Evidently her first assignment has something to do with McArdle's specialty, failure. Wikipedia tells us:

The back page is reserved for a "My Favorite Mistake" column written by celebrity guest columnists about a mistake they made that defines who they are.[25]

Since McArdle recently tweeted requests for her devoted followers to fill out a survey on their favorite mistake, McArdle must be working on that or a similar column; we look forwards to many posts and articles explaining how wonderfully failure has worked out for, well, certain people.

[yap yap yap]  

I'm very excited about the opportunity to work in a newsroom led by Tina Brown, whose turnarounds of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker are legendary. But it is not without regret--the inevitable regret that tradeoffs are necessary and I cannot take the job at Newsweek/Daily Beast without leaving so much behind at The Atlantic. In my five years here, we've gone from a magazine that was fantastic, but losing money by the bucketful to one that was still fantastic, but also profitable. That happened in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, an achievement which still boggles the mind. We've built a web presence, and a web brand, that few organizations can match. And it's been immense fun. Working for The Atlantic has been more than I ever dreamed it would be. I'll forever be immensely grateful to everyone who was here during my time--including my readers and my commenters, who are the ultimate reason that I get to spend my days reading and writing about stuff that interests me.

Those readers and commenters variously informed McArdle that they wished her the best and that most of them would continue reading her column at The Daily Beast, if they could find it. A few noted sadly that they understood her decision to sell out and didn't blame her at all for going for the money, and a few took a final shot at our favorite libertarian princess, now swiftly replaced by Garance Franke-Ruta. (Thanks, Downpuppy.)

Come tomorrow, I should have a URL to give you for the new blog, where I'll be posting a little bit over the summer (expect a post when the Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare drops). For now, I'll just say thanks for reading. I miss you guys more every day.

The link did not arrive but she need not bother; a less-important Megan is not the threat that an Atlantic Megan represented, and therefore is not worth wasting one's time over. Since McArdle was recently whining about her nasty troll critics no doubt she will be immensely relieved that she has traded prominence and respect for money and can now sink into anonymity. The Snark will continue to check out McArdle from time to time but as she is no longer important she will no longer be a central focus on this blog.

So.

Who's next?

Double Down

A typical kindergarten class, as pictured by Megan McArdle.

Awesome art by Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame, found here.



As my helpful commenters and emailers noted, when confronted with an incredulous and mocking response on her latest stupidity, Megan McArdle inevitably doubles down with more stupidity.

Let's start with comments she made on her original post.

Peyton 1 day ago "encourage people to gang rush shooters," Yep. Those six year olds certainly fell down on the job by not rushing the grown man with the assault weapon. You are one sick bitca.

I always enjoy a Joss Whedon shout-out.

Man-who-asks-inconvenient-questions 1 day ago @Peyton 

It takes a village, don't you know?

Heh.

Gorbud 1 day ago @Peyton Thanks keep pushing that lie. It helps you avoid any reasonable response to the story. She NEVER stated that these kids could have or should have rushed anyone. People like you usually pick out something and twist it into a lie just to discredit another person. Really what is wrong with you can't you read. Or does the reality of the government's and your own impotence in the face of evil you can't wish away cause some kind of breakdown in a logical thought process? Obama's magic wand won't work on this problem. The government can't in-fact solve everyone of the world's problems. Big news for the Liberal world. Impossible to accept.

Wishful thinking becomes reality to this poor self-deluded person. McArdle is a master at giving her audience just enough wiggle room to claim that she is not as stupid or venal as she appears. McArdle did not say kindergartners should have rushed the gunmen. She said "young people" should rush gunmen. Now she can claim she meant older kids, which is still indefensible but a little less laughable. Normal human beings would not want any "young people" rushing gunmen ever. They would want their kids and their kids' friends and classmates to run and hide and survive. But Megan McArdle is no longer a normal person. She sold her soul to the devil in exchange for a sous vide machine.

PeterBuka 1 day ago @Gorbud @Peyton ''I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.''What part of that is it you do not understand? If a sane person writes a sane article and finishes it off with complete insanity, that tends to reflect poorly on the sane portions of the article. Similar to Churchill being a savior and a racist at the same time. The racist part tends to smudge his good standing.

McArdle's own words condemn her.

MeganJ.McArdle 1 day ago @PeterBuka @Gorbud @Peyton You should read the rest of the article, in which I made fun of the idea that primary schoolers could have rushed Lanza.

Here is her usual claim that her critics did not read what she wrote. It's a pathetic response but less pathetic than her other typical response, that the critic did not understand what she wrote. And it sets up the lie in the rest of the sentence.

Do you want to know why Megan McArdle is rich and you aren't? Because Megan McArdle is a liar and you aren't. McArdle routinely lies, giant, honking, bald-faced lies, for a wide variety of reasons. Money, of course. Heh! Naturally she lies for money, because she can. There is nothing to stop her. She's not afraid of losing jobs or income; she knows she can always find someone who needs liars to peddle propaganda for them. She's not afraid of social ostracism; her friends, colleagues, and relatives obviously do not find her actions to be morally repellent either. If they did they kept quiet about it, for reasons of their own. So McArdle lies for money when she finds it furthers her ideological goals.

But there is much more to McArdle than greed, of course. There is also vanity, and McArdle lies to save face. This unusually wide-spread public humiliation threatens McArdle's carefully crafted and cultivated high opinion of herself. Prep school scarred her life, evidently. She went to very high prestige schools that most people worked extremely hard to enter. McArdle went to school with lot of very intelligent people over the years (as well as many idle upper class kids like herself). And let's face it, the poor dear just isn't very bright. It had to have been humiliating to be surrounded by people who could actually understand what the professor was saying and could say something intelligent in response. McArdle must be wise, witty, intellectual at all times and the only way she can achieve that goal is by lying, so she lies.

raskolnikovx9 1 day ago 

@MeganJ.McArdle @PeterBuka @Gorbud @Peyton No, but Megan you wrote the above statement and you did it in earnest. Care to retract and apologize? Because, beyond being so very stupid, its very, very offensive. Merl Lino 1 day ago @MeganJ.McArdle @PeterBuka @Gorbud @Peyton You didn't make fun of it you said you didn't know if it would work. You you say that about everything. Please explain what the words, "I would like to see." mean. You don't say that about everything else proposed. Don't wriggle. Admit you proposed something that is terribly wrong and for some unaccountable reason didn't realize that the instant your wrote it.  

Icewaterchrist 1 day ago 

@MeganJ.McArdle @PeterBuka @Gorbud @Peyton please quote that then, because I can't find it anywhere in your article.

She did not, because she could not.

People are very tempted to ignore lies because we all lie at times. We do not, however, make a career out of it. McArdle followed her first post with a couple more. In her next post on the shooting McArdle helpfully pointed out that "I was talking about teenagers, not first graders," not knowing that any parent would be just as appalled at the thought of their 14-year-old daughter rushing a man with an assault rifle.  McArdle explained that it's possible for adults to rush a gunman under some circumstances, although she did not explain why she gave that option as a response to yet another mass shooting of small children.

What often happens in these sorts of attacks is that people run and hide. Split up into ones and twos, they are easy targets for the shooters, who find it easy to pick off cowering people one by one. Unless the shooter's weapon is temporarily disabled--as seems to have happened with Loughner--one or two people are unlikely to be a match for a rifle or a handgun. But it seems to me that 8-12 people could be. Not an automatic weapon, of course, but automatic weapons are not usually used in these attacks, because it's been illegal to manufacture or sell more of these guns for civilian use since 1986. A semi-automatic weapon takes time to aim and fire, and hitting a moving target with a fatal shot is harder than hitting someone who is hiding under a desk.

Please remember that Megan McArdle is hair-splitting the death of children to prevent anyone from passing gun control laws. She has several other reasons why nobody can do anything ever, but let's skip to the end.

Obviously, it is beyond horrible to suggest that even a small number of attacks are largely unavoidable. I don't like saying it. Unfortunately, I think it's true. Which means that it's worth thinking about whether there is something--anything--that people in that situation could do to make them less fatal.

We can't stop random murders so we should not try to control gun sales, but we should try anything up to and including forcing all our teenagers to take SWAT training so they can run towards a man firing a semi-automatic weapon at them. But is McArdle really a liar if she was careful to avoid saying that small children should rush a gunman? Maybe her critics are being unfair by accusing her of wanting to put kids in mortal danger. Fortunately McArdle clears up this dilemma by lying once more about her response.

Merl Lino 1 day ago 

"But I was talking about teenagers, not first graders." You said in a reply to a comment that you meant it as a (very bad) joke. Now your make a different excuse, possibly because you also said you wanted to encourage it unlike other proposals you deem ineffective. Those you wanted to discourage and not recommend. You new response doesn't hold water. The human shield response is not a good one, and training teenagers to do it is absurd. You just reinforce the fact that you are totally without common sense.  

MeganJ.McArdle 20 hours ago 

@Merl Lino I didn't say that. You misread me.

Bingo!

Merl Lino 14 hours ago 

|I covered this, wyour wrote "MeganJ.McArdle 2 hours ago@PeterBuka @Gorbud @Peyton You should read the rest of the article, in which I made fun of the idea that primary schoolers could have rushed Lanza." I replied: "But she wrote, "I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly,.." In the rest of the article she expressed doubt that regulations would be effective, but didn't say she would "like to see them encouraged." She just can't seem to admit that her proposal is terribly wrong or explain why she did not realize that instantly as she wrote it." ----- Can you explain the fact that in the part I quoted you said you'd like to encourage human shield tactics even though you had doubts it would work, but you try to discourage regulations of guns which you also think might not work? Encourage...one set of proposals but discourage the other though you have doubts either of them will work? Then in your first response to that idea you said you were "making fun" of that suggestion? Now you say you were trying to encourage young people, not little kids? So then it was not you making fun, it was you trying to encourage teenagers--you now say--you wanted to gang up .Instead of retracting the suggestion you now elaborate it into a training program for teenagers to learn to react as human shields. You should just admit that it is a preposterous suggestion that you would like to retract.

She can't. She's trapped, by her ego and her lies. She deserves every bit of her humiliation.

I Think We're Going To Need A Bigger Cookie Jar

Tom Levenson has an elegant description of Megan McArdle's latest attempt to turn Elizabeth Warren into a pinata for the right to bash.

To do so she tries to impugn both the quality and integrity of Warren’s scholarship, and she does so by a mix of her usual tricks — among them simple falsehoods;** highly redacted descriptions of what Warren and her (never mentioned) colleagues actually said;*** and descriptions of Warren’s work that are inflammatory — and clearly wrong, in ways she seems to hope no one will bother to check.****

You can see the footnotes for quick examples of these sins. Here, I’ll confine myself to pointing out that in this post you find McArdle doing the respectable-society version of the same approach to argument that Andy Breitbart has just showed us can have such potent effect.

To see what I mean, you have to follow through two steps: how McArdle constructs her picture of a feckless, partisan and dishonest Warren — and then how she generalizes from it.

And indeed, when we google "megan mcardle elizabeth warren" we see that the right is jumping on the "feckless, partisan and dishonest" message that McArdle is pushing. The first thing we see is The Atlantic Wire post ("what everybody's thinking") that states:

First off, The Atlantic's Megan McArdle has studied Warren's scholarship and finds it deeply lacking in academic rigor. In one instance, McArdle argues that Warren inflated the number of household bankruptcies caused by medical expenses in order to justify universal health care. Warren analyzes society's ills in a way that suggests there is "no possible solution outside of a more left-wing government," McArdle writes. That doesn't lend itself to being a good agency head[...].

Their counterweight to their seconding of McArdle:

On the pro-side, is Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel who says Warren's wit and colloquial demeanor make her the perfect candidate[...].

"Colloquial manner" versus dishonest and biased. We wonder which version the right will pick up. From The Corner, who often quote McArdle:

The Atlantic Stacks the Deck [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Its website reviews the debate over whether Elizabeth Warren should head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On the con side it cites Megan McArdle, who "has studied Warren's scholarship and finds it deeply lacking in academic rigor." On the pro side there's Katrina vanden Heuvel, "who says Warren's wit and colloquial demeanor make her the perfect candidate." I'm inclined to side with McArdle, but boy is this not a fair fight.

Of course Business Insider and Instapundit link, as they always do. Joe Weisenthal:

Elizabeth Warren's Medical Bankruptcy Study Gets Demolished
Meanwhile, Meghan McArdle is writing a long, two-part post on Warren's career as a scholar and Harvard. McArdle takes a dim view of her research.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-latest-on-elizabeth-warren-and-the-consumer-financial-protection-agency-2010-7#ixzz0uhbi9jIt

Heh. Note he misspells her first name. The link leads to this:

TARP watchdog Elizabeth Warren has played an important role in fighting abuses of the federal handout, but the knock on her is that she's too much of an ideological activist, and that she's in over her head in the role.

As we all know, whenever we are told what everyone else is thinking, those thoughts invariably are talking points that the right wants to disseminate.

Warren is a bankruptcy lawyer and Harvard professor, with a particular interest in how the financial system hurts the "little guy."

That's fine, and it's not a bad thing to look at how the maze of insurance and mortgages and all that stuff look to the person signing their name on the dotted line -- where they're getting confused, etc. That being said, a professor's work should strive towards some kind of dispassionate "truth", whatever that means.

And it seems in her latest work -- a study claiming that medical costs now account for a stunning 70% of bankruptcies, up from 50% last time she looked -- is just pure nonsense.

Megan McArdle (who you may know from dropping the hammer on Edmund Andrews) rips it to shreds, noting that what Warren ignores it that bankruptcies on the whole have come down (significantly) over the last 6 years, and then 70% of the new number would still be 50% of the old number, so even medical-related bankruptcies have been coming down.

Now, some might defend Warren and say, that, well if her numbers are correct, it still shows that medical costs are the dominant contributors to bankruptcy, even if they've fallen along with the total number of filings. That may be so, but it's not actually saying that much. Because the problem she's trying to address is bankruptcy -- the issue is the devastating financial impact from medical bills (not the same thing). The latter is definitely concerning. Bankruptcy is symptom. But by taking misleading bankruptcy numbers, she can overstate how bad the medical bills situation is.

McArdle also did a followup post here, which is worth reading, emphasizing just how significant the question is, particularly coming from the person who's also playing such an important role in the bailout.

The Washington Post political economy blog pairs someone from the Peterson "Institute" and McArdle with Robert Shiller and someone from The American Prospect, as if they all were on the same level.

The Wall Street Journal says in an article on Warren:

For those and other comments, Ms. Warren has drawn the ire of Wall Street commentators including the Atlantic's Megan McArdle and former bank analyst Tom Brown. The most-often repeated criticism is that her background, as a bankruptcy law professor with a focus on consumers, doesn't qualify her to comment broadly on banking.

And:

Ms. Warren has made so many enemies inside and outside the Beltway, it makes one wonder if anyone is listening at all.

Economics of Contempt links to McArdle and states that they are glad Warren is being criticized. The Volokh Conspiracy also links and quotes McArdle's statement that Warren's data is dishonest, as do various small right-wing blogs. The talking point will be spread until the big media jump on it, and the conventional wisdom will be that Warren is shoddy and dishonest.

And McArdle will cash another paycheck, her rich reward for doing her part to destroy a political enemy and deprive herself and us of a tiny bit of leverage against overwhelming corporate control.

TBogg adds to the smackdown.

UPDATE: McArdle responds to Levenson, with typical erudition and grace.

Tee-hee! Some idiot snipped out a portion of my post in order to accuse me of--selectively reading someone else's work. http://bit.ly/9Wa79K
about 2 hours ago via TweetDeck

You almost feel sorry for her until you realize that she'd cheerfully garrote you and leave you by the side of the road if Jamie Dimon asked her to.

The Princess Bride, Part II

Today, Megan McArdle discusses the most fascinating subject in the world, Megan McArdle. You may have heard her mention once or twice that she is affianced to boy tea bagger P. Suderman, ret. McArdle spent the weekend buying her wedding ring and happily announced it to the world, but one small speck, one tiny blight, marred her Perfect Day.

Via McArdle's link to her boyfriend's present and cross-your-fingers-and-hope-to-die-future employer, we learn that some jewelers are eager to open a new market and increase revenue, the God-given right and duty of every free market entrepreneur. This should warm the cockles of McArdle's heart, but as we already know, if the gays get their hands on marriage, they'll just ruin it for everyone else.

It seems to me that there is a market opening for the brave young entrepreneur who is ready to redefine the gendered engagement ring for the gay community. But I'm a little puzzled about the idea of gay wedding rings. We bought ours yesterday, and though there was a big difference between men's and women's rings, I can't say that any of the rings in either gender screamed "gay" or "straight". The form factor for a circular band seems to have been pretty well settled, and I'm just not sure there's a lot of room there to express your sexual preference.

What puzzles our princess bride? Marketing? Niche marketing? Niche marketing for a new market? If a product is "pretty well settled" in form, should the form never change? Or should it not change just for gay couples?

Oddly enough, not everyone suffers from McArdle's lack of imagination and entrepreneurial spirit. If you Google "gay wedding and engagement rings," you get a wealth of information and merchandise available for the happy gay couple.* McArdle once again depends on her gut to tell her what other people want, and lo, her gut just happens to say that almost everyone wants the exact same things that McArdle and her friends want.

Ah, but that's not the good part. Let's take a look at the comments. We will paraphrase the commenters for brevity and directly quote McArdle.

Commenter: It's marketing.

McArdle: "Mmmm . . . but it's not like gay men are going to want to wear bigger womens' rings, and studding men's wedding rings with diamonds is more of a class thing than a sexual preference issue."

Commenter: Rings can't be designed for gay men?

McArdle: "I was in Act-Up, so yes, I'm familiar with triangles! But a very small minority of my friends from those days, gay or straight, have wished to incorporate those kinds of symbols into their wedding bands, and believe it or not, there are wedding bands with triangles already on them, for gay or straight people who like triangles."

So wedding rings are already designed for gay men, but there is no market for wedding rings designed for gay men. And if a friend of McArdle does not want them, nobody wants them.

Commenter: Small markets aren't served?

McArdle: "I'm saying that top of the line jewelers don't usually introduce "their new line of [celtic . . . asian . . . african-american . . . etc] rings, because only a small minority of any given population wants to make their group identity a major statement on their wedding rings. Yes, you can buy wedding rings emblazoned with any group symbol you'd care to name, but the problem is, then they don't look so much like wedding rings, and only a tiny percentage of the group in question usually buys them.

I'm not against it--I'm very pleased that they're trying to cash in on gay marriage, insofar as it recognizes that gay marriage is a coming trend. But like most attempts to cash in on trends, it seems a little dumb, too.

If y'all weren't totally convinced that everything I say is some sort of coded attempt to advance a right-wing agenda, you wouldn't need to work yourself into a lather every twenty minutes."

You see, gay marriage is just the trend of the moment, and cashing in on it will be dumb. But there will not be a market for specialized designs, despite the fact that there already is a market for specialized designs, because they don't look like traditional wedding rings. And we all know that the question of what a wedding should look like is "pretty well settled."

Commenter: So it's a class issue?

McArdle: "As for class issues . . . um, yes? I'm not under the impression that class doesn't exist, or that it's somehow bad taste to talk about it.

But then, we bought our wedding bands at Zales."

Commenter: What about Celtic rings?

McArdle: "I have seen them . . . but none of the Irish Americans I know even considered one. It's a very niche market, and weirdly, a lot of its customers don't have much connection, genetic or otherwise, to Ireland."

Well, if none of the people that McArdle knows buy Claddagh rings or rings with the Celtic knot, that means nobody does. Someone should tell all those people selling Irish rings that they're wasting their time.

Commenters: Megan doesn't know what gays want. Megan is being elitist.

McArdle: "Yes, Rob, because unless you're a liberal, you don't know any gay people! What a reasonable, informed conclusion to draw.

I'm not going to start iwth the "some of my best friends are gay" act, because that's ridiculous. Let's just say, I know a lot of people who want to marry folks of the same gender, and finding wedding rings that work is not one of the issues we've discussed. Engagement rings, now, are a big issue.

Calling this elite is even more moronic, Ginger . . . "not knowing any gay people" hasn't been a characteristic of the elite . . .well, ever, but for not knowing any "openly gay people" it's been a few decades at least."

Commenter: What? Also, your spelling is bad.

McArdle: "I do appreciate your corrections of my many spelling errors, but I do wish you would practice Reading Comprehension 101. On a side note, all you're contributing to the blog these days is hatred of me. If your target were anyone else, I'd already have banned you. Please try to get the "You suck!":discussion ration down to, say, 1:4, or I still may."

Commenter: You bought your ring at Zales?

As of this time McArdle has no responded to the comment on her choice of jewelry stores. Of course there is nothing whatsoever wrong with shopping at Zales, but it does do some damage to McArdle's elitist creds. It's kind of hard to argue from elitism when you buy your wedding ring next door to Hot Topic and an Orange Julius hut.

UPDATE: McArdle says that she bought her wedding bands (not her engagement ring) at Zales due to time limits.

*I also found out by googling that Hitler sent women who used contraception to death camps. They had to wear a black triangle, the same as lesbians and prostitutes.

Megan McArdle's Theory Of Trumpism

"And I said to Rae Jean, today it's gay marriage, tomorrow it's the rice paddies."

Megan McArdle has responded to all the criticisms of her foolish Trump tax post and I will get to that soon, but I was distracted by a shiny object. Thanks to a heads-up from a reader whose e-mail I can no longer find (thanks!),  I listened to half of a bloggingheads episode that McArdle did with Robert Wright to discuss Trump's followers, and it was a revelation.

McArdle's theories on Trumpism are elaborate fantasies that explain why liberals force conservatives to be racist, which they, like, totally aren't. I only had time to listen to half of her hour-long podcast but by the end of that time two things became unusually clear: McArdle has read too much communist propaganda, and she is afraid her career will be damaged by her past anti-gay marriage stance if liberals gain more power. Everything else flows from that.

Wright and McArdle started their discussion of Trump and his supporters by saying they didn't expect Trump to get the nomination, and neither did anyone else. Wright says it makes you wonder if elites deserve respect, which Trump supporters already doubt. McArdle says the "elites were just constitutionally incapable of imagining that this could actually happen. And so, uh, one hesitates to call oneself elite, but, uh--"

Wright and McArdle agree that calling oneself an elite doesn't mean one thinks one is better than the non-elite, it's just a "sociological category."

"I would say I'm on the anti-elitist side of the spectrum," McArdle lied.

"In fact, it's the same thing, not thinking you are better than other people by virtue of being a quote unquote elite, is not being an elitist," Wright said.

McArdle said, "I claim I am anti-elitist, in some ways I have been more sympathetic to Trump supporters than I think a lot of people have. I am not sympathetic to Donald Trump himself, uh,  I think he is kind of shockingly bad prepared for the job that he says he wants to do. Uh, he is often vulgar and offensive uh, he, whether he is racist himself I cannot peek into his soul, he certainly has made heroic efforts to at the very least to not alienate the racists who like him."

Isn't that just the way things go: Everyone in the world is able to determine that Trump is a racist, based on his upbringing, words, and actions over a long period of time. Megan McArdle, who is paid a great deal of money to comment on economics and politics, is incapable of making that assessment. She must be able to peer into a man's soul to see if he is racist. This is confusing, for later we shall see that McArdle is able to peer into her own soul and determine that most of Trump's followers are not racist.

Wright said that people say Trump's voters support him for different reasons, such as racism, ethic and class resentment, or economic anxiety.

McArdle agreed that "you don't get people for one reason" and it's obvious some hard-core racists don't like Trump, but the racists and anti-Semites are only around 10% of Trump's constituency. McArdle described Trump's supporters as not doing "super well" but not disadvantaged and are "concentrated in the $30-100,000 band," which is both wrong and an odd definition of not doing very well.  But they fear they or their kids will lose their $100,000 jobs, so naturally they turn to Trump, who promises to deport day-labor construction workers, nannies, factory workers, housekeepers, mechanics and cooks.

Now that they had virtually written off racism in Trump's campaign, McArdle and Wright agreed that opposition to immigration is not necessarily racist.

McArdle said, "The way I would put this is, look, if you talked to someone about, say, some country in Africa that doesn't want to be swamped, uh, some small area that doesn't want to be swamped by say wealthy white tourists, right? Um, and it's not that the tourists [sic] are doing something kind of morally illegitimate, it's just that they want their community to be like their community."

Obviously Africans can't be racist, right? So if they don't want white people around, that's not racism. Likewise, if white people don't want black or brown people around, that's not racism either by the transitive laws of race relations. The Africans aren't morally bad people, they just don't want their community to be spoiled by the presence of people of other colors, which is what happens when other-color people enter your homogeneous community of Black people in Africa or white people in Alabama.

"I don't know that this place exists, but I am just saying as a sort of theoretical construct if that place said to me, "No, we want a community that's a certain way, that is our old way of life, we want to preserve that I wouldn't say that they're racists, I would say they have something affirmative that they want to preserve and influx of strangers does change it."

As we saw when McArdle discussed Brexit, she thinks an influx of other-color or other-culture people will destroy a community which has existed unchanged for an unknown number of years, or at least change it for the worse.

"My relatives came here in the ninetieth century and they absolutely changed America radically, if you look at how America's politics changed, its religious make-up, um, any number of things. Now I think a lot of those changes were for the good, I think some of them weren't, you look at what happened in, in nineteenth century cities thanks largely to my people, as, you know, we were... [laughs] I,  I can see why the Protestants were upset."

Naturally she would side with the oppressor, and her decent Irish ancestors would spit on the lace curtain upstart. It's too bad we don't hear what the Irish immigrants did to the Protestant Americans. Deny them employment? Burn down their churches? Spit on them as low-lifes?

"Um, but, and, but the fact that I came here makes me feel even apart from the kind of benefits of having other foods, other cultures, etc., makes me feel sort of moral obligation to pay it forward, there are arguments to the other side, there are people who say look, my community is the way I want, it's not that I, like, hate those people or think they're inferior. I mean, but, they aren't like me, if they come here things will change.  You're importing your future electorate, and that does change things, right? So I think that's that, it's legitimate, and I think that elites conspire--"

As we know, McArdle is almost always talking about herself when she talks about others. This will become very clear later. McArdle assumes immigrants will be Democrats and she wants to prevent people from immigrating to America to gain a better life for their children because it would harm the chances of the political party she says she doesn't belong to. She is not the only one of course; Republicans often say this.

"But I would say this, this, that there's a fourth group, um, that I think is and, and, I think there is a lot of overlap with the this group and the other three, is that they're tired of being shushed by elites, right, and you can frame that as, like, white resentment, and also you can frame it as actually elites are kind of obnoxious about these people and this is a natural reaction backwards."

McArdle and Wright said that political correctness didn't change how people felt about others and it was very tedious to keep up with changing terms, such as disabled versus differently labeled. McArdle was upset that she was being forced to use words chosen by others instead of the terms she wanted to use.

McArdle said, "If you're not [an elite] what it feels like is some nanny came along, they have more economic power than you, they have way more cultural power than you, they're ordering you around and they're telling you you're not allowed to say what you think."

Political correctness killed terms like the n-word, retarded, and all the slurs commonly used in the near past. The statists are controlling speech. McArdle, who repeatedly said she is not a Randian, said she was worried about the same sort of repression that Ayn Rand most feared.

"And, you know, there's, there's a real, there's a whole literature of communist countries and one of the really interesting things is uh, I'm, I'm starting to read The Three Body Problem, the science fiction novel about China, which is obviously kind of very cryptically getting at these issues. What's interesting to me is you read these things, you read Orwell, you read lots of them uh, people make the same observation which is that they think that the object is to make them lie, not for any affirmative [unintelligible] just a purpose in and of itself and that the ultimate purpose of that is to shame them, degrade them and make them less, right, and so they, what they feel is that they're being controlled and shamed by people who have appointed themselves as their cultural betters, that they have no power over the conversation, and that--"

Yeah, that's not revealing at all.

McArdle's ability to peer into the mind of Trump supporters is nothing short of incredible. She realizes that it's not racism, they're really afraid of  Clinton imposing a Cultural Revolution, and it will all end up with her being sent to the sticks to take inventory in a dress shop. This paranoia is overwrought. Does she really think she's going to be shamed for using the wrong word for disabled?

Wright pointed out that conservative strategist have cultivated resentment to get votes and this election is partly is about a sense of contempt that people feel the elite have for them.

McArdle responded, "So, I-I think that that's true, but I also think that the contempt is absolutely there, and, I-I still remember the first time I encountered it, the first time I noticed it, so I underwent a conver-I grew up in a super liberal part of New York City and I went to college and I still remember a communications major talking about Rush Limbaugh, who I had never heard, I think I had listened to Rush Limbaugh twice in my life, he is not my cup  of tea on any level. Um, but she [laughs] said she wanted him banned from the radio and I-I said, "Well, but you know, that's bad, that's censorship" and she said, [forcefully] "You don't understand these people listen to him and they believe what he says," and that thing has always stuck with me because it really is a kind of running theme in conversations that I hear very frequently in DC and in New York, is like "these people," "these people" are sheep and they are bad sheep and they need to be controlled and herded somewhere because they are terrible."

McArdle does not want people to tell her she is terrible for taking a stand against gay marriage and the idea that some liberal policies are more moral in fact is extremely grating to her.

"Um, um, and, so I think that yes, absolutely, do conservative strategists use that strategically, absolutely, just as Democratic strategists strategically heighten the perception of conservative racism in minority communities. There is racism in the conservative movement um, but it is railed on constantly because that is to their political advantage. Like, this is how politics works. This is how people are raised."

Both sides do it, but liberals did it first and forced conservatives to do it, whatever "it" is. Democrats inflame minorities communities by constantly railing on the dreadfulness of racism, which the minority communities might not even notice without all that political maneuvering. And this is not only politics, it's how minorities are raised. They're told by their parents all their lives that white people treat them badly, so naturally when they grow up they think badly of white people.

Remember, racism is rare. That's how we know it's all in Democrats' heads.

Wright said, " Trumpism has been described as white identity politics, do you think it is to some extent a reaction against the non-white identity politics that have become such a big part of coalition building on the Democratic side?"

McArdle agreed that Blacks created racism by seeing themselves as a political group.

"Uh, yeah. Look, I think first of all the more you have ethnic identity politics, there's [unintelligible] dimension along which stuff is played, if you define everyone else as a racial demographic category then the people the residual is also going to define itself as a racial demographic. If that is the major cleavage line in politics, then we'll have white identity politics. Um, so yes, I think that that is part of it. Um, I think that as America becomes majority minority, right, it-it no longer makes sense to say as a white person you're just kind of a default American and then everyone else is a member of a particularist ah, minority. Now you're a member of a minority too and minorities tend to have identification with each other, they cleave together along those lines, right, there are cultural similarities between white people, they have shared experiences that non-white people don't, um--.

What else could the United States do after the Civil Rights Act but become racist for the first time?

Wright pointed out that white people don't just hate minorities, "a lot of the people they hate are white. You can call it white working class identity politics, too."

McArdle said, "But identity politics is always strongest, is always strongest in the working class, right, that's a generally tr--." Wright didn't agree and McArdle dropped it. She said workers used to identify with their fellow working class members but "that broke down" for some reason. What else could they do but become White Nationalists and get Hitler tattoos?

McArdle says she's concerned about "punitive norms." People feel threatened about having different options.  People are so afraid of being punished by the liberal cultural hegemony that reject the idea of violating norms altogether. But Trump violates all norms, McArdle said, and the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater.

She said Trumpism is a huge reaction against all the social justice stuff, that people used to be able to have a different opinions but now you'll be called racist. When there are lots of punitive norms that punish people for different opinions such as gay marriage, "people's reactions are no, I don't want that, and what starts to happen is that any violation of norms looks okay. So they like Trump for violating norms but Trump smashes all of them so people are so sick of it. They're rejecting the entire system, instead of the tenuous part."

Wait, how did gay marriage sneak in there? I thought we were talking about racism as a motivating factor for Trump voters.

"And I think that's what we're seeing here, is that people are so sick of the elite cultural control over them and I don't think this is all of it but this is a strand of his support, that that the fact that he's vulgar, the fact that he is not bound by any kind of decent norms of propriety. That's a big part of his appeal and the problem with that, and I think, but on the flip side, the problem with having so many punitive norms, of having norms not just be about we're going to have an argument, but no you can't say that and if you keep saying that, I'm going to see if I can destroy your livelihood, or get you get kicked out of school. Right?"

And there you go.

Megan McArdle is supporting-not-supporting Donald Trump's Republican  party because she is afraid that she will suffer financially for being publicly against gay marriage. She can't give that reason for supporting the rehabilitation of the Party of Trump, but there it is. So she works her way backwards, inventing pseudo-intellectual reasons for covering her heteronormative hide.

She said Trump's following is a backlash against speech codes, and she has no problem with word bans-her mother slapped her when she was four for using the n-word after hearing a black friend use it, which is fine with her.

The problem, McArdle said, is that we're going beyond a word ban to an idea ban. "What happened with Brendan Eich and gay marriage is a good example [of an idea ban], right, that's not a word ban, he was--that is a ban for believing in heterosexual marriage and I can disagree with that but--the point is that--"

McArdle doesn't disagree with that. She said that gay marriage might harm heterosexual marriage, so it was better to forbid gays from marrying. She also slickly tries to minimize anti-gay legislation that has been run through the courts for years to restrict gay rights and calls anti-gay beliefs a belief in "heterosexual marriage," a miserable dodge. Wright pointed out that in the future, people might look back on anti-gay marriage advocates the way we now look back on anti-miscegenation advocates.

McArdle protested that Brendan Eich's action was private, his workplace not anti-gay, his donation was leaked by "someone at the tax office," and she "can't imagine an organization advocating against interracial marriage."

Wright said that that's his point, so McArdle fished up another segregation-era argument. "You need to give people space to change their minds. If you go from ten years-wait-but there's also this--is that-"

McArdle said she disagrees with comparing racial inter-marriage with gay marriage, that race is different from everything else, including gay rights. What followed was a long explanation in which she tried desperately to deny that racial bigotry was anything like sexual bigotry, so Megan McArdle wouldn't look bad to prospective employers.

"And I think the legacy of slavery in the United States is unique, it is the original sin of our republic, uh, it justified things, so for example, I think states should have a right to succeed, if Hawaii who wants to leave right now they should be free to, on the other hand, I also think that seceding over slavery is not okay.  And I kind of square this circle by saying, you have the right to secede, that the  South should have been allowed to secede and we should have invaded to end slavery."

Wright laughed. He will not be the last. She thinks parts of the nation should be able to dissolve it, never mind that whole war over secession to maintain slavery. But after we let the South secede, we should have invaded the now-foreign country to force them to give up slavery, which we will somehow enforce. She really must think that everything she says is wise, otherwise she would have learned to curb her musings when being recorded.

"But at any rate, the point is we did a bunch of things, we've always, and for the past 150 years we have taken legal steps that are kind of not justifiable on principle-on legal principle I mean, there are totally justifiable on the principle of extirpating this terrible wrong we did to millions of human beings. Um, I feel similarly about affirmative action, uh,  is that you know what, this thing happened we have to undo it, it's not kind of fair, and I don't care."

Affirmative action is unfair to whites.

"Um, and now you can, we can have practical arguments about affirmative action but as a principle matter, and I feel that way about just a large number of things, Brown v Board of Education was not necessarily a good but as a woman, right, I don't think that I deserve that, that, saying things about women is on the same par as saying things about Blacks. It's a different thing, I don't think, I don't think it's as bad. Uh, I think [unintelligible] comments that are okay to make about women that I don't think aren't okay to make about Black citizens. But-but that too has been applied to women and it's not a pace of change thing, these changes have been happening for 50 years."

School desegregation was not necessarily a good thing, my friends. McArdle might want to worry less about her anti-gay stance and more about her views on other races (and their IQs).

After talking about idea bans, we are now back to word bans. Insulting Blacks is worse than insulting women and gays, although we are not talking about insults, we are talking about systematic exploitation, repression, violence, and denial of civil and economic rights. But for McArdle, it's about words, specifically the words she used to explain why she was anti-gay rights.

"But it is now dangerous to believe things in a way it wasn't 50 years ago, uh, that it wasn't 20 years ago. So if you think about, like, the gay marriage case, right, for me, if you, if you, if someone had told you ten years ago gay marriage is about it-it part of having gay marriage be legal is obviously people that disagree with gay marriage would be legally required to bake a wedding cake for that wedding. I don't know about you, but I would have been, like, "That is some bs propaganda, that is never going to happen, then you are just making crap up so you can like to make a stupid argument against gay marriage. And then it happened, right, things have changed so fast we not only say, well, we've changed our minds, but holding a position I held five years ago is now appalling and I will pummel you for it."

At this extremely interesting half-way mark I had to abandon the conversation.

McArdle felt protected by the covert racism and sexism of the right, just as she felt free to giggle about violence against peaceful protesters during our disastrous invasion of Iraq. She now feels less protected in a gay-positive Clinton Nation.

McArdle is Trump-curious because if the liberals win and dominate the Supreme Court, she is afraid she'll lose money. People might fire or refuse to hire someone with a history of being antagonistic to gay marriage, and despite her best efforts at erasing her past, her old posts can still be found. Everything she says is a rationalization for her desperate attempts to preserve her elite status and freely-given, comfortable, consequence-free "opinions" about race and sexuality.


ADDED: It's not too surprising that McArdle has sympathy for Trump voters. Both she and Trump (wrongly) think Democrats are letting in illegal aliens to gain more voters.

Donald Trump on illegal immigration this morning: “They are letting people pour into this country so they can go and vote." via @reidepstein

— Jenna Johnson (@wpjenna) October 7, 2016

SECOND ADDITION: McArdle is worried about the liberal culture thought police while the anti-gay organizations are the ones firing people for their ideas on gay marriage.

One of the largest evangelical organizations on college campuses nationwide has told its 1,300 staff members they will be fired if they personally support gay marriage or otherwise disagree with its newly detailed positions on sexuality starting on Nov. 11.

How To Fix Megan McArdle's Poverty

We have been busy but we would be remiss not to point out a plaintive missive from Megan McArdle (who else?). McArdle asks someone to figure out How Conservatives Can Fix Poverty and Win Elections for her, for on top of all its other crimes against humanity, Obamacare is destroying marriage. McArdle read and commented on Garance Franke-Ruta's Atlantic interview with a couple who might get a divorce because they can't afford health insurance of Obamacare.

Let us enjoy take a moment to note that, for all intents and purposes, Franke-Ruta replaced McArdle when the latter slowly faded off into the sunset.

Okay, we're done.

Then there's this little bit about something else, and after that bit we return to marriage. McArdle has read people who have read studies that say married people have more money than unmarried people, so conservatives should find a way to incentivize marriage, reducing the need for "entitlements" and consequently winning elections with their imaginary solutions.

Let's begin with McArdle's cri de coeur:

[...Conservatives need to think hard about their answers to the mess that is our current patchwork of benefits. I’ve seen suggestions here and there, but nothing, so far, that the movement has coalesced around. The liberal answer -- give subsidies to more people! -- creates plenty of problems. If conservatives can come up with a better one, they’ll have a cornerstone for the more populist conservative policy platform that Ross Douthat has been calling for. Maybe even for a more populist conservative policy platform that can win elections in 2016.

McArdle understands the need for alms for the poor; they keep the dirty and unwashed at arms' length. But let's not overdo it!

Generous welfare benefits discourage work, eroding the tax base that is supposed to support them. Even Social Security benefits seem to reduce the number of children people have -- children who are still very necessary to support the universal entitlement.

Since Social Security is given to retired and disabled workers and their survivors and dependents, yes, I suppose Social Security does "seem" to reduce the number of children people have. You know what else reduces the number of children? Not having children. McArdle is married yet has no children, for reasons we neither know nor want to know. It's not very fair of her to insist that the poor have more children so she can ensure she gets Social Security. McArdle plows on anyway.

I’m on the record as a marriage booster. Marriage is a happiness booster, it’s the best environment for raising kids, and it’s one of the most reliable personal finance programs around. It’s good for you, and good for society. Good policy should encourage marriage, not discourage it.

Conservatives support “family friendly” policies such as child tax credits, but they tend to give this issue shorter shrift. This dynamic plausibly plays a role in the disintegration of marriage among the less educated. You often hear that welfare helped to destroy fragile families by making men less necessary to their economic support. But welfare did more than that: It actually chased men away. A two-adult family was unlikely to be eligible for welfare, or ancillary benefits such as housing and Medicaid.

Unfortunately McArdle can't think of any actual policies so she merely wafts a request out into the ether, where no doubt it will land on some fallow conservative mind, who will be able to convince people to do what McArdle will not: give up something that is to their benefit. McArdle herself refused to give up her mortgage deduction or employer-provided and tax-payer subsidized health care. Yet she insists that people much, much poorer than herself give up their government benefits, benefits they use to survive.  The poor's government benefits pay for food and shelter for their children. McArdle's government benefits paid for a Thermomix.

And speaking of those deductions, we now come to the little bit of the post that is sandwiched in between the odes to marriage. Less charitable minds than ours might think that this little section was the real reason for McArdle's rare venture outside of Obamacare.

This is not the only program that has this effect. Many tax subsidies phase out at higher income levels, such as IRAs and student loan deductions, and thanks to the tax deal cut over the fiscal cliff, higher-income earners will face more such phaseouts this year.

The link leads to an article on the Pease Limitation.

One of the impacts from the fiscal cliff legislation to be felt by high-income earners is the reintroduction of the Pease limitation, reduces the amount of itemized deductions that certain taxpayers are allowed.  While the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 reduced the impact of the Pease Limitation, it is still around, and it can greatly limit itemized deductions like mortgage interest and charitable gifts.

The infamous Pease limitation was first incorporated into the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 and it is named after former Congressman Donald Pease.  The purpose of the Pease limitation was to raise revenue by limiting some popular and common itemized deductions among high-income earners.  Pease limitations aim to reduce the benefit of the following itemized deductions:

• Charitable Contributions
• Mortgage Interest
• State, Local, and Property Taxes
• Miscellaneous Itemized Deductions

Move up http://i.forbesimg.com t Move down

 

The limitation for 2013 will kick in on AGI levels that exceed $300,000 for joint filers and $250,000 for individuals, indexed for inflation.  Income over the applicable amount will trigger an itemized deduction limitation that is the lesser of (a) 3% of the adjusted gross income above the applicable amount, or (b) 80% of the amount of the itemized deductions otherwise allowable for the taxable year.

It seems that Mr. and Mrs. McArdle are about to take a bit of a tax hit. No wonder McArdle is trying to think of a way to save tax monies by squeezing the poor. Some people might complain at length about such an injustice, but McArdle is a libertarian and is no doubt overjoyed at the chance to stop taking advantage of those mooching and looting laws.