Less Private Megan: Ricky Martin is gay. I just wanted to say that. Also, someone who is not officially out is gay. I just wanted to say that too. [I hope her blogging friends don't become more famous, or we'll be hearing about their sex lives too.]
More Fiscally Responsible Megan: People are worried about long-term risk on US bonds. Perhaps they think we're in a financial crises, but it is more likely that they are worried about Social Security and Medicare driving the US into default.
[That can't be right, can it? Is she really saying people are worried about the US government defaulting? Several times she's said something similar, but I must be mistaken in some way. Does she not understand the part about printing money, or am I seeing things that are not there?
And of course, there's the dreaded default risk. If people stop thinking we're good for the money, they will demand higher interest rates, and tip us into crisis.
What is she saying?]
Did she really say:
ReplyDeleteRather, I wonder why the sex lives of public figures are so central to their appeal. Frankly, I know nothing about the love lives of virtually any movie star or musician: not gender, age, hair color, or names.
That is simply false. She doesn't know the "gender, age, hair color, or name" of "virtually any movie star or musician?" So she couldn't tell me that Cary Grant was male, and had dark hair, and is now dead? So when she watches a movie she is totally unaware of the age, sex, or gender of its stars?
aimai
I think Megan means she doesn't know Cary's lovers identities. Have you noticed that Megan is not a very good writer?
ReplyDeleteThe interest rate on 10 year Treasuries is 3.88%. It's quite low, but not quite as absurdly low as it was a few months ago, so there's been a rash of articles among the dumber economics types trying to panic.
Megan, as always, is jumping on the wave after it already broke, and hasn't understood it either.
Yeah, that's just Megan being a lousy writer. I love how she participates in the outing of a celebrity in one paragraph, and then wonders why we should care in the next. This is a woman who never provides links to anything, but she goes through the trouble of linking that bit of gossip in an article where she's pretending to turn up her nose at gossip.
ReplyDeleteActually, I think your title and your first shorter just about sum up her entire poorly argued, self-glorifying glibertarian mindset. I swear, most of her arguments simply could not survive the scrutiny of a good high school classroom discussion. (But then, the same's true of John Yoo and most movement conservative dogmatists.)
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with aimai that Megan's claim is astoundingly dumb, I think downpuppy's right that, in this case, her awful writing outstripped her bottomless idiocy. Perhaps we're lucky it wasn't reversed. (You know, the way we might be "lucky" if we were trapped listening to Newt Gingrich on NPR versus Michelle Bachmann on Glenn Beck.)
She also writes this:
I assure you, dear readers, that there are many parts of my "truth" to which you will never be privy, and lucky you, really.
This is (as an old pal of hers said) a grave and gathering danger. This means that she could unleash even more cruel, blithe idiocy should she so chose.
If only she would Go Galt, away from the many truths to which she has never been privy (by choice).
On a second reading (shudder) I agree that I misread mis-megan. But I think it is still the case that it is probably an out and out falsehood that she neither knows or cares about the sex lives and preferences of celebrities. Megan is a relentlessly trivial and stupid person--she's obviously not reading history,or economics, sociology, anthropology, philosphy or even much modern fiction. If she and Suderman aren't simply consuming popular culture at an astoundingly vapid rate I'd be stunned.
ReplyDeleteThis whole "you and your gayness are just TMI" is nothing but the latest incarnation of conservative victimhood. Its already such an old trope that its nearly comatose. It ought to go right up on the shelf next to "I never even noticed that black guy was black so there's no such thing as racism" otherwise known as the "appropriation and raping of the corpse of martin luther king shtick."
aimai
And today's 10 year yield is down to 3.82.
ReplyDeleteBad news => lower interest rates
Megan would be one of the people who jump on a fake bush crash & try to make an injury claim with hidden cameras running. (She'd be the one who tripped on the step sneaking in & really broke her leg.)
bus crash, not bush crash - arrghh
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of when they staged a fake crash of a near empty bus & half of NYC scampered on & pretended to be hurt.
Gah.
Might as well go for a triple -
ReplyDeleteThe grownups have responded to Megans fiscal idiocy.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/a-note-on-the-term-spread/
Brad DeLong reads Megan McArdle getting confused about interest rates; he’s a better man than I am
substance follows, but we're seen it before.
& the post pointed to:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/03/department-of-huh-default-discounts-in-us-treasury-interest-rates-edition.html#tp
Has pickchers.
Oh, snap! Thanks Downpuppy; that stuff is gold, including DeLong's comments.
ReplyDeleteI (naturally) think it's important to refute McArdle because she's such a useful tool for the right. There must be push-back on wrong information, even (or especially) stupidly wrong and wide-spread information.
Here's hoping she responds. I don't think she's constitutionally able to ignore her name in the NYTimes.