Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

McBoring

What the hell?

[Commenter]

You have inadequate imagination of the complex prescription regimes some people must follow. Not all prescriptions are pills, for example. I take one or more prescription medications at 6 separate times of the day, at different time intervals.

McMegan 13 hours ago in reply to [commenter]

I take pills in the morning, different pills at night, and inhalers on a different schedule . . . does that count?


Megan McArdle is calling herself McMegan? If she wants a nickname, I can think of better ones. Like Corporate Shill. Lakey Of The Ruling Elite. Future Unemployed Journalist With No Money And A Preexisting Condition. If she didn't notice "McMegan" is a negative term, maybe she won't notice that mine are as well.

The post is a meandering bit about pills, pill boxes, and pill-taking habits. McArdle seems to be retreating to a lucrative but boring world of random sniping at the government with platitudes and petty complaints. It's as dull as dirt but it does demonstrate early adaptive techniques. McArdle is helping to create a brave new world of educated tea baggers, who are able to provide intellectual arguments for selfishness, venality, greed and spite. She is Glen Glenda Beck, with a blog instead of a whiteboard. She is Jonah Goldberg in a Boden frock. She's worse than annoying--she's boring.

UPDATE: News Alert! Our correspondent reports Democrats think they'll pass health care and Republicans think they won't! She recommends that we wait and see to find out what will happen.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

'Lakey'? She is a lackey, to be sure. Probably stupid enough to be proud if it, too.

Unknown said...

Correction: 'proud of it.' Apologies.

Unknown said...

Since I'm 64 and a diabetic, I understand why I'm on a prescription drug regimen. Isn't McMegan a little young to be on a medication regimen?

Kathy said...

Lately I've been wondering: so many people who know what they are talking about (such as P. Krugman) say that another crash -this time Commercial Real Estate caused- is a'commin'. And probably a credit-card crash, too. How can jobless, homeless people pay, you know 47% on a $3,000 loan?

Anyhow! What I am wondering is, if a really good Health Care bill that takes effect immediately (say 3 months) mitigate this coming crash?

freq flag said...

...world of random sniping at the government with platitudes and petty complaints...

She's practicing for the post-Randian Rapture after she's been summoned to Galt's Gulch.

Clever Pseudonym said...

Harry V,
Megan's supposedly got asthma and a number of other ailments. Given that she's such an unashamed narcissist, I'd always assumed most of her illnesses could be reduced to a textbook case of Münchausen syndrome and the need to feel special because of her medical shortcomings.

Kathy said...

The father of a schoolfriend of my daughter's died in his sleep from Asthma. He couldn't afford day-to-day treatment (no Health Ins. since his symptoms made it hard to keep a job), and went to the County hospital on a near-weekly basis for emergency treatment.

Wonder what ArgleBargle has to say to that?

Susan of Texas said...

KWillow, the same thing nearly happened to someone I know--his asthma stopped his breathing in the middle of the night. He lived, but will have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

McArdle probably doesn't realize that her sedatives are bad for her asthma, as well as being addictive. Plus she has that thyroid-related auto-immunity disease. She needs good medical care and is doing her best to make sure she doesn't get it!

Downpuppy said...

It was the insomnia & restless leg that convinced me that her other diseases might be a tad more mental than physical.

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/a_disease_by_any_other_name_wo.php

Susan of Texas said...

Alice Miller says that a lot of ailments are inner turmoil expressing themselves through bodily pain. We are tense and we have headaches and muscle aches, we worry and get nausea and indigestion, we can't sleep and generally feel sick and run-down. Very strong emotions such as fear and anger can't be suppressed; they always come out somehow.

It might only be metaphorical, it might be medical, it might be both. Panic attacks make people short of breath; that's a long way from asthma, but psychological stress does affect asthma. Anxiety makes the muscles twitch (facial tics, for example); the person feels she has no control over her environment and is under great pressure to do something she feels inadequate to accomplish. At night we rehash everything that makes us feel bad about ourselves; even people with good self esteem go over and over the mistakes we make, the fears and humiliations of the day, and dread the arrival of tomorrow. If you are up late at night you are suspended in time, no responsibilities pressuring you because everyone else is in bed (presumably).

All this is very, very general, of course, and you don't know a person because you know their ailments. But the mind does control the body and sometimes you can see what is bothering someone by observing their physical symptoms. When you observe young kids you learn to distinguish between ailments with a medical basis and ailments based on emotional distress.