Shorter Megan McArdle: If banks have to follow the law it will be harder for people to get a mortgage.
Shorter Megan McArdle: Banks have to follow bankruptcy laws but if they don't I won't get upset about it.
Shorter Megan McArdle's guest poster: When banks don't follow the law they are not failing to follow the law.
Shorter Megan McArdle: That murdered little girl could have been me. Only now do I realize the magnitude of what the world could have lost.
Too bad she didn't think of all the little Iraqi girls that were killed with our bullets and bombs before she supported our illegal war.
What better use of a national tragedy than to name-drop a meeting with a senator?
ReplyDeleteSorry, Megan. I'm a little too preoccupied with thinking of that young girl's family and loved ones and the agony they must be suffering to reflect on how it's really all about me. But I could name-drop a few famous people I've met and known over the last thirty years if it will help you not feel like such an astonishing self-centered a-hole.
ReplyDeletePeople often toss around the word narcissism as a catch-all armchair diagnosis for personalities that annoy them, but then sometimes an actual narcissist comes along to show us the true definition of the word and how ugly, evil and sad it can make someone.
ReplyDeleteMost callous people were once a loving, feeling child whose empathy was crushed over the years. I feel sorry for her but there comes a time when you have to take responsibility for your actions. She's long past that time.
ReplyDeleteIt's beyond callousness though, isn't it? She's openly admitting that she was only able to feel the weight of the murder of a 9-year-old girl after she imagined that she was that girl. And the only way she was able to do that was because she also once attended a political rally as a child. You can't even call that empathy.
ReplyDeleteAnd the word "admitting" isn't even appropriate here, since she writes this without any trace of shame or self-awareness.
It's no exaggeration to say that I am filled with horror when I encounter people like this.
That's right, she has no empathy for anyone but herself and a few select others.
ReplyDeleteSusan,
ReplyDeleteAre you sure about that?
Oh my gosh, you're right. Those times when she seemed empathetic--thinking about the unemployed, about Brian Beutler being shot--those were All About Her, just like her recent post about the little girl who was shot.
ReplyDeleteI'll try it in kinder terms - Megan may very well be quite capable of experiencing empathy. She just sucks miserably at expressing it on the pages of the Atlantic, where she's supposedly putting on her gentlest public face. If that's Megan at her best, I don't want to be the one stuck with her on a bad day, or when she considers her chips down. Like having to give up her Mini Cooper or a trip to Aspen.
ReplyDelete