Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Comic Relief

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

But that's not the good part.

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


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

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

9 comments:

Downpuppy said...

I think I may have worn out my welcome there.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Now that Andy Sullivan has left the Atlantic, I don't know if I can read it anymore.

/sarcasm
~

atat said...

I love how it doesn't seem to occur to her that "naming the site" from which her giant blockquotes are sourced is not only a simple common courtesy, but also a basic rule of journalism.

What a lazy, clueless hack.

Clever Pseudonym said...

"Can you imagine? This...creature did not want an incoming link from me? ME?!!? In ten years, nobody has done less than bow before me when I have been benevolent enough to address their lowly, inferior existence, even if I didn't mention them by name, vaguely linked to their material and then nearly quoted it in full so that no one would click through to read directly from the source anyway. Ingrates. Don't they know who I am?"

blivet said...

Personally I don't mind working for a living, and I like to do a good job, but I wish I had her paycheck.

Ken Houghton said...

Post more than 1/3 of an interview, without attribution, and then wonder why people complain.

Just wait until next week, when she talks about James Frey and I Am Number Four. Or search her archives for her comments on Michael Bellesiles.

Anonymous said...

The comments of her hangerons yesterday were particularly annoying

fish said...

Clearly cutting and pasting 1/3 of the whole fucking interview constitutes fair use. Right?

Anonymous said...

It's her usual game of not providing important specifics, which is why she's accused of making up numbers or strawmanning constantly because she refuses to specify who the hell she's attacking when talking about liberals.