Listen, I've been saying for years that the euro was a horrible mistake. You know how Europeans are, they're too insular to go where the opportunity is like Americans. Selfish, the lot of them. And of course their governments are weak and ineffectual. Martin Wolfe agrees with me--you know Martin Wolfe, don't you? I used to read him at the Financial Times when I worked for The Economist in London. He says the PIIGS are cutting their own throats but what do you expect, they're far too self-indulgent and decadent to make the clean decision to abandon the euro.
Speaking of self-indulgent, can you believe all those moochers who try to get their relatives to co-sign a loan? By all means, give them the money if you must but you're not doing them a favor by helping them get credit they don't deserve. Everyone knows better than to ask me to risk my credit for them.
Speaking of incompetents, we tried to call our cable company and you wouldn't believe the hell they put us through. Alyssa Rosenberg-you know her, right? We used to work together, she went to Yale--wants to unbundle cable; who does she think they are, some low-rent operation like Netflix? [laughs] Although one never knows, if they felt like sending me a free subscription I might try it out.
Oh no, don't run off. We haven't seen each other for so long. Oh, very well if you must. But you're not escaping me for long!
It's cute how she argues the euro is unstable, compares it to the US economy, and then says the dollar has had a couple centuries to "mitigate the stress," or whatever pretentious shithead phrasing she used. The euro is a relatively young currency; comparing it to the dollar is stupid, especially if you're going to note in the next bleeding sentence that it bas had the benefit of time to gain strength and stability.
ReplyDeleteHer silly little lies are so transparent. In her scattershot attack on Netflix she throws this out there:
ReplyDelete"Well, watching the last season of Treme or Mad Men (legally, on DVD) will run you $30-40."
When she's asked what the hell she's talking about, she replies, "That's the revenue that the makers of the series get from the secondary market."
Yeah, nevermind that you just wrote that it would run me $30-$40 to watch Mad Men on dvd. Anyway. So then she adds this gibberish:
"Netflix helps spread the cost by . . . bundling. But the average person pays a lot more to Netflix than they use in DVDs, or else Netflix would not be profitable.
Gobbledygook. I think she's trying to pretend that cable bundling and Netflix are the same thing, but I honestly have a hard time deciphering what she's even trying to say. Maybe it's just me.
This morning, Greenwald takes an opportunity to shine a light on some recent McArdle idiocy:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/06/07/weiner/index.html
Wait - if it costs ME $30-$40 to watch, how can that be revenue for the "makers"? When I buy a TV season on DVD, what I pay is distributed between hundreds of people, from the retailer to the directors to the studios. Once AGAIN, she hasn't got a clue.
ReplyDeleteNot only that, but nobody is even disputing that buying everything you want to see on dvd is going to cost more than a cable subscription. That's an obvious straw man. And of course renting Mad Men (via Netflix or anywhere else) isn't going to run anyone $30-$40. Her argument is complete nonsense, so then she pretends that she wasn't talking about buying dvds in the first place.
ReplyDeleteWell I read part of ArgleBargle's cable/bundling screed. It was hard to follow, tho whether it was her fault or mine I can't say. I can say that as Pay-Per-View becomes more popular, cable companies will probably stop loading subscribers down with dozens of channels they don't want. I have basic Cable service, which includes all sorts of... crap. I only watch about 5 of the channels from time to time. But husband & I do use PPV a fair bit. I imagine our cable company will catch on.
ReplyDelete... you might have ended the Cocktail Party chitchat with "Hey, wait! You didn't finish your cake!"
ReplyDeleteI can't bring myself to read this argle-bargle but I will say that I don't bother with cable at all. If a show is good enough I wait a year and then take it out of the library, or rent it from my local alternative movie store, or buy a used DVD from Newbery Comics. I can't say whether its cheaper or not. It can be 25-30 dollars a season for a used copy of a popular show, or it can be free if I take it out of the library. On the other hand, I am not paying whatever a month for cable when I don't watch most of it. Downloading and paying from Amazon or itunes also works for me, and I daresay I'll get into renting from them at some point. netflix makes sense for people with more patience than I have.
ReplyDeleteaimai
There's really no greater illustration of Megan's hatred of consumers than attacking Netflix, is there. The only way you can really dislike it is if you're connected to a direct competitor, so, yeah. For less than $20 a month I have unlimited access to their streaming services on all my internet capable devices, including my bluray player, and I can have two discs, dvd or bluray, for as long, or as short, as I want them. Aimai, you really should try it, I know I sound like a salesperson but it's hard to understate the quality of the service. No matter how good your local alt rental store is, it doesn't have what Netflix has, sometimes literally, as there are things on streaming that don't exist on dvd.
ReplyDeleteI still have cable because I'm a big Yankees fan, and there are enough good shows on tv that the convenience of having my dvr record them instead of downloading them makes sense to me, especially for somewhat time sensitive shows like Maddow, the Daily Show, and Colbert. But if I were in a nation with a top of the line, fully fiber optic internet I'd probably just get an MLB.tv account and download everything else.
As for what Megan was trying to say.... the fact that people are starting to see Netflix as a suitable replacement for cable speaks to the quality of the service in simple ways that all her low end sophistry can never disguise.
We haven't had cable for years (we got rid of it when I found myself watching infomercials into the wee hours of the night -- WTF?) For a couple of years we bought dvds of series were were interested in, on sale they were 15-25, and we would buy maybe one set every couple of months, so cheaper than cable and I'd avoid the zombifying of me.
ReplyDeleteFor the past few months we've used netflix (no dvd's, just the streaming) and hulu plus, but we just cancelled hulu plus because it wasn't really offering us any extra value (my husband proved this by canceling our subscription and waiting almost 2 months until I noticed to say, "I told you so!"). It's $8/month and we have access to more tv/movies/documentaries/anime than we have time to watch, and it doesn't trigger my "addiction" any more than dvd sets do (I think it's the HGTV/Food Network/Bravo trifecta that does it for me!)
You guys are probably right about Netflix now that its streamed and not mailed in and out--that's the last time we tried it. My parents have it and they love it. I still feel guilty about not supporting our local indy rental place, though. Its like still wanting to buy buggy whips just to keep your buggy whip manufacturer in business when you actually drive a car.
ReplyDeleteaimai
Oy. Megan's bit on Weiner almost tempts me to drag FMM out of retirement, if only scream the name AMANDA MARCOTTE at her inre: this; "I am fighting a powerful urge to point out that virtually all of the people urging us to move on to something more important are men. But obviously, I'm losing the fight." Feminism means you can't disagree with Megan.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant take. You should make this an ongoing feature ! (It's not like the material will dry up.)
ReplyDeleteRofe
brad, megan is a yankees fan also. guilt by association.
ReplyDeletegranted, she's half-assed at that too given her posts on the topic.