Policing the Image

There is thin-skinned, and then there is Megan McArdle. After showing the world she didn't understand what was going on (more on that later), she later got a little testy on twitter. 









Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago

1. It's perversely ahistorical for @asymmetricinfo to opine re: Brown/Wilson/Ferguson w/out any allusion to race at all/ http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-25/ferguson-prosecutor-couldnt-win?hootPostID=10cdb7ed02eb69add8ec891563ee8089 …
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1. Megan McArdle ‏@asymmetricinfo 3h3 hours ago
2. @yeselson Do you think that that angle has been under covered?
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo That's exactly what so profoundly misconstrued here. It's not "my angle" to discuss race--to not even use racial descriptors
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo like "black" and "white" to describe Brown/Wilson. It's "America's angle"! It the great weight of our history. How could you
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo not even acknowledge--if only to downplay it if that is your view? Just deeply, antiseptically odd. No way around it.
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1. Megan McArdle ‏@asymmetricinfo 3h3 hours ago
2. @yeselson I’m not downplaying anything. But in what way would a lengthy discussion of it have altered the piece?
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo I'm not talking about a "lengthy discussion". I'm talking about the occlusion of lacking even a mention of that context. If
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1. Megan McArdle ‏@asymmetricinfo 3h3 hours ago
2. @yeselson Would I be telling a single reader anything they didn’t know?
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo It reads like what, clearly, you intend it to be: a deliberate omission of obvious context that a second reader would have
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo surely suggested you include. Some things you include not to convince, but because, if you don't include them, you reveal
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo paradoxically, your own moral and historical blindness.
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1. Megan McArdle ‏@asymmetricinfo 3h3 hours ago
2. @yeselson Because if I weren’t so historically blind, I would definitely support indicting someone who couldn’t be convicted?
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo Wow, you're just arguing for the sake of arguing now. Your position on the indictment doesn't absolve you one way or the
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1. Megan McArdle ‏@asymmetricinfo 3h3 hours ago
2. @yeselson You turned that into “historical blindness”, as if maybe I thought the huge racial disparities in the justice system were minor.
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo How would I know? I didn't read your last Ferguson column. I'm coming to this column cold. How else to know what you think
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo is important here, except by the words you wrote between the four corners of the page. Or didn't write.
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1. Megan McArdle ‏@asymmetricinfo 3h3 hours ago
2. @yeselson Or we can think “Hmmm, why might a reasonable person have done this?"
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo Why do you assume that an occasional reader--and surely there are many who read you less often than I do--should give you
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1. Megan McArdle ‏@asymmetricinfo 3h3 hours ago
2. @yeselson Because as you well know from being on the web, it is impossible to defend against every horrible interpretation people can invent
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo Right, yes indeed. So I didn't call you a "racist" or anything close to that--which would indeed be an outrageous and
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1. Megan McArdle ‏@asymmetricinfo 3h3 hours ago
2. @yeselson You’re using words with highly charged implications, then trying to retreat to something blandly defensible when challenged.
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo Not at all! "Perversely ahistorical" is what I said, and I stand by that. Not racist or anything like that. You don't like
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1. Megan McArdle ‏@asymmetricinfo 3h3 hours ago
2. @yeselson Or are you just saying that I have to explicitly write that it’s about race in order to prove that I am not a racist?
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo Why are you using the word racist?! I didn't, nor would I. No, I'm writing that a failure to use just a few words of context
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1. Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 3h3 hours ago
2. @asymmetricinfo revealed that you were historically dense or peculiarly insensitive to the weight of history. Just a few words! That             
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Megan McArdleVerified account ‏@asymmetricinfo 3h3 hours ago

@yeselson . . . been living under a rock for the last six months, and did not sleep through all of my American history classes?

          


She operates at an intellectual level so naturally she's at a terrible disadvantage.