Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

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Tuesday, November 25, 2014

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 3 hours ago
  1. It's perversely ahistorical for to opine re: Brown/Wilson/Ferguson w/out any allusion to race at all/
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    1. 3 hours ago
    2. Do you think that that angle has been under covered?
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    1. 3 hours ago
    2. 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. 3 hours ago
    2. 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. 3 hours ago
    2. 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. 3 hours ago
    2. I’m not downplaying anything. But in what way would a lengthy discussion of it have altered the piece?
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    1. 3 hours ago
    2. 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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    2. Would I be telling a single reader anything they didn’t know?
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    1. 3 hours ago
    2. 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. 3 hours ago
    2. 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. 3 hours ago
    2. paradoxically, your own moral and historical blindness.
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    1. 3 hours ago
    2. Because if I weren’t so historically blind, I would definitely support indicting someone who couldn’t be convicted?
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    1. 3 hours ago
    2. Wow, you're just arguing for the sake of arguing now. Your position on the indictment doesn't absolve you one way or the
    3.                             
    1. 3 hours ago
    2. 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. 3 hours ago
    2. 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
    3.                             
    1. 3 hours ago
    2. is important here, except by the words you wrote between the four corners of the page. Or didn't write.
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    2. Or we can think “Hmmm, why might a reasonable person have done this?"
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    1. 3 hours ago
    2. Why do you assume that an occasional reader--and surely there are many who read you less often than I do--should give you
    3.                             
    1. 3 hours ago
    2. 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. 3 hours ago
    2. Right, yes indeed. So I didn't call you a "racist" or anything close to that--which would indeed be an outrageous and

    1. 3 hours ago
    2. You’re using words with highly charged implications, then trying to retreat to something blandly defensible when challenged.
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    1. 3 hours ago
    2. Not at all! "Perversely ahistorical" is what I said, and I stand by that. Not racist or anything like that. You don't like
    3.                             
    1. 3 hours ago
    2. 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. 3 hours ago
    2. 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. 3 hours ago
    2. revealed that you were historically dense or peculiarly insensitive to the weight of history. Just a few words! That             
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    • 3 hours ago
    . . . 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.




      at

      5 comments:

      1. DownpuppyNovember 25, 2014 at 6:23 PM

        Do you suppose Megan misses the Atlantic, when her comment section was at least partially inhabited by civilized humans?

        ReplyDelete
      2. Susan of TexasNovember 25, 2014 at 6:57 PM

        I'll bet she misses the prestige and the upper hand it used to give her.

        ReplyDelete
      3. ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©November 26, 2014 at 1:18 PM

        She's incredibly lucky anyone pays her to be an entitled, clueless clown.
        ~

        ReplyDelete
      4. Susan of TexasNovember 26, 2014 at 2:15 PM

        Yeah, an entitled, clueless clown would never realize that.

        ReplyDelete
      5. RogerNovember 26, 2014 at 6:51 PM

        Little testy -- Isn't that Meeegan's pet name for Suderman?

        ReplyDelete