I do not say often enough that Megan McArdle is
a very poor writer.
Both victims and the groups from which most of the victimizers are drawn need a refresher on probability: “Most sexual harassers are men” is not the same statement as “most men are sexual harassers.” And the righteous majority of men, or police officers, probably has more in common with victims of sexual harassment, or victims of police brutality, than with the perpetrators.
The rest of the post is Both Siderism, applied to rape and police brutality. A girl's gotta have a gimmick if she wants to get applause.
The paragraph before that is pretty wild too:
ReplyDeleteSexual harassment is not, of course, the only context in which this occurs. We don’t need to believe that all cops, or even most cops, abuse their power, to understand that as soon as power is created, it will be abused by at least some of the people who wield it. And if those people perceive that it is wiser to target black men than middle-aged white women, the middle-aged white women will have no idea that this is going on, while the black men will grow to see every cop as a potential threat. So instead of coming together to solve a joint problem, we divide into sides, separated by our own experience.
"All right, so maybe some men in positions of power are disgusting perverts with no sense of boundaries, and maybe some police officers are abusive towards black men. But hey, maybe some women and black men are just paranoid and see perversion and abuse where it doesn't exist. Are there really any villains here? We need to acknowledge that harassment is a problem shared by the harasser and all of his victims. So we need to have a regular summit, just bring everyone together and...oh, wait, that officer just put that black guy in a chokehold for making aggressive eye contact. We'll try it another day."
Astonishingly, the comments section gets really really bad.
ReplyDeleteDon't know anything about publishing, but isn't it the job of an editor to make sure writing that dense and run-on doesn't get published?
ReplyDelete"power corrupts"
ReplyDeleteYou should see what Jenghazi Rubin gets away with in the Washington Post, Mike from Oak Park.
ReplyDelete~
In this case form follows function : Megan is writing to obscure & impress, not to explain or help.
ReplyDeleteWe're looking at a refresher on probability. Time was, it was probable nobody who wrote that badly would be paid for it.
ReplyDelete