She lambastes liberal commentators for not saying the exact thing I said yesterday. Which is cool, whatever.
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Obviously you’re not selling your Uber-Leet Access to the right people.
Hell, you’re practically *GIVING* your opinions and prose away.
I’ve never really understood why anyone pays attention to Megan McArdle. Granted, the only times I’ve ever read any of her stuff is when someone who has a problem with it links to it, but nothing she’s ever written has ever struck me as being at all insightful. She has a lot of the signifiers of intelligence, or at least education (well, degrees and such, primarily), she at least has the vocabulary of economics, etc., and she can form what *looks* like a logical argument, but… nothing she writes is “a smart take” on anything, and she seems to write about an alternate reality.
Jesse, think these things through. If she read, she might comment.
“Having a Libertarian ideologue in that position isn’t doing much to help them.”
Having a libertarian ideologue who is more interesting than Megan McCardle would also be a better choice.
I’ve never really understood why anyone pays attention to Megan McArdle.
Because libertarians think she’s hot.
No, seriously. That’s pretty much the only reason she has a job. She’s the libertarian Michelle Malkin—she looks cute while spouting all of the stupid rhetoric they want to hear.
Wait - you’re pimping the fact that McArdle agrees with something you wrote?
I hope you went back to re-read it to make sure you haven’t committed a grievous logical fallacy somewhere in your argument. Because whenever I see McArdle agreeing with me it’s a warning light to go back and rethink my premises to make sure I can justify my position. It isn’t the big green flashing neon warning light I would see if Bill Kristol ever wrote something I agreed with, but it would be a danger sign.
Having a libertarian ideologue who is more interesting than Megan McCardle would also be a better choice.
Perhaps, but using any capital-L Libertarian is going to damage The Atlantic’s hard-earned reputation for thoughtful, reality-based journalism. They’ve been making some odd choices lately.
Wait - you’re pimping the fact that McArdle agrees with something you wrote?
It’s more him mocking her for saying: “hey, why aren’t any of those starry-eyed librul bloggers noticing that Wal-Mart is doing this mainly for its own benefit, and why aren’t they mentioning that the SEIU is on board” when Jesse did precisely that. One quick Google Blogs search would have turned it up, but apparently that’s too much for McArdle.
And they don’t really agree. Jesse was pointing out that Wal-Mart was doing this for selfish and greedy reasons, while McCardle was ... well, using the same two terms, but as spoken by Ayn Rand and Gordon Gecko.
“Perhaps, but using any capital-L Libertarian is going to damage The Atlantic’s hard-earned reputation for thoughtful, reality-based journalism. They’ve been making some odd choices lately.”
Nonsense. Radley Balko is doing better stuff than anybody the Atlantic employs who is named Coates. His stuff on SWAT raids, drugs, etc., is top shelf. I just tune him out when he talks about economics, but he’d be a huge, libertarian improvement on McCardle.
Radley Balko is doing better stuff than anybody the Atlantic employs who is named Coates. His stuff on SWAT raids, drugs, etc., is top shelf.
Agreed, but Radley Balko is a small-l libertarian (which is why I used the qualifier)—the very fact that he does stuff that deals with actual social libertarianism sets him apart from the likes of McCardle. Capital-L Libertarians are narrowly focused on the economic aspects of their ideology, with the social aspects as “nice to have, but not my main concern.”
Balko may get some Koch family money filtered through Reason (the main on-line presence of small-l libertarianism), but I don’t think he’d shill for the astroturf Teabagging “movement” the way McCardle did.
BTW, here’s the always unruly and potentially NSFW Exiled Online’s takedown of McArdle in re: the Teabaggers. Pretty funny stuff:
I’m thinking more along the lines that The Atlantic needs to find another tentpole columnist for its business and economy section. Having a Libertarian ideologue in that position isn’t doing much to help them.