McArdle (no link — I can’t link her and Politico the same day, morally):
I’ve been reading the debates touched off by Julian Sanchez’s post on “a systematic trend toward “epistemic closure” in the modern conservative movement”. I’m nervous about wading in because almost anything I say is bound to offend someone I like. I’m especially sensitive–perhaps oversensitive–to the way that anything I proceed to say about conservative people outside the northeast runs the risk of sounding a lot like that fifties moderate whose work one occasionally comes across: “Of course, I just love negroes–they’re all so musical and I don’t know how I’d get my house cleaned without our Bessie. But why can’t they be a little more patient about this civil rights mess?”
And you laughed when I said tea was the new black.
Update. Even crazier stuff (from McArdle) in the comments:
I think the identities of black and gay are a lot more mutable than you think. A lot of the discrimination that blacks now face is against choosing to be black identified–to name their children identifiably black names, and so forth. A black man who strips away all of the cultural identifiers of blackness is going to face substantially fewer barriers to advancement than a black man who chooses to maintain black speech patterns and so forth. The point is, he shouldn’t have to.
Likewise, a gay man who stays in the closet is, at this point, not a victim of discrimination . . . but we don’t think they should have to choose to remain in the closet.
So saying, “Well, conservatives could choose to be liberals” strikes me as not very interesting. Having to stop believing what you believe in order to get a job is not something that we think should happen–particularly not in a milieu which purports to be committed to open inquiry. Nor is it really reasonable to ask everyone in Alabama to turn themselves into Manhattan.
I’m starting to feel mean making fun of this. And I wouldn’t note it at all, but this is all taking place in a magazine that is taken fairly seriously, and by a writer who was almost given a spot on the NYT editorial page.
soonergrunt
Wow. Just wow.
BenA
There really is no filter at all? A little voice inside her head saying: “Maybe I shouldn’t post this?”
Linda Featheringill
And her point is?
demimondian
I’d put that particular snippet as being exhibit one for the case in favor of epistemic closure of the Megalobertarian mind.
Scott
Of course there’s no filter. You only need the filter if there’s a chance you could face repercussions for saying something horrible. Since the Atlantic will never, ever, ever kick McMegs out the door, there’s no reason to filter the pure, unadulterated libertarian koo-koo.
Keith G
If she is saying that she is afraid that her words will make her sound stupid, hateful and loony, I am afraid that cotton has already been picked.
trollhattan
What…what-what?!?
/Sheila Broflovski
Midnight Marauder
Just…absolutely unreal. Like, I am legitimately astonished right now.
And kudos on that whole “being oversensitive about what you say” thing. Looks like it really worked out well for you.
JGabriel
McArdle:
Which, it seems fair to note, has never stopped her before.
But then she goes ahead and …
Sigh. I can’t even do anything with this. It’s beyond satire. It’s like when Tina Fey doesn’t even write her lines, but just quotes Palin directly. It’s like watching fish in a barrel shoot themselves.
Their reality laps our satire. AGAIN.
.
Menzies
@Linda Featheringill:
This. WTF does this mean?
cleek
it’s like her train of thought completely derailed itself, and somehow jumped onto a different set of tracks. neat!
in all fairness, it happens to the best of us.
when i have thought events like that, there’s usually a bong on the table next to me.
Zifnab
And so now here’s the real game. Is McArdle using the tea/black reference sympathetically or as sort of a back-handed insult? I don’t know a lot of upper crust dead tree columnists that would take “You’re just like a 50s era house cleaning negro” as a complement. When the GOP starts looking at its base with the same eyes that it looks at a racial minority, I just can’t help but think it’s something of a rhetorical slap to the face. Or perhaps a verbal shove under the bus. Depending on which you prefer.
Comrade javafascist
Her entire body of work appears to be an attempt to answer the philosophical question: How many words does it take to say nothing?
sukabi
if she was at all worried about offending, she would have backed away from her laptop, made an emergency appt. with a shrink, and checked herself into a “spa” for some alone time…
they really aren’t afraid of letting their “racist freak flag fly” anymore are they?
Crashman
The Atlantic’s website is like a scientific paradox. McArdle on one end, so very obtuse and stupid; Ta-Nehisi Coates on the other, so brilliant and thoughtful. How do these two diametrically opposed forces existing on the same place not annihilate the Atlantic’s servers?
Marc
Worst of all – I have no idea what she is trying to say. Apart from being silly and insensitive it is completely incoherent.
Sentient Puddle
Is it me, or is the entire blogosphere now atwit over this concept of “epistemic closure”? Like they all looked up what “epistemology” meant, and now feel obliged to write up a post claiming “Hey, I link to people who slightly disagree with me, so I’m not guilty!”
And seriously, can we just retire the term already? If your audience has to look up the word you’re using in a dictionary, it doesn’t mean you’re smart. It means you probably need to spot-edit your post.
BruceFromOhio
That wasn’t wading, that was a fucking cannonball into the kiddie pool. She must like a LOT of people.
jrg
She’s got a great point. I never fully considered the similarities between irate medicare recipients brandishing misspelled signs about “soculism”, and a class of people denied the right to sit at the front of the bus with the white folk.
I just don’t have the cognitive equipment to make these connections. I guess that’s why I don’t have a position on the staff of “The Atlantic”.
Citizen_X
Shorter McGurgle: within the epistemically-closed borders of Conservastan, you are free to say any goddam crazy thing you want–just DON”T say anything remotely critical of the teatards.
geg6
@cleek:
That was my thought exactly.
She really is a twit. A complete and utter twit. How the hell does TNC look her in the face without either laughing right into it or punching it at staff meetings and such?
Rick Massimo
She usually manages to have a post where she actually says something before writing a post explaining her mixed feelings about what she said and lashing out defensively at those who have pointed out that she said was moronic drivel.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I suspect that whatever else is at the link makes what’s posted here sound like the sanest part of the post, and I don’t want to look. I’ll go out on a limb and guess that the notion of tax levels returning to where they were ten years ago is an unheard of breach of the social contract. Obama and the Dems, by enacting legislation by majority vote, have left the ‘Baggers no choice but to scream about Stalinist Naziism, etc etc
I think McMegs confuses “offending someone she likes” with people she likes, and who like her too much to just point and laugh, patiently trying to explain why what she said is really stupid.
Brian J
Sheesh, that was a lot of words, most of them superfluous. Next time one of my bosses says I need to get better at getting to the point, I am going to show them that post.
Anyway, since there’s a lot in there that appears to be unnecessary, it’s not worth responding to everything. Let me, then, just quote the last two lines:
I’d put this a different way. I’d say the problem is that one side–the reality-based side–is trying to deal with problems like global climate change, while the other side–the 20-something percent who believe any and all nonsensical rumors about the president, for instance–doesn’t believe in trying to deal with such problems because they don’t believe they exist. The latter side won’t be engaging with the “broader intellectual culture” because, in most cases, they can’t.
For all of the talk of having a third party, it sometimes feels like we already have three. The extreme left, most of whom are registered Democrats but who, a lot of the time feel alienated; the extreme right, most of whom are Republicans but feel alienated for different reasons; and the big, overlapping middle, which runs from Olympia Snowe and possibly even as far as Richard Lugar and George H.W. Bush on one side to someone line Russ Feingold on the other. There’s a lot of tension between the third group because it’s so big, and how it, as tenuously connected as it might be, moves forward isn’t clear.
Ash Can
Was she sober when she wrote that?
GregB
How soon before a new word enters the lexicon?
Tea-groes.
Alan
I’ve always wondered if McArdle was the female libertarian that caused Ann Althouse to break down in tears at some dinner wondering how she could know libertarians aren’t racist when they say blacks should have shown patience rather than forcing the Civil Rights Act down the throats of poor white business owners.
neill
This McArdle entity…
I’m afraid this last piece of data doesn’t pass the Turing Test… this ‘bot needs to go back to MIT for more work.
Nice try tho’ — but that mechanistic sociopathology is so difficult to delete.
Bill E Pilgrim
Good lord. That really is the most astonishing article (I admit I’ve rarely read anything by her) and I don’t have the stomach or heart or some other internal organ it would require to actually pick and choose quotes to examine but on the whole she’s basically saying, that the people on the right these days are not marginalized because they’ve staked out marginal territory on the extreme, but because “the left”, which she defines also as “the cultural elite”, discriminates against them.
Yow.
Okay one quote:
Yikes.
The great myth of our time, which permeates every breath emitted by the fair and balanced land of false equivilancy known as the corporate news media and assumed here by McCardle to a comic degree, is that there are two halves of the country, always two, and always precisely equivalent in numbers.
Thus, if what’s become of the Republican party, no matter how far to the right this group slides, isn’t included in any decision that the country makes — health care, foreign policy and so on according to the Wolf Blitzers, but taken here by McCardle to include hiring decisions — then there’s discrimination going on. Just like racial discrimination.
The brain hurts to read this.
Does anyone actually realize just how marginalized what we call “the right” is these days:? I mean just in terms of numbers? Does she have an Internet connection?
JGabriel
sukabi:
I could be wrong, but to be fair, I don’t think McArdle actually is racist – just gobsmackingly insensitive about racial matters.
.
MattF
I’m sure this explains something. Hmm. Maybe it explains why I’ve never read any of her stuff.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT – but breaking FLOTUS is in Haiti
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8618445.stm
FlipYrWhig
Oh, it took me a few tries, but I think I got it. She means that she doesn’t want to sound paternalistic and condescending towards the Tea People when she praises their energy and authenticity. It’s just that she demonstrates what she _doesn’t_ want to sound like by sounding vastly more offensive than warranted by the role she’s trying to play ironically.
I think there may have actually been a germ of self-awareness in there. Got lost in the cascade of random dreck, but, hey, germ.
Crashman
@neill: Big +1 for you!
BruceFromOhio
@JGabriel:
HTH
Brian J
@Scott:
You know what I find most amusing? The idea that The New Yorker puts out 47 issues each year, most of them filled with great stuff, while The Atlantic puts out 10 filled with crap from McArdle. The New Yorker, admittedly with a probable bigger budget and more prestige, is doing about five times as much work as The Atlantic, yet is light years ahead of it in quality.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Bill E Pilgrim: You are of stouter heart than I. I’m kind of curious to know how the awesome power of college English departments plays into Tea Partyism, but I’ll bet that underneath it all lies the sympathy C that Our McMegs got for her paper on how Ayn Rand exposed the welfare state for the fraud that it is. Freshman year can be brutal.
Keith G
@Bill E Pilgrim: Re the block quote you provided:
Oh no! She didn’t!?
cleek
i absolutely love this passage.
she’s afraid of offending teabaggers so she drops a big steaming pile of “Hey look, racism! racism! racism!” on herself. even if she’s not racist herself, whatever point she was trying to make got obliterated by the racial stuff. kaboom!
it’s almost as if merely thinking of teabaggers makes it impossible for her to not think of racists who pretend not to be racists.
Tim O
Did someone say “Wow” already? I can’t think of anything else to say.
carlos the dwarf
@Brian J:
Disagree on the quality of the Atlantic in general. It’s no New Yorker, but it’s a decent magazine.
Phoebe
And black is the new president. Bitch.
Bob K
Compare: Limbaugh/McCArdle – Which one more closely resembles nails on a chalk board?
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/13/limbaugh-coal-mine/
Kryptik
No, seriously, how long until we get Fox and CNN complaining about how ‘Teabaggers’ is a slur on par with the n-word and f-word? Because that’s what they seem to be pushing for, and McMegan’s comparison seems to belie that kind of ridiculous equivalence.
So…as always: Fuck McMegan.
Sentient Puddle
OK, those of you picking through the post make me want to go read it and attempt to parse it myself. From what bits you’ve provided and my attempts at reading through a few long-form posts McArdle periodically provides, I’d probably do just as well to hand a 9 iron to my co-worker and tell him to beat me over the head repeatedly with it.
WereBear
@Crashman: Imagine them bumping into each other in the cafeteria.
Brian J
@carlos the dwarf:
I don’t think it’s really bad, but you’d think that with doing an issue every 4-6 weeks, they’d be outstanding. Or maybe it’s just McArdle that drags everyone else down.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Keith G: @Brian J:
Yes, she actually did.
And I was only addressing the lunacy of equating the margins of the extreme right with the cultural mainstream quantitatively, I didn’t even get into the whole issue of qualitatively equating racial discrimination with what she’s talking about.
As if the country had a long history stemming from its very founding of ignoring a certain class of people called “the right” and…
The whole thing is too lunatic to even discuss.
The only way this could possibly make any sense, even in the confines of her mind, is if she thinks that she’s talking about the poor, or working class, or etc. Who of course have been systematically excluded from the halls of power over the centuries.
She’s not, however. Her quote above cites “conservatives” being discriminated against. As if it’s a long tradition.
It really is insane, I’m amazed anyone printed it.
Athenae
I don’t think she realizes other people are real and not, you know, characters in her head. Also, way to rip off Mad Men, you solipsistic nitwit.
If it’s any comfort to her, though, this is an affliction she shares with the majority of the Washington pundit class.
A.
mistersnrub
Cripes, the comment section over there – what a bunch of sniveling virgins. “Oh, Megan, you make such an excellent, cogent point.” Reminds me of a Xena, Warrior Princess in-store signing or something.
JGabriel
Kryptik:
Since last November, at least. I’m sure there are earlier instances. That’s just the first link that came up on Google.
.
Morbo
And this comes a day after Edroso pointed out her rage at the temerity of renters in her new house not to want to give up their contractual rights.
James Hare
@geg6:
I think it’s clear from Ta-Nahesi’s writing that he is a bit more understanding about idiocy than the majority of folks. I think he’s been dealing with clueless white folks his whole life, so McMegan is just amusingly clueless rather than obnoxiously out-of-touch.
andrewtna
I can’t believe I read that shit. In a piece entitled, “What’s the matter with Fox News” she doesn’t even discuss what’s the matter with Fox News. She mentions Fox twice, in a span of 37 grafs. How in the holy fuck did she get hired? All she does is ramble nonsensical bullshit, today about ‘negroes,’ until concluding that Dems are libtards and Republicans deserve empathy.
Gotta love this:
Their ideas can’t gain traction in the media?
If tall bitch was to drop off the xanax for a day and join us back on earth, she’d see that the real problem with our media outlets (especially the liberal ones) is that they give the right a constant soapbox to spout discredited and morally bankrupt horseshit. There are reasons why this former MSNBC junkie hasn’t turned on the news in months.
Crashman
@WereBear: I smell a buddy-cop movie. We need a studio to pitch this to, stat.
LuciaMia
Speaking of ‘tea.’
OKLAHOMA CITY – Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.*
*Translation: We won’t be happy until we shoot somebody.
Brian J
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Are you sure you meant to respond to me?
Paris
She has incredible self awareness. “I’m afraid if I write how I really feel everyone will say ‘ what an obnoxious racist’, which is true, so I’ll write it anyway”.
Mnemosyne
@Bill E Pilgrim:
As far as McMegan is concerned, not being automatically deferred to is the exact same thing as being discriminated against. You should have seen her tale of woe about the Post Office not having the right stamps for her wedding invitations and the insolence of the lowly postal worker who refused to hand-stamp each of the 200 envelopes while McMegan waited. I’m telling you, it was just like the Montgomery bus boycott.
Bill E Pilgrim
You could really sum it up with:
“A lot of people think that conservatives have crazy, extremist ideas that make them seem marginalized off on the fringes of society. You know who else marginalized people? Racists.”
Persia
@Bill E Pilgrim: For that matter, has she ever compared the salary of an average Econ professor’s to that of a bank manager? I don’t think it’s discrimination that keeps conservatives out of academia.
Sentient Puddle
Jesus Christ, I think I’m maybe halfway through, and this post is like the poster child of stream-of-consciousness writing and why you don’t do it. I have no idea what her thesis is, and whatever actual points she makes (which I’m not entirely sure prove whatever it is she’s trying to prove) could be cut of about 75% of their verbiage. Less tangents and smarmy anecdotes, more getting to the point.
That said, I found this line interesting:
I’ll let you guys snark on that one.
EDIT: Added the second sentence to that quote. I didn’t read it before posting, but holy crap does it make it better.
KCinDC
Speaking of the tea party, some idiot who claims to be a progressive is doing what he can to make sure all crazies are dismissed as fakes.
carlos the dwarf
@mistersnrub:
Except they actually believe that crap. It allows them to justify their own privilege by deluding themselves that they are oppressed, and that gays/women/blacks/etc., as members of the VAST LIBERAL CONSPIRACY, are the ones who are really powerful.
Kryptik
@JGabriel:
I know teabaggers and freepers and such have done it already. I’m waiting for the ‘serious news’ to actually run with it, especially since Fox and CNN already seem to have a deep love affair with the teabaggers. Oops, maybe I shouldn’t use that word!
@LuciaMia:
No, seriously, when are they just going to give up the pretenses and straight out say what they want: “We’re gonna start another Civil War because there too many damned liberiprogressicommies!”
Bill E Pilgrim
@Brian J: Oops. Sorry, had meant to click Jim, Foolish Literalist. Trying to get fancy and double-respond which made me goof.
The Grand Panjandrum
Even Richard Nixon has got soul.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Persia: No kidding. All of this academia-envy, makes me laugh sometimes.
As they say, the competition is so fierce because the stakes are so low.
carlos the dwarf
@Sentient Puddle:
Stream of consciousness is a literary fiction technique. It does not make for cogent political blogging.
Kryptik
@KCinDC:
Some of the stuff I saw suggested there seemed so outright mocking and obvious though that only in our satire-challenged, utterly absurd political reality could they be seen as attempts to ‘infiltrate the tea pary and tarnish them’ rather than what it is: satire and mockery.
Oh, I agree it’s stupid and will give only more ammunition to dismiss the real crazies as ‘infiltrators’ and ‘plants’, but that goes to show just how utterly stupid and fucked up the discourse really is.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
Wait, is this real? Because I can believe it, but it also sounds like a joke. Oh, Megan McArdle, you defeat parody.
The Moar You Know
This is what passes for great thoughts amongst the teabaggerati.
I’m reconsidering the wisdom of eugenics. Perhaps there really are some people who, for the greater good, shouldn’t be allowed to breed.
Brian J
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Oh, no worries. My brain is feeling beyond friend today–and reading McArdle’s drivel, which was entirely my own fault, isn’t helping–so I thought I was missing something obvious.
Alex
One of her replies to someone who replied to her post.
ericblair
@carlos the dwarf:
As well, since most have the social graces of a Tasmanian devil with hemorrhoids and the organizational skills of a toddler on pixie dust, things tend not to go as planned. Since they are also Always Right and Correct, it must be the fault of the VAST LIBERAL CONSPIRACY.
Bob K
I love this phrase – “This is an affliction she shares with the majority of the Washington pundit class.”
Since we’re talking about making up reality as you go. I can envision an alternate reality where certain individuals can be sold off to Ma$$ey Coal for use as canaries.
Ugh
Jesus she just goes on and on and on. PUT DOWN THE LAPTOP AND STEP AWAY FROM THE LIGHT MCMEGAN!
IndieTarheel
The woman is a walking Hoekstroika.
Scott
I bet the Pulitzer board is kicking themselves for not giving Megan the Pulitzer she so clearly deserved…
JGabriel
@Kryptik: Oh. Fair enough. I don’t really make the distinction between Fox and Freepers.
.
Midnight Marauder
Just incredible. Surely, this woman cannot be so ignorant of the Civil Rights Movement in this country? Oh, wait a minute. I guess it is kind of easy to do that when Negroes aren’t real people in your world.
IndieTarheel
@ericblair:
I endeavor to use this at all feasible times. You owe me a Coke, monitor, and keyboard.
Sentient Puddle
OK, after parsing all but the last few paragraphs of the post (I ran out of gas), I can safely say that McArdle said absolutely nothing of note that would in any way, shape or form advance the discussion of epistemic closure (fuck…).
The only reason you would want to read it is to pick out passages where she says stupid things as a result of writing at 90 MPH and not bothering to edit. Occasionally a source of amusement, but you’re probably better off searching YouTube for videos of cats doing weird things.
Violet
Just wow on that whole attitude. But this too:
WTF? She decides what to say in her professional blog based on how her friends will feel? There’s your Village-think right there. Circle the wagons, bitches.
Bill E Pilgrim
Plus the obvious rejoinder about “conservatives being excluded in the Coastal cultural elite”, which is basically one giant WTF?
Yes, I suppose that conservatives can’t get a word in edgewise what with all of the John Kings, Charles Kruathammers, President John McCain’s reserved seat at every Sunday talk show every week, and all of those other left wing hippie ex George Bush speechwriters who write for the Washington Post these days.
Rosalita
A new classic…
Cerberus
@Bill E Pilgrim:
They’re all not real conservatives. Also Erik son of Erik also isn’t a real conservative anymore since he’s been included.
On the other hand, the interviews with Joe Lieberman about how Democrats are always wrong totally fill the role of listening to the left-wing and thus there is no need to invite on anyone who actually knows what they are talking about ever again in the constant search to accommodate the conservative persecution complex.
In short, they are delusional psychotics, but we already all knew that.
carlos the dwarf
@Alex:
Yeah, that’s really fucking offensive.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Shorter MM: Galt’s Gulch, Dynamite Hill, what’s the difference? They are both just unpopular bits of real estate with a colorful history, know what I mean?
Legalize
It just boggles me that McMegan has approximately zero expertise in anything she is paid to write about, yet she seems totally unbothered by that fact. If boggles me further that her employer is apparently equally unbothered by that fact.
Cain
@GregB:
Why can’t we just call her a ‘Tea Hag’?
cain
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I put in the thing about the Montgomery bus boycott, just to be clear. But she was really steamed that this lowly peasant at the Post Office wouldn’t do what she wanted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So… who is this conservative who’s been denied a job for being conservative? Erik Erikson? Joe Scarborough? Pat Buchanan? The Blogger fka Jane Galt? Most of Wall Street? From the clips I’ve seen, she seems to be talking about academe. I’m pretty sure studies show that outside of the humanities, the supposed liberal conspiracy is pretty weak. Ben Stein, Ken Starr, Larry Sabatao and his hairpiece and Victor David Hansen all have academic jobs. Is there some Tea-Bagging Shakespeare scholar being denied tenure somewhere? Or is McMegan talking out of her ass, using her platforms of the Atlantic Monthly and NPR to whine about how she’s being picked on and silenced for her ideology?
Morbo
What’s that about Ross Douthat now?
JohnR
I can’t decide whether she’s stuck at the reasoning level of a gifted high school Senior or a rather slow college Freshman. Still, she knows that she’s special and that’s all that really counts.
norbizness
It’s like reading a suicide note, but the Atlantic editors keep applying the stomach pump after she swallows the bottle full of pills.
4tehlulz
No one likes you, McMegs.
sukabi
@Brian J:
I’d put this a different way. I’d say the problem is that one side—the reality-based side—is trying to deal with problems like global climate change, while the other side—the 20-something percent who believe any and all nonsensical rumors about the president, for instance—doesn’t believe in trying to deal with such problems because they don’t believe they exist. The latter side won’t be engaging with the “broader intellectual culture” because, in most cases, they can’t.
I think you’re over thinking here, what she was trying to say delicately, and not succeeding was this:
The problem is that we on the right are too busy engaging in masturbatory self-congratulation to bother with reality… basically all we’ve got for our troubles is a slippery mess.
Citizen_X
@LuciaMia:
Lovely idea. I suggest they call it “The McVeigh Brigade.”
rootless-e
I knew that telling them to go fuck themselves would eventually work.
Mike in NC
Yup. Like I wrote on the previous thread, she makes Kathleen Parker look GOOOOOOD!
Keith G
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I always get a kick when conservative whine about the liberal elite media. They so conveniently forget about Katharine and Phillip Graham, Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, and William Paley to name a few. They were part of the patrician elite class that shaped post war politics and media and they were not liberals.
Randy P
I know that Annie actually starred Andrea McArdle, but every time I see McArdle’s name all I can think of is a little kid with a big mop of bright orange hair singing “The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow”
slag
This is getting bizarre. I mean truly bizarre.
On the other hand, McMegan does have a point. I see no reason why my interest in English literature doesn’t qualify me for a job as an astronaut. Why is NASA discriminating against me? I feel just like Rosa Parks.
MikeBoyScout
Bringing her brand of stupid right in to Sully’s wheelhouse
And of the time of this comment post he has refrained from telling her to STFU.
Must be grating him something terrible.
ChrisS
particularly not in a milieu which purports to be committed to open inquiry.
this bullshit along with “I guess I’m just politically incorrect,” are two of the biggest fucking shields these assholes like to cower behind so that they can continue to fling hatred and breed ignorance.
“Why I can’t forward emails that compare the President of the United States to an African bushman solely based on the color of their skin? I thought liberals were supposed to be tolerant of other ideas?”
I’m starting to think that maybe this liberal needs to start punching teabaggers in their throat. There’s supposed to be a rally downtown today, maybe I can head over there and provoke something and get on Fox News.
SGEW
Sullivan and Coates need to hold a sensitivity training intervention for their colleague. I mean, really.
Doesn’t she ever get embarrassed?
Michael D.
Oh my. What an ignorant, ignorant comment.
I mean, is she this stupid?
Being in the closet is precisely the EFFECT of discrimination.
I’m sure she meant that another way, but wow. Let someone read your posts before you push the freakin’ Publish button.
Just, wow.
slag
@4tehlulz: To be fair, she probably didn’t actually offend anyone she likes. Anyone she likes is probably either equally clueless or equally unconcerned about offending people she doesn’t like.
Violet
@Cain:
Ha! Love it.
ChrisS
Being in the closet is precisely the EFFECT of discrimination.
As is “A black man who strips away all of the cultural identifiers of blackness is going to face substantially fewer barriers”
Wow.
Why can’t you just be more white?
jl
I agree with the problem of ‘self-identified’ blacks giving their kids ‘black’ names. That is obviously the kid’s fault.
Just the same with self-identified Irish who insist on offending me by having their parents name them Sean, and who are obviously into Irish life styles, like dipsomania and bar fights.
Then there are the krauts who have been named Horst, who are self-identified by their parents as either being at your throat or on their knees.
And kids who have self-identified by their parents as communist totalitarian automaton free sexing Swedes, spirits crushed by being named Gustav.
I say, heck yeah, let’s go back the nineteenth century all the way! No racism here, move along. And I resent your hateful accusation, and you are asking to be spit upon.
I am sick of these whiner reactionary racist scum.
I forgot ignorant, hateful and stupid. Sorry, I apologize for any feelings hurt by my incomplete characterization of teabaggers and glibertarian idiots above.
NobodySpecial
@4tehlulz:
Sadly, not true. She can always count on Taibbi and the gang.
Bob L
The critic of the conservatives is they should stop acting like bat shit loons off in fantasy land. Presumably they can do that without dropping their core beliefs. If they can’t then they need new core beliefs.
carlos the dwarf
@MikeBoyScout:
I expect he’ll get there…he usually doesn’t link to blog posts until they’re a day or so old…Dude has so much blogosphere to get through that eh can’t possibly stay current.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Keith G: And also, looking at the second quote in the post above now–
Let’s be clear about what she’s saying here.
Racial prejudice could be defined as deciding based on only the color of someone’s skin that you know what the person’s thoughts, opinions, attitudes toward work, etc, will be.
Being politically and culturally “conservative” is the way you think and feel about things. Let’s also be clear: if McCardle is referring to views that are so far to the right that people are being denied inclusion in the cultural discussion, or even jobs, then these aren’t moderately “conservative” views (like hers for example) these are right wing views.
So she’s claiming that if your views are so right wing that the majority is excluding you from things, because of those views, then it’s the same as racial prejudice.
When in fact, it’s the opposite. Or converse, or I don’t know what the hell it is in relation to racism except that it’s not the same as it, and to imply that it is is laughable.
jl
@Bob L:
It is spewing hate to correct a reactionary loon who says one plus one equals three.
You are being provocative and may be spat upon, righteously.
Civility is one way street. The rich and their dupes say so, and this truth has been blessed by the Village Idiots.
To Pilgrim: it is also discrimination to exclude some nut who thinks one plus one equals three from being included in important public discussions of policy, like balancing the budget. That should be obvious.
/snark tag here.
Woodrowfan
Have to share this. This am went to the Drs with my wife. Routine check-up stuff. While she was in with the Dr. some teatard whined about the Today Show being on the waiting room TV and demanded they switch to Faux. I objected and suggested he leave it. He got on my case about Obama saying how “they” were going to crush us in November, etc. I told him “Man, you people can’t stand that there’s a black man in the White House, can you>”
WOW did THAT set him off. He was in my face “why do you insist we’re all bigots and homophobes” (to which I replied, because you are!). After a minute or so some of the staff asked us to stop, to which the bagger said “Tell that to lefty!” but I’d already sat down and returned to my book. I apologized to the staff and tried to read. Mr. teabag clutched the TV remote with a deathgrip and watched the ads on Faux.
I also suggested we switch to a neutral channel, like the weather, but he ignored it.
Afterwards I was checking out with my wife and he started up again! My wife asked if he was a tea-partier and he said “YES, and damn proud of it.” She just smiled a saccharine smile and said, “well then, God bless” and turned her back on him. The staffer checking us out was an African-American woman and she commiserated with us when he left.
My wife told me that’s why she loves me, I don’t back down when faced with a RW blowhard. I did go back by myself and spoke to the head staffer who told us to be quiet and apologized saying we had been inappropriate and I was sorry. She was nice about it. I’m sure we made the staff (and other patients) uncomfortable and I regret that. So I do regret adding to the scene in public but on the other hand these assholes really do think they’re a majority and we need to stand up and say “enough!” it’s a tough balancing act.
celticdragonchick
@Kryptik:
They are already pushing that meme at Althouse. Some idiot bragged how he had called a female acquaintance a “cunt” in front of her 11 year old daughter at a mutual friends house after she made a reference to “teabaggers”. The guy doubled down on the misogynistic insults after his friend called him on it, and the woman left the house with her daughter in tow.
The guy was really, really proud of himself in the comments. Only one commenter even tried to reprove him, and was denounced as an concern troll for his/her troubles.
neil
@Marc: Thank you. I thought it was me.
I mean, I’m used to reading, shall we say, “inartful” writing – spilling from the keyboards of all kinds of pundits (David Brooks, for a shining, three-days-a-week example), but usually I understand the points they’re trying to make. Even fuzzy, half-baked ones (a Brooks specialty). But this?
How is it that entitled, pampered white suburbanites think they know about the ins and outs and alleged pitfalls of “black self-identification”?
Nope – she’s really just talking about herself. She harbors an attitude about black people with “identifiable black names”, and thinks, like all bigots, that her most cherished prejudices are held by everyone else. Because she’s so “mainstream”.
And that’s pretty much the clearest thing I got out of this.
celticdragonchick
@SGEW:
Not that I can tell.
Mnemosyne
@Woodrowfan:
Just out of curiosity, what was his kick against the Today Show? The cooking segment had “exotic” food?
Wait, let me guess — they had a segment about Michelle Obama’s trip to Haiti, which is of course hideous lie-beral propaganda.
Bob L
@jl:
I stand correct. I should recall that white Christians males are the most persecuted majority in the history of the world. All these people are doing us upholding REAL American values like no taxation with representation. As the HRC protester succinctly put it; they are no better than Negros now. Clearly I need a Caucasian friend now to tell me his pain. /snark
supposed that slip from the Teabaggers says more about what they think then they want to admit; the idea of a Representative is to dump the tax burden on the other guy, not spread it around fairly.
Steeplejack
McArdle:
Balderdash. Poppycock, even. A black man who “strips away all of the cultural identifiers of blackness” is still going to look black walking down the street, and that is all that is needed for all too many racists and tea-partiers (if that is not redundant). I don’t think they’re waiting to check whether his name is Lincoln Washington Jones or Dashiki Tupac X.
McArdle—what a jackhole! (Or should that be jane-hole?)
licensed to kill time
@Athenae:
This is exactly what I thought, shades of Mad Men, girl. It’s almost Reaganesque, in terms of confusing history/real life with movie/tv scripts/characters.
Woodrowfan
@Mnemosyne:
I think it was just that it wasn’t Faux. I don’t like “Today” either but I tuned it out…
ruemara
Too. Fucking. Early. To. Be. This. Angry.
goddamn idiot woman. Who the hell is she screwing to keep her job?
J.W. Hamner
Her post reads like the least funny madlib ever.
Phoebe
@Cain:
Yes yes yes yes yes. If there’s a category/tag for the condescending fetishization of rubes, which there should be, common as it is, then let this please be it.
Remember Naomi Wolf? Her too.
Steeplejack
@mistersnrub:
Hey, hey, hey, hey! False equivalency. I would go to a Xena in-store signing. Just sayin’. Arrgglle!
Davis X. Machina
Screw the LHC. What happens to the time-space continuum if James Fallows bumps into McArgybargy, or vice versa, in an Atlantic elevator?
I presume Fallows spent all those years in China purely as a precaution against this potential Extinction Event.
Cerberus
@Woodrowfan:
First up, I’m proud of you.
Secondly, it comes down to them believing they deserve to rule the world. By slipping into these fantasy kingdoms reinforced by constantly running away from the existence of others, they believe everyone thinks like them and believes like them and they have the right to shout down and force the conformity of anyone who disagrees.
And with the evolving of the world, more and more people stop “playing along” with the psychos and starts standing up to them and condemning them. Suddenly the world doesn’t seem to contain enough people that agree with them and they take that as a personal threat.
They were born with privilege damnitt, they should never have that checked, remarked upon, or challenged. Such an act is unprecedented, horrifying.
Especially since they are trapped in a world of projection where everyone is like them. They know what they did when they were on top and “everyone who mattered” was just like them. So if the “them” are standing up to them, how long will it be until they personally are the “them” that gets discriminated against.
And so they assume that that’s already happening and that having to be disagreed with or called out in public is tout suite equivalent to real oppression.
Because it’s unprecedented
Until we started standing up for ourselves and countered their assumption of control over the world.
Davis X. Machina
Then there are the krauts who have been named Horst,…
We had an AFS student here one year named Horst Schmidt. Used to love to hear his name on the announcement.
Kryptik
@celticdragonchick:
Wow….that’s….wow.
Telling stuff, isn’t it? Then again, their lives seem to thrive on that kind of false equivalence in order to justify their warped world views. They really do take pride in their ignorance.
Steeplejack
@celticdragonchick:
I thought that guy’s post was later shown to be (or said to be) an April Fools Day joke.
Kilks
@Crashman:
I was going to say something just like this. Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of my favorite writers.
To read McMegan’s post after having read TNC writing about The Ghost of Bobby Lee is more than I can handle. Such good writing followed by… whatever the f**** McMegan wrote is enough to make my brain hurt.
licensed to kill time
@Cain:
Or a teahagger.
maus
@Scott: Yeah, exactly. I’m starting to think the real “ivory tower” is the establishment media. They offer awards to fluffy libs and idiot conservatives without any thought to the merit these awards and positions were intended to qualify.
rikyrah
some replies here are hilarious.
I have loved reading this post.
McMegan is a clown. a straight up clown.
Morbo
@Steeplejack: The April Fool’s Joke was that SEK from LG&M was baiting the Althouse commenters into making such posts. Then the walkbacks began.
FlipYrWhig
@Steeplejack:
No, it was an “April Fool’s Joke” joke.
One of the Lawyers, Guns, and Money bloggers said, as a joke, that he had planted offensive remarks, in order to call attention to the fact that you’d think something _that_ offensive would _have_ to be a deliberate plant… but it wasn’t. (The joke being that there’s no way to tell the difference between self-aware parody offensiveness and un-self-aware real offensiveness in the Alt House.)
Then Althouse got all willfully obtuse and thought it was a real admission of a false-flag operation. Then people started Googling wildly in the finest tradition of Keyboard Kommandos.
asiangrrlMN
@Steeplejack: Agreed! I would be at a Xena in-store signing in a heartbeat. Gawd, this woman sucks. But you all made me laugh my nonexistent ass off, so I’m thankful for that. Tell ya what, Megan, you want discrimination? I’ll show you discrimination. She and her ilk are such a bunch of sniveling bitchez. Seriously. She wouldn’t know what to do if she were seriously discriminated against for her beliefs. Actually, she’d probably change her beliefs.
@Woodrowfan: Good for you. I agree that this shit needs to be confronted (something I have a hard time doing) in order for them to realize that, yes, hon, the world is not your oyster. You really are as stupid as you fear you are.
Steeplejack
@FlipYrWhig:
This makes my head hurt. Can I get a flowchart, please?
asiangrrlMN
@Steeplejack: Hey, Steep man. Whatcha doing on now?
different church-lady
You mean, like, his FUCKING SKIN COLOR, YOU PRATTLING TWIT?!?
different church-lady
@BruceFromOhio:
FlipYrWhig
@Steeplejack:
I think I made it more confusing than necessary.
1. Remark on Althouse about “teabag” being equivalent to “cunt” and saying that if one is acceptable around children, the other should be too.
2. Remark is defended by Althouse denizens.
3. SEK of LG&M on April Fool’s Day says, April Fool’s! I was the one who left that remark, because clearly it would have to be a joke, and no one could possibly mean it seriously or defend it.
3a. SEK’s “admission” is clearly itself a joke about the standards and mentalities of Althouse commenters.
4. Althouse and her commenters decide it’s a _real_ admission, because they don’t understand “jokes.”
Woodrowfan
One additional comment, a little old lady said, when I said I didn’t like Faux news, “I never met anyone who didn’t like Fox news!” I was too busy arguing with the guy to tell her “I don’t know many people who DO like Faux. one of us lives in a bubble.”
Ash Can
I’m starting to feel the same way. This poor thing is a post turtle, and shame on the people who put her there. People evidently have been filling her head full of nonsense for years, making her believe she’s brilliant and insightful and a special snowflake. Now, for whatever reason, the editors of Atlantic have put her out there on a national stage, where her ignorance is on display for all to see. Maybe she was so fucking annoying during her job interview that they decided to teach her a lesson that they knew she wouldn’t learn until it was way, way too late (if ever). Ouch.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
Not me. For one thing, it’s a tortured word play and makes me wince.
For another, it’s wrong. The old black is still the new black in this country.
asiangrrlMN
@Ash Can: I would feel sorry for her if she didn’t have a secure job that pays handsomely and benefits. Because presumably she has all that, I just snicker at her instead. Oh, and if she had a modicum of self-awareness.
maus
@Ash Can:
Wait, are you waiting for wingnut welfare to induce shame over a quick and easy paycheck?
Master Mahan
Translation: you’re not tolerating our intolerance!
Will
I tried reading that piece of hers earlier today. I simply couldn’t do it. It was just too stupid, too uncomfortable, too weird, too horribly written. I started to get the feeling that even if I got offended, I might not be getting offended at anything intentionally drawn that way. She simply did not know what the fuck she was talking about, and opted to continue typing in the hope she would find out. When you realize that not only do you not understand what someone else is saying, you realize they don’t either, there is simply no point.
Phoebe
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty: He doesn’t mean black people. It’s a fashion thing. Black, the actual color, has been so popular for so long, that every so often some editor tries to make gray “the new black” or brown or red, or whatever else, to get people to chase the shiny new thing when everyone still in fact loves basic, dramatic, slimming, black.
Right, so saying “X” is the “the new black” is the same way of saying it’s the new fashion, the new craze. It’s completely not a race thing. At all.