One of the reasons I no longer read any of the At Pack bloggers regularly (this includes any of the younger current and recent Atlantic bloggers as well as a few hanger-oners) is that they seem to have crushes on the people on the cover, in the same way that Villagers do (with McCain in particular). Megan McArdle’s anti-Krugman screed is a good example:
Though I’ve only met him once, everything I’ve heard about Ryan indicates that he genuinely loves this stuff–if he could have more time with the CBO and JCT staff, he’d be in heaven.
[…..]I emailed Ryan’s people around noon to ask whether my recollection was correct that he was unable to get staff time from the JCT. Within 30 minutes on a Saturday morning, I had emails from two staffers, one of whom was on vacation. They affirmed that he asked the JCT for an analysis, and was turned down. Which tells us a few things: first, that Paul Ryan’s people are exceptionally hard-working and responsive.
Now, I agree that Krugman should have checked with Ryan’s office about why the JCT didn’t score their proposal. But why is the wet kiss to Ryan and his office necessary?
Look, I know I obsess about this crap, so feel free to yell “Green Balloons” in the comments. But there’s very little that distresses me more about American politics than the fact that the political blogosphere is creating the Village 2.0, a new group of power-fellating pseduo-elites who all think the world of one another. At least Cokie Roberts and David Brooks don’t talk about pink Himalayan salt and ramps all day.
It’s only a matter of time before VeriGoogle gives them all a much louder microphone.
El Cruzado
I read ta-nehisi often and sully every once in a while (when I want to waste a lot of time since his blog is a content-producing machine).
I dunno why anyone would ever pay any attention to what McArdle has to say.
Omnes Omnibus
Green balloons. I have to disagree with some of your phrasing. You say
I would say “has created,” but, otherwise, rock on.
ETA: FYWP
JGabriel
I wish McArdle had stuck with the Jane Galt handle. It was much more descriptively accurate.
.
El Cid
Wouldn’t someone ask the JCT?
DougJ
@El Cruzado:
I don’t think of him as a member of the At Pack. I guess he is younger, he doesn’t wear it on his sleeve.
kindness
Well yea, what you say is true Doug. Doesn’t change the fact that Megan is all too frequently a Grade A Asshole.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
As much as I like TNC, it’s getting a little ridiculous that he consistently turns a blind eye to Megan’s horribly tone-deaf posts on race (and there’s a metric fuckload of them already).
azlib
Of course Ryan’s staff was responsive to Megan – she is part of the media elite and does not ask hard questions.
Zifnab
This was inevitable. The old guard replaced by the new guard. I’m not worried that McArdle and Goldberg have replacements waiting in the wings. We’ve got a more serious and more informed blogosphere that we continue to tune in with.
When you’ve got no options in terms of political news and opinion, that’s when you’re in trouble. If the Web 2.0 power-fellators are counterbalanced by the 24/7 admin haters, all remains in balance. It’s when sycophancy is all you can hear that I get worried.
cleek
i don’t know what an “At Pack” is, but i definitely agree that a lot of high-profile bloggers act exactly like a Jr. Villagers Club.
it’s part of why i hate Bloggingheads – it feels too much like Pundit Fantasy Camp for people who haven’t been able to climb onto a network booking agent’s go-to list.
freelancer
Jebus, not to keep harping, but damn the site is screwy today. I blame EDK’s new baby.
NonyNony
But, on the plus side, we’re watching them grow up in real time as nothing but bloviators rather than having them spend time as journalists gaining our trust before it turns out that they were always just power-fellating pseudo-elites. So there’s some transparency. Having never actually done any work to actually earn any of my trust, I will always know that I can’t trust a goddamn word that Megan McArdle writes about anything – including “and” and “the” – without having it vetted by six economists, three accountants, and a grammarian.
Midnight Marauder
Because he comes “from a family of academics who are actually intellectually intimidating.”
Duh.
Chad S
Did McMegan get her degrees(assuming that she went to, you know, college) from the same internet web site where I got my minister’s license?
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@azlib: And I would bet they know she’s a fellow traveler, as Paul Ryan worships Ayn Rand.
JGabriel
DougJ:
I think we should go with something more like Googlizon or Gozon – you know, something that sounds more like an evil Transformer(tm) or a giant atomic-bomb-metaphor lizard.
.
Spaghetti Lee
To be honest, give me a villager any day over a hate-filled pustule like Rush Limbaugh or Pat Robertson. That class of “pundits” doesn’t seem to have so many people waiting in the wings.
MikeB
Now, I agree that Krugman should have checked with Ryan’s office about why the JCT didn’t score their proposal.
I think he did:
In other words, Ryan could have gotten JCT to do a 10-year estimate; it just wouldn’t go beyond that. And he chose not to get that 10-year estimate. So it was Ryan’s choice not to have any independent estimate of the 10-year revenue effects.
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/doubletalk-express/
and yeah – totally obnoxious that they swoon for Ryan…
dj spellchecka
while i realize that their is an atlantic version of ray-gun’s “11th commandment,” the various bloggers not named mcmagan really wreck their credibility by looking the other direction whenever she cranks out yet another column full of baloney…
srv
How about setting a good example?
Why don’t you and Kain agree to start calling each other ignorant MF’s? And Annie and this new Kay could start throwing mud at each other and checking each other’s countertops.
There are so many posters here now, less talk, more screaming.
JGabriel
Megan McArdle:
… to Objectivist Rand-worshipping nutjobs (yes, it’s a triple redundancy, I know) like Paul Ryan and the artist formerly known as Jane Galt.
.
DougJ
@srv:
Are you serious or kidding?
CalD
THANK YOU!!!!
(And present company excluded, of course.)
twiffer
wow, so she got a response from someone who was on vacation? yippie fucking skippy. guess what! i’ve emailed people when i was on vacation. i’ve had to work on vacation. everyone on my team has done so. we have an oncall rotation so about every other week i’m first in line to be woken up @ 3am or have my weekend ruined. not to mention that i am, in practice, always on call for any applications i happen to be a SME for.
last year, i had the joy of spending all of mother’s day embroiled in ROS for a server cluster crash (due to a hardware failure, at that). i’ve had to work while on FMLA leave. for fuck’s sake, my wife got called by work while on maternity leave. responding to an email on a saturday? that’s nothing. all that means is ryan’s staffers have blackberries. it’s not exceptional; it’s barely par for the fucking course so far as i’m concerned.
Poopyman
@DougJ:
Good Lord! Even if he was serious he couldn’t be serious.
JGabriel
@twiffer:
Yeah, but … McMegan got one from a Republican on vacation.
That never happens. Unless you ritually drink the blood of the destitute in service to Ayn Rand.
.
Poopyman
By the way, Ted’s dead.
MSNBC sez so, so it must be true.
J.W. Hamner
Actually, IMHO, she’d be a lot more readable if that is what she talked about all day… while she can be as irritating about that as any self conscious foodie/yuppie… her advice isn’t usually half bad… unfortunately she’s not posting on the Atlantic Food Channel.
Xecky Gilchrist
@twiffer: it’s not exceptional; it’s barely par for the fucking course
To people like us, yes. But do you think McMegan has ever worked on a Saturday or vacation?
Morbo
@JGabriel: I hope they do name it that, if only for the lawsuit that would follow.
TimO
I thought it was Googlezon?!?
Paris
How does that translate into:
Is she intentionally dense or just a liar?
Carwin
For crying out loud Doug, go moonlight over at http://firemeganmcardle.blogspot.com/ and be done with it.
Martin
Putting McMegan in the same category as Fallows and TNC and Green isn’t really fair. Hell, even with Sully it isn’t fair. Feel free to tie her to Goldberg, however. If he gets anything right (which he sometimes does, as he has recently with the mosque business), I’m pretty sure it’s purely by accident.
But I don’t understand why anyone should be concerned about what’s going on with the bloggers. If you don’t like them, don’t read them. It’s not like pageviews are a scarce commodity (unlike TV and radio time) where bad bloggers can starve out the rest.
IMO, the best media criticism comes with an immediate contrast to good media behavior. That’s something you don’t often see – the question of ‘why did these guys fuck up this story that these other guys got right?’ Context for discussion is very important.
Dave
Y’know, it’s great how Ryan’s staff is all ultra-responsive and stuff. But how does that change the fundamental fact that Ryan’s “blueprint” is a Grade-A piece of shit? Or is that too difficult a question for Galty McDumbFuck to ask?
Martin
@Paris: You say that as though they are mutually exclusive. McMegan herself is evidence that they are not. For example:
It doesn’t tell us that. I’d put hard money down that she’s just seeing selection bias. They responded to her because they knew she’d pass on whatever lie they wanted to tell. If Krugman had asked they would have been too hard-working to have time to reply.
licensed to kill time
OT DougJ or any frontpager:
The Shut Up You Whiney Bitches thread got Hyphen-bombed about two hours ago and is just sitting there, dead in the water. You fix please? It’s at #138 by commenter Apnea.
Last Hyphen Bomb I saw was by commenter Jinx. I’m starting to see a pattern here…
DougJ
@Martin:
I said younger, not all current and recent. So Douthat, Yglesias, Ambinder, McMegan, yes, the others no. I guess TNC may be young but he sounds like an adult
georgia pig
Of course it’s not necessary — it’s the expected result. It’s like Cheney and Russert. Is it a big surprise that Ryan’s people will jump to a request by someone they know is a likely Ryan fluffer? Only to the idiot Ryan fluffer. BTW, Krugman already addressed Ryan’s “excuse.”
Martin
TNC is quite young, and new. He replaced Yglesias, after all. And Douthat is long gone (thank God).
DougJ
@licensed to kill time:
Fixed.
roshan
So replying to emails on a Saturday makes one exceptionally hard working and responsive?
licensed to kill time
@DougJ: Thnx.
Also, I asked one of Cole’s people around 3:30pm to fix a broken thread. Within 11 minutes on a Tuesday afternoon, it was fixed. Which tells us a few things: first, that Cole’s people are exceptionally hard-working and responsive. And second, well I don’t know what but I just wanted to screw around with McArgleBargle’s quote.
srv
@DougJ: Hey, if you can win-the-mornings by making up shit about Greenwald’s PAC, why can’t y’all do it to your own? Think of the page hits, “DougJ calls Kain a poopyhead!” Your master can plead for civil discourse, the écouterians can threaten to leave, DFH’s might have a reason to cheer, and it might attract a mob of Reasonoids to come over and play.
Why is that we always have to do all the screaming?
roshan
@licensed to kill time:
Nope, these guys are more like the “professional left” and need to be drug tested.
Jay in Oregon
@JGabriel:
When I saw the “VeriGoogle” portmanteau, my first thought was Gorizon, for much the same reasons. :)
PaulB
What’s interesting is how she keeps hammering on a side issue, completely ignoring the elephant in the room. Yes, Krugman got a fairly unimportant point wrong, one that matters not at all to his central thesis, that Ryan’s Roadmap does not, in fact, balance the budget. Instead of focusing on that, McMegan hammers away on something that is almost completely irrelevant.
catclub
“Megan McArdle:
I emailed Ryan’s people around noon … Within 30 minutes on a Saturday morning, I had emails from two staffers, one of whom was on vacation. … Which tells us a few things: first, that Paul Ryan’s people are exceptionally hard-working and responsive.”
One is extremely tempted to try some fun with mail headers.
(and reply-to lines).
mai naem
@Midnight Marauder: What, his family aren’t high school dropouts?
Seriously, most of these Republicans that the MSM think are such brilliant wonkheads turn out to be a bunch of party line spouting phools. All of them. A debate between the half brains of Obey/Waxman/Frank vs. whole brains of Ryan/Cantor/Pence would leave the latter three crying like babies.
Corner Stone
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Hell no. That’s when she takes some quality “yacht time”.
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: And not that a couple hundred people here couldn’t say the exact same thing but I can’t remember a time in the last 10 years where I was truly disconnected from work and not expected to be reachable.
chopper
ah yes, the “A for effort” school of politics.
look, i don’t care if the guy gets jizzy in the pants over this shit (would it be irresponsible to ejaculate? it would be irresponsible not to) but if he’s a moron he’s a fuckin moron, no matter how hard he tries.
politics aint supposed to be the special olympics, people, no matter how much it looks like it most the time.
chopper +5
DougJ
@srv:
I made nothing up. The fact that I later gave the benefit of the doubt about what a PAC is supposed to do does not mean that I was incorrect to say no money was dispersed to candidates. That’s a matter of public record.
timb
@PaulB: hold on! It’s only down by a mere 4 trillion and Ryan said “he’d fix that.” Four trillion isn’t that much money to Republicans.
OMG, did you hear Michelle went on vacation and it cost taxpayers like 150,000. That is unacceptable.
That’s the difference between grown-ups and Meghan: grown up vacations cost 150,000; Meghan and Paul’s trip to Fantasy land costs 4 trillion.
timb
@mai naem: Look, I’ve known pence since he ran ads featuring bloody fetuses, since he had a radio talk show which completely ripped Limbaugh off…..the idea he has any brains at all is insulting to half-wits like Cantor and Ryan
Nylund
from what I’ve actually read, the JCT did offer to score it, but only under a specific time frame which Ryan rejected because it wasn’t the time frame he wanted. He did have other options and he chose not to do them. Krugman’s larger point that Ryan never made this clear and used the crap CBO estimate as a selling point to make unfounded claims about his plan still stands.
Megan doesn’t report the refusal of the offer that JCT did make, merely just that the first request wasn’t possible. In fact, all she really does is say, “I took the government authority figure’s word that he totally tried to do his bestest and its totally not his fault, so everyone else is just wrong or something.”
Does that sound like the actions of a true libertarian or that of a partisan hack?
Nylund
I’ve never seen a so-called Libertarian trust a government source so completely, and with such air of gratitude for all their hard work. Ayn Rand would be proud.
Batocchio
Regardless of the JCT, Ryan was peddling bullshit – he was peddling that supply-side tax cuts/cuts to the wealthy/trickle-down, would raise revenue – or at the very least, be revenue neutral. That completely ignores all the data of the Reagan and Bush II presidencies – decreased tax revenues, exploding deficits, and no job gains. So before we even get to the details that McArdle is pretending vindicate her glibertarian pal, Ryan was dumb, delusional or dishonest – or some combination of the three.
Nate Silver had a longer post on Ryan’s unwillingness to find someone else to do an independent estimate. And Ryan hasn’t corrected his figures in the five months since his Roadmap was eviscerated in detail by at least three groups – and that’s all before Krugman. Ryan is a Randian zealot, but it also appears he’s a bullshitter who’s always been arguing in bad faith. Fact-check everything he or McArdle and her hubby says.