Most people are content with one field, but not the Business and Economics Editor at the Atlantic. She has decided to branch out and be wrong about multiple fields of scholarship:
But still, every party has the red-faced, humorless, easily-offended type. Yesterday, at The Atlantic web site, Megan McArdle provided a stellar example. Her comments begin strangely, with the admission that she’s “in the middle” of the book. Note the urgency to condemn it publicly, even before reading the damned thing! And boy, does she lash out:
• “It reads like horsefeathers . . . like an undergraduate thesis,”
• “breathless rather than scientific”
• “cherry-picked evidence stretched far out of shape to support their theory,”
• “they don’t even attempt to paper over the enormous holes in their theory.”Ouch! And that’s just the first paragraph. But wait, it gets worse. The second paragraph is worth quoting in full, as it’s really a perfect expression of the bug-eyed panic the book provokes in some people:
“For example, like a lot of evolutionary biology critiques, this one leans heavily on bonobos (at least so far). Here’s the thing: humans aren’t like bonobos. And do you know how I know that we are not like bonobos? Because we’re not like bonobos. There’s no way observed human societies grew out of a species organized along the lines of a bonobo tribe.” (emphasis in original)
Got that? Humans aren’t like bonobos because we’re not like bonobos. No way! So there! Case closed.
I’m sure if Sully weren’t on vacation, he’d link to McMegan’s analysis and call it “interesting.”
steviez314
Isn’t a bonobo a chimp that writes a column for the New York Times?
Ryan
Best quote “I’m not familiar with Ms. McArdle’s work, but if she’s got a gig at The Atlantic, which is one of the most respected magazines in the country, presumably this is far below her usual intellectual standard.”
If he only knew.
burnspbesq
I think we’ve established that McArdle is unworthy of being taken seriously. This is at the point where we are beating the memorial plaque that says a horse once died here.
We can haz fresh meat plz?
mistermix
This is my favorite quote from the article:
cleek
ok, since mistermix’s version of this just disappeared, i’ll put my comment on this one:
why, oh why, do people keep talking about McArdle ?
neill
some of us would like the book title — without the link to McFartbrain…
we support the bonoboese liberation front, and/or would buy the book just ’cause it makes a certain Atlantic blogger upchuck split pea soup and spin her head around…
please do tell…
ed
I believe that was the great Chris Washburn who claimed to be amphibious, although a lot of jocks have made similar errors over the years. Yogi Berra reputedly said something to that effect.
valdivia
great title & best quote at the top evah!
QDC
I love this guy!
mistermix
@cleek: Yeah, I took it down because it was basically a link to the same article. And, strangely, not the first time that’s happened.
General Stuck
Ot
Deep Thought
What is wrong with this story?
McClatchy turned Onion?
NonyNony
@neill:
The book is titled “Sex at Dawn”. The first link up there goes to Psychology Today where the author of the book that McArdle “reviewed” shreds McArdle in the quotes John provided. So you can skip the McMegan link and just read the shredding (I recommend it – the author is one of those types who likes to politely fillet his subject via the use of their own words).
Frank Chow
Wait humans aren’t like a pair of lightweight chinos? http://www.bonobos.com/ Very interesting indeed.
Senyordave
Personally, I would rather read Charles Shackleford’s analysis of the book. Being amphibious, he must have some wild tales to tell.
dmsilev
Really, you missed the prize quote at the end:
Sadly, no. This *is* her usual intellectual standard.
dms
maya
Apparently McArdle has never had sex at dawn.
jacy
@burnspbesq:
While it was good for a chuckle to read the author’s takedown of McMegan, I agree with you. Can’t we just dispatch her to the blogospheric dustbin?
Really, if we keep whacking her, are we ever going to get candy?
Comrade Javamanphil
One of Sully’s under-bloggers did note the smack down. She should stick to only writing about what she knows but I suspect the world isn’t ready for a blog whos eonly content is about how awesome it is to be Megan McArdle.
Randy P
I’ve been fond of reading about bonobos ever since learning that they use sex as a negotiating tool for intertribal conflicts. And that they have sex for fun.
Around our house we’re also very fond of studies of bower birds, who get their mate by building little bowers and trying to do a better job of interior decorating than their competitors. If the researchers leave pretty little plastic things around, they’ll incorporate that in the decoration.
jwb
@General Stuck: If the Dems can’t win this fight, which they’ll find a way to lose, they deserve to be pummeled in November, which they surely will—starting with the very Dems who will vote to extend the Gooper taxcuts. Then the real fun will begin.
Matt M
From the table at the end of the article, reprinted from “Sex at Dawn”–methinks this sentence could use a rewrite:
arguingwithsignposts
@Matt M:
Win!
I didn’t even catch that.
calling all toasters
I’m guessing Mr. McMegan has already contracted Wandering Eye Disease, hence her bluster. The stupidity, of course, predates her relationship.
LarsThorwald
So McMegan is essentially adopting the Cantor Rebuttal that seeks to dismiss an argument in its entirety with an appeal to the Gob Bluth in all of us: “I mean, come on!”
The Cantor Come On?
The Can’tor?
I’m trying to get into the Balloon Juice Lexicon here! Maybe those aren’t catchy enough, but I mean, come on!
Viva BrisVegas
@Matt M:
Once you go Bonobo you never go back.
WyldPirate
Bonobos are evil. They have sex. For the hell of it. With members of the same gender.
Bonobo’s are goddamned-to hell homosexual primates. God hates them and human fags, too. Also.
They are probably fucking soshualist and liberals, too. And Muslim. And direct relations to Barack Hussein Obama. Also, too.
/Megan McFartwhistle.
Xenocrates
• “It reads like horsefeathers . . . like an undergraduate thesis,”
• “breathless rather than scientific”
• “cherry-picked evidence stretched far out of shape to support their theory,”
• “they don’t even attempt to paper over the enormous holes in their theory.”
funny, these are MY exact thoughts when reading the bilge produced by Ms. McArdle’s keyboard eructions….
NobodySpecial
@General Stuck: Maybe they heard that it’s a center right nation, and they’re afraid of pissing voters off?
Nah, can’t be it. Must be they’re upset that lefties made fun of their suits or something.
mr. whipple
Yup. I understand the need to be civil with people you work with, but she’s a freaking moron.
Comrade Jake
@mistermix:
Yeah, that made me LOL. One assumes McMegan has only made it to chapter 5, and apparently also not read the table of contents. She’s really quite the intellectual.
NonyNony
@jacy:
Why? She’s an endless source of humor because she’s so blissfully unaware of her own ignorance and so screechingly defensive of it at the same time. The only frustrating part is that people take “Jane Galt” seriously at all – though if she were widely acknowledged to be a corporate shill who writes whatever her masters pay her to write then she’d be slightly less fun to mock. But only slightly because she’d still insist on pointing at the turds she passes and asking to be called a genius for it.
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Let’s be fair here. She can comfortably blog about what it’s like to be born on third base and think she’s hit a triple all by herself without even the need of a pitcher. Just like any other overprivileged schmuck that lacks self awareness and was born into an upper middle class family. So she’s a completely replaceable cog at The Atlantic and we have to assume she’s kept around writing about stuff she knows nothing about because her bosses like what she writes.
Chew on that, and then think about how much ya wanna support The Atlantic.
Alwhite
I see no reason to ignore McGargle as long as she has a perch at an ‘respected’ publication. It would be one thing to ignore a total internet loser like Treason in defense of human bondage Yankee but if he ever got a gig at Atlantic then it is our duty to mock him endlessly.
Stillwater
McArdle paradigmatically instantiates an antiquated epistemological weltanschauung in which a priori ratiocination is presumed sufficient for descriptively accurate analyses of empirical subject matter.
Wait, what?
quaint irene
Ha, “Sex At Dawn.” Well, guess that’s better than dueling pistols.
Scuffletuffle
@steviez314: Where would you like your internets delivered?
Howlin Wolfe
@steviez314: FTW!
Scuffletuffle
@Matt M: Why, what’s wrong with it? … Oh, you mean…uh.
SRW1
Maybe McSuderman’s eyes are already straying and McMegan is just desperate to beat back the panic she feels rising in herself.
Howlin Wolfe
@cleek:
Because it’s entertaining to ridicule people like her. Totally mean, but I have to get my tribal hate out somewherez so I can think clearly when necessary. I dunno; it’s funny, too.
I also want to keep track of people like McArgle-bargle sort of like an indicator of how far the cultural decadence has progressed in this country. Did McA-b pen an utterly ridiculous piece? Check. Is she still enjoy her sinecure at the Atlantic? Nero still fiddling by the flames? Check.
Gex
It is always an interesting intellectual exercise to pull contrarian bullshit theories out of your ass to reinforce the status quo. Black people obviously have lower IQs than white people. And obviously we aren’t like bonobos because, well because. These people (sully, mcbargle) are the kinds of “reasonable” conservatives/libertarians who most impede progress in our understanding of how we work because the give preference to their hobby-horse theories molded by the past at the expense of what we are actually learning.
Punchy
Holy effin’ shit this is funneh. Because it’s sooooooooo wrong.
p.a.
“Hello, Atlantic Ombudsman?”… (crickets)
“Hello, Atlantic Editor-in-Chief?”… (crickets)
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”…
Chuck
I just hope that Sully has the good sense not to fire one up on the beach on this vacation.
Zandar
Clearly the only thing worse than McMath is McMath applied to the real world, aka McScience.
p.a.
It’s really not fucking funny. It’s not a major problem in the big picture of what’s going on in the world, but in its own small way by keeping this incompetent hack employed someone more deserving, who may add something positive to the public discourse, is being deprived of a public forum and what I assume is a pretty good living as a a writer.
El Cid
@NonyNony: She wasn’t just born into an upper middle class family; she was born to an enormously successful and well-connected father who got rich in part with New York construction products — arguably mob-connected (New York construction, shocking eh) — and off of government contracts.
Chad N Freude
@Stillwater:
Best sentence evah posted on the Internet. But it contains an error: There is no “a priori ratiocination” in McArdle’s commentary, but rather “a priori assumption without ratiocination”.
— The Drive-By Pedant
BattleCobra90000
@Comrade Javamanphil:
I’m ready for that blog.
Mnemosyne
@General Stuck:
The fact that the writer doesn’t even mention that the tax cuts expire automatically, so writing breathlessly about how Reid will somehow lose the vote that will “let” them expire is so wrong-headed that it makes him look like this guy?
The Bobs
@Punchy:
Punchy,
I’m pretty sure the author knows it is wrong. That is some grade A snark.
jacy
@Zandar:
McMegan wouldn’t recognize science even if it was covered in pink Himalayan sea salt and carrying a copy of The Fountainhead under its arm.
Dave Herman
You’re forgetting the principal logical foundations of objectivism: A is A. From that, it logically follows that libertarians are right about everything. Objective reality, you damned hippie!
gex
@Chuck: I wonder if he will put two and two together and notice his affluent, white maleness means he was treated differently by the system than those poor black men (whom Sully is convinced may just naturally be in that position because they are predisposed to have lower IQs).
Nah. Or else, how could he be a conservative?
gex
@gex: Although to be fair, his “getting special consideration” because the fine may “derail his immigration” is something the system is doing for him because the system unequally prevents him from becoming a citizen by marriage.
TomG
Once in a while I will read someone at The Atlantic besides Andrew Sullivan, but McArdle has never been someone I read daily. So far, I can’t see that I’m missing much.
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne: I can always count on you Mnem to figure stuff out.:)
BDeevDad
@mistermix: I love how McMegan tries to change the meaning of her words by insisting in her comments that the chapter is terrible and doesn’t count.
PeakVT
I’m amphibious.
The Marines need that guy. Somebody give them a call.
timb
@Alwhite: THIS +1
timb
@El Cid: And, she completely misses the relationship between government money and her father’s personal wealth. Thomas Frank’s book “the Wrecking Crew” is really necessary to understand how desperately stupid and dishonest conservatives and libertarians can be
Joey Maloney in paradise
I suspect the link to TFA sent some Juicers over there to post in comments because my goodness there certainly is some fine McArglebargle shredding and it really kind of sticks out among all the posts that are actually about the book.
Mark S.
I know I’m the twentieth person to bring it up, but it’s just perfect in so many ways. It’s the “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” for our generation.
timb
@Mnemosyne: I think the underlying issue is “can Reid win the vote to extend the tax cuts to the middle class when Republicans and “Republicans” (like Bayh, curse his evil soul) will just refuse to pass anything. In doing so, they hope to hold the rest of us hostage, so Harry will cave.
Does anyone really doubt he will?
burnspbesq
@jacy:
Priceless. You win the toobz for today.
Randy P
@BDeevDad: Thanks for scrolling through the comments. I wouldn’t have the patience. Your link also led me, a few comments down, to the following exchange with Ms. M, where she doubles down on “they aren’t like us because they just aren’t!”
Comment:
Response:
McFrank
Also, if you make unreasonable criticism of a book by a psychologist, he will call you out:
chester
@LarsThorwald: i’m on board, though i prefer it comma-less.
i mean come on.
J.W. Hamner
I have an amateur interest in what primates can tell us about ouselves (hence the name of my blog: Chimpanzee Tea Party), so I guess I can at least thank her for alerting me to this book’s existence through her ignorant ranting… sound like an interesting read.
ed
Would you fix the damn quote already? It was Chris Washburn, not Charles Shackleford, who said that.
Apologies for picking nits.
stormhit
This comes dangerous close to defending her- which I don’t want to do- but Evo Psych is almost universally bullshit. New ramblings in the “field” don’t typically really deserve a fully fleshed out intellectual takedown, those have been done already. Not that she would be capable of doing that even if she wanted to, of course.
Brachiator
@Randy P:
RE: Thanks for scrolling through the comments. I wouldn’t have the patience. Your link also led me, a few comments down, to the following exchange with Ms. M, where she doubles down on “they aren’t like us because they just aren’t!”
Holy Mother of Darwin, this woman is all kinds of stupid. There are all kinds of easily explainable, scientific, reasons why caution should be used when trying to compare humans and bonobos, but McMegan is not remotely aware of any of them. For example, although some people like to talk about how humans and bonobos are nearly identical genetically, humans and chimps split from the common ancestor about 7 million years ago, while current studies suggest that bonobos split from chimps less than 1 million years ago. This difference in lineage may be more important than mere percentage of DNA might suggest. Then there are issues of bonobo morphology, which may influence behavior.
But the more Megan puts out junk, the more one wonders why somebody just doesn’t pull the plug on her nonsense. She is just hopeless.
frankdawg
@burnspbesq:
I always felt whacking upper-middle-class-twit-of-the-year winners was its own candy.
J.W. Hamner
From the critique:
Ha! Libertarians luuuuuuuuurv to compare us to chimps… why? Because chimps occasionally make war on other groups. Stronger chimps will take things from weaker members of their own group. They have a pretty strict social hierarchy. Basically, chimps can be used (ignorantly) to justify Social Darwinism. So great, an evolutionary expanation as to why “I got mine, so f-u!”
So what happens when you bring up bonobos? They flip out.
Paris
McMegan looks like the girl who smelled bad that I knew in middle school.
arguingwithsignposts
I’ll just add to the “Why do we keep talking about McMegan” thinking and say that her pious, ill-informed glibertarianism is heard quite frequently on APM’s “Marketplace,” along with that hack David Frum.
She wouldn’t be spreading her bullshit on NPR stations if it weren’t for her gig at the Atlantic. So anything that can be done to relentlessly pound home the fact that she is a hack who knows next to nothing about what she’s talking about is for the good of the order.
Of course, it’s never done a damned bit of good with any of the other hacks who keep pumping out their drivel (Bobo, Chunky Bobo, The Mustache of Understanding, Kraphammer, etc.), so …
J.W. Hamner
@stormhit:
When compared to real science or regular psych? I’ll agree with the former but not the latter.
aimai
Well, but McMegan’s only attacking one version of evo psych with another–the evo psych of megan’s feelings. Her argument boils down to “me and a bunch of other people I claim to know are sexually jealous all the time so…everyone else must always have been too.”
I’m permanently banned over there so couldn’t post my mini rebuttal of one of her fakier fake points:
Megan, you know there are people out there reading your stuff (heaven knows why) who are actual anthropologists, sociologists, and even archaeologists and historians. You may be the english department’s favorite economist, and the econ department’s favorite english major, but to the rest of us you are just astonishingly and almost immorally badly educated. Uh, no, “hunter gatherer tribes” aren’t “frequently extremely violent” and we, of course, don’t know much about the original early hunter gatherer humans. The ones you (may) be talking about, if you aren’t simply making things up, are groups of people who have been forced to the margins economically and socially through the destruction of their habitat and ecology and through incursions by the modern world. We can’t say whether original human hunter gatherer societies were violent or not violent. And we certainly can’t say much about the social and sexual arrangements.
But if people were giving out points for hysterical, undergrad level attempts to pretend to some knowledge you’d definitely get some for matrilineage is not equal to matriarchy. But no one is giving out those points except you.
aimai
Brachiator
@J.W. Hamner:
But of course, Social Darwinism ain’t science, just an abuse of misunderstood scientific principles to justify a philosophical bent. Similarly, “survival of the fittest” doesn’t mean survival of the strongest. If you are a weak parasite and pass your genes along to the next generation, you have won the Evolution Lotto.
Chimps have a hierarchy, orangutans are solitary, gorillas have social groups in which males have harems. Variety and diversity. But then again, libertarians and fundamentalists have to avoid science, because it can never offer support for their narrow social visions.
Howlin Wolfe
@NobodySpecial: Maybe you’re nobody special because of your mediocre intellect that can’t get off a talking point: “We’re a center-right nation! How do I know? er, uh, some pundit or other said so! Poll? I don’t need a stinkin’ poll! We’re a center-right nation!”
J.W. Hamner
@Brachiator:
Made worse by believing that an understanding where our behaviors and tendencies came from can provide a justification for whatever it is they’re advocating.
I’ve not read the book McCardle is furious about, so it’s possible they are advocating polyamory on a misguided evolutionary basis, but I suspect it’s more likely they feel that studying bonobos informs our understanding of our own sexual proclivities and problems.
The behavior of monkeys can also be very informative. There are obvious reasons people focus on bonobos and chimps, but I’d agree that too often people forget there are other primates.
Remember November
@neill: Splitter!
gene108
@ed:
It was Shackleford. My memory escapes me about after what game he said it, but it was definitely Shackleford. Washburn wasn’t that much of a chatty-kathy, though he has had his own share of problems.
Kiril
I’m sure there are editors at The Atlantic who think that whatever we think of McArdle and Goldberg, we all still know the long-form articles are still top-rate pieces of journalism.
Just as I’m sure the news editors at the WaPo think it doesn’t matter what’s on the opinion page because the news section is separate.
NobodySpecial
@Howlin Wolfe: Your snark detector, it needs a-fixin’.
DougJ
@Mark S.:
Well said.
Warren Terra
@Kiril:
The long-form articles may often still be good (though it’s hardly consistent of late) but the short-form pieces and the literature section are so consistently awful, and their choices in editorial appointments and bloggers mostly so reprehensible, that I refused to renew my subscription, and I can’t be the only one. I still like James Fallows, and though he’s not my cup of tea I’ve got nothing against Ta-Nehisi Coates, but the rest of those people shouldn’t be allowed to copy-edit a once-great magazine, let alone drive it into the ground. And I include Sullivan in that bill of particulars, for all that he’s a better writer than the rest of them and I agree with the general drift of his opinions reasonably often: his is the willfully ignorant narcissism McMegan seeks to ape, slightly redeemed by humane impulses that she has deliberately crushed within herself.
Mark S.
@DougJ:
Aw thanks!
Turbulence
@aimai:
You got banned at the Atlantic? That is awesome. Can you share with us what you said that lead to a banning?
That really blows me away…you’re not one I would expect anyone to ban.
maus
I wonder if she’s using the argument because she read Dan Savage’s obsessive tongue-baths of the book on human sexuality and bonobos, and how we should all be polygamous or at the very least with open-relationships.
maus
I mean, I like some of his relationship advice, but “sexology” can get way into pseudoscientific areas, especially the generalizations.
Anoniminous
@Stillwater:
I hate to say this …
I understood that.
:-)
Moreover … you’re right.
(LOL)
Anoniminous
@stormhit:
On the face of it genetic inheritance has some affect/effect on a person’s psychology. The questions are what, how much, O Really?, & so on. And that’s not surprising considering how recently the full genetic code was cracked.
I’ve got no bonobo in this clusterfuck but I do think we should (a) cut them some slack while they try and get their feet under them (b) not take reported “results” too seriously until ditto, too. Also.
Manidest
On the advice of a friend I have stopped acknowledging the existence of McMegan. I nearly had an aneurysm last time she was a guest on Marketplace. This led to a discussion over beverages that ended ended with “Why do you even bother listening to what this person has to say”. I realized I was more bothered that she existed. Not her as a person, but her place in society, how she ended up where she is now…perfect reminder that whatever a meritocracy is, we are the opposite of that.
Anyway, just easier to pretend she doesn’t exist.
HyperIon
@Randy P quoted McArdle saying:
This is a quintessential statement of A = A.
Or maybe: If A = B, then A = B.
Not really that profound, eh?
John Bird
Can I thank you once again for not going easy on Andrew Sullivan? I mean, it’s great that the guy who was calling war opponents fifth columnists in 2002 no longer believes that the Iraq war was “the conservative thing to do”, but he doesn’t seem any more motivated to base his opinions on facts now than he did then. He seems utterly driven by whim, by his fan base, and completely untrustworthy.
ed
@gene108:
It was Shackleford. My memory escapes me about after what game he said it, but it was definitely Shackleford. Washburn wasn’t that much of a chatty-kathy, though he has had his own share of problems.
Teh Googles agrees. Fuck. My bad.
Phoebe
Somebody just got married. Somebody who is insecure and defensive and rigid. End of story.
GrammyPat
” “Left hand, right hand, it doesn’t matter. I’m amphibious.” – Basketball player Charles Shackleford.” …..
“Left Hand, Right Hand, it doesn’t matter….I’m ambi-jack-trious.” – Anon. (horny) construction worker (circa 1984)