This scathing exposé of Mr. McArdle is a little more mean-spirited than I usually like to be, but it brightened my morning, e.g.:
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.
A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.
When we show up, we win.
Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.
It’s the corruption, stupid.
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.
Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.
Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.
Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.
DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.
If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!
We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.
… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop
“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.
“I was told there would be no fact checking.”
It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.
Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.
We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.
The worst democrat is better than the best republican.
Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.
There is no right way to do the wrong thing.
You are here: Home / Look what we did to the neighborhood
Alex S.
I liked Plastic Beach. Empire Ants is my favorite track.
mistermix
The big revelation is that he’s short. I just assumed he was a fucking hipster.
Capri Sun-Bagger
Inside baseball. Your inner-Villager is showing his fangs.
dmsilev
Not The Onion: Arpaio Boasts: I Gave Sarah Palin Pink Underwear!.
I predict starbursts across the right-wing blogosphere.
dms
Seitz
It really bothers me that he likes Deerhunter, but transcending space-time? C’mon, man. That said, their new album is one of my three or favorites of the year, and their Chicago show last Friday was pretty epic.
Also, I’m not sure I know anyone who enjoys the entirety of Astro Coast. It’s got some really good songs, and a few songs that were pretty obviously done by a young band making its first record.
Punchy
Your inside-baseball schtick is showing again. Have not a clue who this guy is/was.
cleek
whoosh….
right over mah pointy lil head
Bella Q
Can you imagine being Mr. McMegan, on purpose?
Ash Can
@dmsilev: If I were to think of that story before each meal, the pounds would just drop off of me.
David Fud
This “hipster” thing seems to be gaining traction everywhere as the “poser” of the 2010s, except retro-fashionable instead of pink hair.
Hmmm. I must be missing something. I’m not sure what it is that makes folks writhe with contempt for those who try desperately to be what they are not. The desperation seems punishment enough by itself, but maybe the extra fuel (like the linked web site) is a morale booster for the anti-hipster crowd?
Steve
@Punchy: We should have a softball game between the commentors who are like “DougJ always blogs about the same stupid people!” and the commentors who are like “DougJ blogs about people I’ve never heard of!”
JGabriel
@David Fud: I don’t get the anti-hipster thing, either. It seems very red-state like.
To the extent that I used to know all the latest bands, I’m sure I was a hipster once too. As, given his post titles, DougJ must have been also. And Cole, IIRC, has owned up to being a college alt-radio DJ in the mid-80’s (me, too!).
I sense a lot of projection going on here…
Anyway, I always thought wanting to expand and move beyond the horizons of local tv and radio, and share it with others, was one of the aspirational hallmarks of liberals, lefties, and open-mindedness in general. Seems kind of mean-spirited to mock the guy for that, an apparently human quality, instead of for him being a shallow glibertarian with an Oedipal complex.
.
John Cole
@Seitz: I thought he meant the movie and couldn’t figure out what the hell he meant.
some other guy
OMG! He wears clothes and listens to music that I disapprove of! What a LOOOSER. lolz
When did politics on the internet turn into this high school drama bullshit? Grow up.
Steve
@JGabriel: Yeah, I liked the Pixies in college, but then I GREW UP and… oh wait, I still like the Pixies. Well anyway, that was back when alternative meant something.
SoVeryConfused
Think I’ll stick with Vivaldi. Hip in 1740 just sounds so much better to me.
Sentient Puddle
@David Fud: Because one of the defining characteristics of a hipster is how unbelievably smug they are about the whole schtick. If you spend ten minutes listening to a hipster and don’t feel the uncontrollable urge to punch them in the face, they’re doing it wrong.
Violet
@John Cole:
Me too.
@mistermix:
Isn’t McMegan tall?
@some other guy:
When has it not been high school drama bullshit?
Gin & Tonic
@Steve:
These aren’t necessarily different.
matoko_chan
Suderman is such a poseur.
He tried to pretend he lissened to screamo in his youth at TAS, but ….AMG…..the retard never heard of Sonny Moores band FFTL? (From First To Last)
they fucking defined screamo.
He’s another MPB republican assclown that is really just a grey in a young person suit so crude you can see the zipper from a half mile off…….like O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Audra Shay– Shay is the president of the “Young” Republicans and shez 39.
wat i say?
you cant get to Cooltown on the conservative express. it only goes to Crazytown anymore.
Seitz
@John Cole:
I’m sure they get that a lot. Their new album is called “Halcyon Digest”. The two best tracks are Revival and Desire Lines. Worth a quick listen.
matoko_chan
@David Fud: hipsters are ‘conservatives’ trying to pretend they are not interior 40somethings with exterior Male Pattern Baldness.
TooManyJens
@Sentient Puddle: Roughly this, yeah. It’s like the rage I feel when I see Christine O’Donnell smirking about how she totally kicked Chris Coons’ ass on that First Amendment thing. Only hipster fashion doesn’t actually matter, so it’s not so much rage as annoyance.
matoko_chan
@Violet:
Highschool never ends.
yeah..it will be better.
riiiiight.
matoko_chan
@some other guy: “hipsterism” is the pathetic conservative attempt to capture coolth and the youth demographic. All male conservatives under 35 are like Douthat and Suderman and O’Keefe…puds with MPB and double chins or no chins.
Epic Fail.
they aint cool
Sentient Puddle
@TooManyJens: And really, it’s that reason that makes me hate them all the more. I mean, it’s one thing to be smug about politics…at the very least, that stuff matters. But hipsters seemingly put all their effort into trying to project that they are cooler than me. Good for fucking you.
This thread needs more Gorillaz. So, the aforementioned Empire Ants. Unsurprisingly, Suderman is wrong.
JGabriel
@Steve:
Bah, humbug. Just because we’re old farts now doesn’t mean we have to disrespect the kidz.
I’ve faded in and out of paying attention to the scene over the years. For instance, 87-92 I wasn’t listening to new stuff a lot, and actually missed out on hearing the Pixies when they were still new. Then I caught up again 93-05, but for the last five years not so much, and I know I’ve missed out a bit on some pretty great bands like TV on the Radio, Deerhunter, Animal Collective, et. al.
There’s always good stuff coming out. We’re just not listening.
.
John Cole
I’m reasonably sure when DougJ wrote “scathing expose” it was sarcasm and he realizes this was HS bullshit. C’mon folks. How long do you have to read someone before you understand them?
Morbo
“Hipster” has pretty well run its course and by now is almost devoid of any useful meaning. There are still people around for which the label applies effectively Suderman, these idiots, but more generally it’s being slapped on anyone too young to collect social security doing something which the labeler disapproves of.
This reminds me… I need to pick up a 30bomb of PBR tonight.
vg
@Punchy:
Calling it “inside baseball” makes it sound like Doug’s on the inside of something. It’s more like a D-list blogger letting on status he doesn’t have.
Also interesting: Isn’t Doug in his 50s or sth? What’s this guy doing obsessing on a blog about some 30-something female blogger? Little bit creepy, bud. And yes, Megan McArdle is a bad blogger who has gained an undue level of notoriety. But so is DougJ. It’s not like the reader is going to forget that just because he goes on and on about McArdle and McArdle-related subjects.
ricky
So I am confused. When someone combines pillows and cardboard boxes, am I supposed to envision the McArdle family trying to gentrify homeless habitat? Where do I express guilt for laying my sleepy head on wads of newspaper
all these years?
geg6
Wow. Talk about a thread full of people with no sense of humor. And jeebus, when you can’t make fun of McSuderman and his idiot wife, what small pleasures can possibly be left in life?
But then, lately, there’s been a lot of that around here. Too many emo lefties showing up here lately for my taste. I think they should all go pound some pink Peruvian salt.
ricky
@John Cole:
I’ve read you long enough to understand you are gloating over the zebras blowing the fat quaterback’s fumble that handed the Steelers an undeserved win.
Face
But what’s Sullivan got to say about the new Gorillaz album?
matoko_chan
@vg: wallah…..mcsuderman is a poseur that draws a paycheck from Freedom Works.
hes a teabagger trying VERY HARD to pretend there is youth demographic within the tea party.
DougJ is a snarkster, not a poseur or a “hipster”.
take your butthurt back to HotAir if you dont dig DougJ.
kth
Part of the joke is that Suderman is trying very hard to be a hipster, and the other part is that he is not succeeding. The evidence for the latter is that, though I only listen to Patsy Cline and Deep Purple, I have (mainly through osmosis) heard of most of the bands he cites.
Plus the pictures; sweet Jesus only a tool would allow himself to be photographed looking like that.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@kth:
Thank you for explaining this, apparently some explanation was needed for some readers.
DFH no.6
I’m a 55 year-old white dude with thinning hair long gone white who, with my management job and Norman Rockwell family life, easily “passes” in my Snobsdale, AZ neighborhood (I’ve even been told, FSM help me, that I look at least somewhat like McCain).
I’m supposed to be into “geezer” rock, I suppose, but I’m not (some old stuff still holds up, but not a whole lot). I much prefer new bands, like those mentioned by Mr. McCardle: Surfer Blood, Deerhunter, Gorillaz. And many more besides. There’s a great variety today, and this is the best time for contemporary music, IMHO, since I’ve been listening (going back to the 60s).
I’ve seen quite a few in concert, both locally and at Coachella (Deerhunter, and especially Gorillaz, were fantastic there this year). Gonna be at the Gorillaz concert here in Phoenix tomorrow, and will be at the Deerhunter concert in Tempe in November. There are some cool small venues in these parts where just this year I’ve caught a lot of new bands, like St. Vincent, Sleigh Bells, Ra Ra Riot, Dungen, Besnard Lakes, Holy Fuck, Land of Talk, etc
Gorillaz has been a favorite from the start (Damon Albarn is a rare musical talent), and I’m with Alex S. back at the beginning: Empire Ants is my favorite, too, on Plastic Beach, just a beautiful tune (love the whole album).
Deerhunter is sometimes called “shoegaze” or “noise pop” music (there’s a hundred different genres now, apparently) and I find them pretty trippy, but “transcending space-time”? That’s just embarrassing.
And I’m nobody’s idea of a “hipster”. Never have been. Unless liking the new music makes you one, which is stupid.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@DFH no.6:
But how do you feel about Ayn Rand?
NobodySpecial
Oh noz, another white guy caught trying too hard. Alert the fainting couches!
Catsy
@JGabriel:
This. I am sick and fucking tired of the word “hipster”. From the context in which it is almost invariably used, it seems to be nothing but shorthand for “an older person who fails to conform to the stereotype of their age group”, or “older guy who didn’t stop liking cool stuff just because he got old”.
Seriously, what the fuck? I’m almost 40, I still wear my hair long, still like video games, listen to some recent bands along with my 80’s and 90’s metal, enjoy pop culture, dress more or less like I did when I was in my 20’s and can still relate to people that age. My original sin seems to boil down to the fact that I didn’t get “old” like I was supposed to. Sorry to spoil your stereotype, asshole.
Boots Day
I couldn’t care less about his taste in music, but the idea that someone would feel the need to post on Twitter that he doesn’t have much of an opinion about something strikes me as ridiculously egotistic. Are there people out there dying to hear about what Peter Suderman is indifferent to?
catclub
@SoVeryConfused:
1740! I’m not so sure. Bach had not yet written the Goldberg Variations or the Art of Fugue. (Check out the Villa Goldberg
trailer on YouTube for hip.)
How about we compromise on 1750?
NobodySpecial
@Catsy:
Except for the long hair which I never had and ‘enjoying pop culture’ cuz I find most of it useless, you could be my twin.
Plus people love my homemade T-shirt with the Black Mage throwing a fireball while shouting “Hadoken”.
Kicked in the Ding Ding
@Catsy: In my experience it exclusively refers to 20-somethings (or maybe early 30s) unless it’s qualified thusly: “aging hipster”.
brantl
@vg: Blow me. Blow Dougj, too, for that matter.
freelancer
DougJ is just too cool for school, people.
I’ve never heard of Deerhunter (and I listen to a lot of varied indie), but the fact that he lauds Pitchfork is enough for me right there. Those pukes and their inimitably pretentious reviews are intolerable.
Sentient Puddle
@Catsy:
Uh…I don’t think that’s anywhere close to anybody’s profile of what a hipster is.
Wikipedia:
The big emphasis is on the “non-mainstream” part. Hipsters crank that shit up to 11, embodying that “I liked them until they sold out” attitude.
I don’t know what anyone else is accusing you of being (or really, what’s wrong with it), but you certainly aren’t a hipster.
Catsy
@Sentient Puddle:
I’m not sure who your mythical “anybody” is here, but my description of what it is shorthand for is pretty much spot-on when it comes to how the term has actually been used in my direct experience.
Which is all well and good, and I’ve heard that usage as well, but the usage of the term in the way I described it is very common and becoming increasingly so. It’s a slang term, and a pejorative one at that–it doesn’t have an official, authoritative definition. And that’s part of the problem here.
Wikipedia is really not a good reference for tracking slang.
Glad to hear it. Still sick of the term.
Church Lady
Funny, the pictures of Suderman are kind of what I imagined you must look like. Costumes and all.
Capri Sun-Bagger
Everybody needs someoneto hate, I guess.
And DougJ, it is precisely inside baseball, which is kinda sad, because when you aren’t caught up in the Cool Kid Chronicles, you occasionally have something worthwhile to say.
DFH no.6
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
How do I feel about Ayn Rand?
I, of course, despise Ayn Rand, as anyone with the least sense of care and concern for their fellow man would. Not everyone in AZ is a misogynistic bigoted teabagger. Just most of us, unfortunately.
Reading Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead turned my brother-in-law (who I went to high school with) from a gentle-souled anti-Viet Nam war protestor into a full-fledged rightwing libertarian asshole.
Maybe he was always going to end up that way, but that’s not the way I knew him pre-Rand.
trollhattan
In which Chait apologizes to McMegan for upsetting her sense of blogging propriety.
tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/78636/sincere-apology-megan-mcardle
Judas Escargot
@trollhattan:
I love how we now live in a world where the Right can bluster about “second amendment remedies” and keeping Democrats around as neutered animals… but an earthy metaphor like Chait’s? Nope, beyond the pale. Mustn’t offend the fee-fees.
From McMegans’ vapors:
But why stop with curb-stomping? Wouldn’t it be fun to pile ten-thousand gleaming skulls of supply-siders outside the Heritage Offices?
Why yes, actually. Yes, it would. But whose fault is that?
Most of us never asked to be angry. But after 30+ years of supply-siders shitting in our collective mouths and telling us it’s the yummiest candy on Earth, you’d have to be either an idiot or a dog to not feel some degree of anger at this point.
HyperIon
@cleek:
Moi aussi.
WTF?
and yes, Capri, I guess this IS about being one of the cool kids. remember, some guys never grow up. our DougJ may belong to that group.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@trollhattan:
Sorry to see he wussed out.
Nerull
@DFH no.6:
All those bands are popular, which means that, to a hipster, all those bands suck. Hipsters are not obsessed with listening to new bands, they’re obsessed with projecting the image that they’re too good for anything popular. If you’ve heard of it, it’s too mainstream.
Nerull
@Catsy:
…older? Huh? The majority of ‘hipsters’ are low 20-somethings, though there are plenty of older ones too. It’s got nothing to do with age groups.
It’s about smug superiority, being ‘different’ by being like everyone else. It’s a conformal non-conformism. College hipster fastion consists of drinking PBR, riding fixed gear bikes, wearing tight women’s pants, and the most hideous shirt and jacket you can find. All in the name of being ironic. It is all very carefully designed to look like they don’t care.
They will usually deny listening to any bands whoever they are talking to has actually heard of, regardless of what they actually listen to, because if someone has heard of it, it’s too mainstream.
Anton Sirius
@Nerull:
Q: How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: It’s a really obscure number. You probably haven’t heard of it.
catclub
@Sentient Puddle:
quoted by sentient: “I’m almost 40, I still wear my hair long, still like video games, listen to some recent bands along with my 80’s and 90’s metal, enjoy pop culture, dress more or less like I did when I was in my 20’s and can still relate to people that age.”
And still live in my mom’s basement.
Dan S.
unhappyhipsters.com/
ricky
@Dan S.:
I was like so totally into that site long before you linked to it.
Read it alone. In the stones. I placed. Where the grass was.
Once.
ron
yeah, helmet is fugazi with “west coast” flannel.
idiot.