There are those who say that I spend too much time criticizing Megan McArdle and baiting others into defending her. To them, I say:
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Michelle Obama vacationing in Spain; they have the money, so why not? But I agree with Doug Mataconis that, while there’s nothing actually wrong with it, it’s really quite unbelievably politically stupid. When we’re in the middle of the worst recession in living memory, it’s not a good idea to take a luxury vacation that most of your countrymen could never possibly afford in the best of times, at considerable taxpayer expense for the security, in a foreign country.
I know that it’s wrong when foul-mouthed, vituperative bloggers substitute hot profanity for cool reason, but I’d like to ask everyone, including the other front-pagers here: if you were the business and economics editor of Atlantic, would you devote blog posts to analyzing Michelle Obama’s vacation habits?