by Blue | Procrustean economics major and so-called "libertarian" Megan McArdle has attracted more than her usual heaping helping of well-deserved loathing and contumely. I have collected a few of them here for posterity.
Gavin M., having a go both at McArdle and Instaprat, who thought her worth quoting:
Let’s look....at what she just tried to say.
The more publicly [George W. Bush] is seen to coordinate with the Obama team, the more reassuring it will be to markets.
In the time it took you to remember Bush’s approval and disapproval ratings, and to form the thought that ‘markets’ are widely supposed to be smarter than the bottom 25% of Americans, such as for instance Jersey guidos with hair mousse and four-finger rings, blank-eyed women wandering angrily through dollar stores, people who cut you off in traffic and shout incomprehensible expletives that sound like “Gawaaa!”, people who equal ass, bonk-headed yar-yar dingbrains, those who sit on their porches with earthenware jugs and mail-order guitars, singing “‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” as the 20th Century struggles to free itself from the possum trap it walked into as it tried to cross their property, and people who listen to Coheed and Cambria — in that mere span of time, Glenn Reynolds woke up, walked the dog, had breakfast, turned on the computer, had another cup of coffee, sat down, checked his RSS feeds, went “Say, that’s a good point,” and quoted McArdle’s post nearly in full.(Sadly, No!)
And she really outdid herself with her little pre-Christmas post on parents who spend too much money on toys for their chirren that they can't afford while gabbling excitedly, as she is wont to do, about the extra-supercalifragilistic features of her own new high-tech toys in between complaining that people at the Apple Store actually had the gall to humiliate her by checking her credit.
TBogg, who collected these goodies, remarks:
Now who wants some iPhone packaging to play with? You can draw a face on it, pretend it's a sad bitter puppet and then both of you can go down to FAO Schwarz on Fifth and stare through the window together for a Christmas memory that will last a lifetime...
Susan of Texas remarks of McGrinchy's holiday spirit.
McArdle has a sidebar item called "Gadget of the Week." (Of course she doesn't update it because that would take effort, but never mind.) The gadget for the last few months is a $500 TIVO.
Megan also recently bought an IPhone and a Mini Cooper....Is it worth spending over $500 on a Tivo? I'm sorry to report that it is.... They've also added new features that prove surprisingly useful, such as the ability to download movies on a whim from Amazon's Unbox service. I'd give up my dishwasher before I'd part with this.
I find Megan---who compared to me is young---callow and self-regarding, but in a way that suggests she simply hasn't grown up enough to realize how repugnant she sounds when she starts holding forth about the rules that apply to the "little people."
The thing is, I agree that something good will come out of the economic crisis if it stops people piling up consumer goods and if it ends with them teaching their children some values other than acquisition of stuff. But the people who need to stop their reckless consumerism include not only the feckless poor who have to overcharge their credit cards to buy toys for their tots, but people such as Megan McArdle, who artlessly boasts of her acquisitions without thinking just how horrible and greedy it makes her sound.
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