"Megan McArdle? Really?"

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• Brian says:

  August 28, 2009 at 11:41 pm

  If I’m not mis­taken, it was on TCM tonight. One of my favor­ite movies, and this time around I noticed how quietly obser­v­ant Minnelli is of char­ac­ter beha­vi­or in those open­ing scenes; when I think of the film, I always remem­ber the big set-pieces at the end, but the whole movie is full of lovely little ges­tures (the way Sinatra tilts his head or draws out a “Yeaaahh” like it’s a note in a song; the way Shirley Maclaine wakes up in the bus seat at the begin­ning) that tell us everything we need to know about the characters.

• Dan Coyle says:

  August 29, 2009 at 1:00 am

  Those who can, do. Those who can­’t, blog for the Atlantic Monthly.

• Discman says:

  August 29, 2009 at 9:55 am

  Megan is one of the best things goin’ at the Atlantic. I’m not sure why you’re pick­ing on her. How about Andrew “Sarah-Palin-Is-Not-The-Mother-Of-Trig” Sullivan? He’s often insight­ful and chal­lenges my own pre­con­cep­tions of cer­tain mat­ters, but if ever there were a fir­ing offense, it was his lead­ing of the charge into the Palin “scan­dal.” All of his sub­sequent, on-target posts about Palin were dis­cred­ited by his zeal­ous pur­suit of a fake story – and his refus­al to apo­lo­gize. Instead, he doubled down on his journ­al­ist­ic “right” to raise such an alleg­a­tion. Disgraceful.
  But, yeah, Megan McCardle. Now THERE’S a problem!

• Central Square Indian says:

  August 29, 2009 at 11:18 am

  Megan was on Tom Ashbrook’s On Point yes­ter­day (Jane Clayson was filling in, I think) on NPR. I was quite dis­ap­poin­ted in her naughty par­tis­an lying habit. Naughty naughty!

• The Siren says:

  August 29, 2009 at 12:26 pm

  What a won­der­ful screen cap.
  McArdle is a near-perfect example of the market-worship that begins with the premise, “I worked damn hard to get the par­ents I got.”

• Glenn Kenny says:

  August 29, 2009 at 1:42 pm

  @ Discman: Yeah, Sullivan’s a tool. And he’s been hack­ing away long enough now that he’s prac­tic­ally a ven­er­able one. But McArdle really is the bot­tom of the bar­rel. As Charles Pierce puts it, “she’s the fresh­man philo­sophy major that every­body avoids in the bar, even at clos­ing time.” And as Doghouse Riley fol­lows up: “And–again–she’s thirty-six years old. The first time I saw that i thought some­body was hav­ing a leg-pull, and I will nev­er, ever get over it. And as obnox­ious as the woman is, who­ever gives her a nation­al for­um is the mor­al equi­val­ent of a tor­turer of oth­er people’s pets.”
  Relevant link: http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2009_08_23_archive.html#8815585879444867792

• Vadim says:

  August 29, 2009 at 2:11 pm

  This reminds me that I finally had the chance to see part of “The Dean Martin Show” last night for the first time, and there was Dean’s good buddy Frank as his guest. Their plainly drunk­en cam­erader­ie was­n’t that far off from this movie, honestly.

• preston says:

  August 29, 2009 at 6:55 pm

  “The Dean Martin Show” ruled! And evid­ently Dean only ‘played’ drunk (like myself.….) But the tone of that show is so enjoy­able, and so un-PC that I doubt we’ll see the likes of it again on a nation­al TV plat­form, which is OK because I’m not drunk, I’m not.

• karen marie says:

  August 30, 2009 at 12:50 pm

  After listen­ing to WBUR daily for 20 years I had to give it up in 2005. Tom Ashbrook makes my ears bleed. Megan McArdle being booked as a guest does­n’t sur­prise me. I am ever so grate­ful that I was­n’t in my car that day as my listen­ing options are lim­ited and I very likely would have tuned in and ended up in an accident.

• Steve says:

  August 30, 2009 at 2:26 pm

  The Trig “story” was pretty low and a dis­trac­tion from the real prob­lems with Palin. I think it was Rod Dreher who said that Sullivan is unread­able dur­ing an elec­tion cycle; under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, he’s a must-read.
  However, his work on tor­ture is abso­lutely top-notch and an essen­tial con­tri­bu­tion to this tor­ture “debate.” (Quotations because it is unfathom­able to me that there is a debate about tor­ture going on in America.)

• tc says:

  August 30, 2009 at 3:38 pm

  To be fair, AS was also a must-read dur­ing the foiled Iran upris­ing. Level-headed he was­n’t, but only Nico Pitney had more up-to-date info about what was hap­pen­ing. And I bet that Sullivan, unlike Pitney, would­n’t have let him­self be used by the White House to ask a pre­cooked ques­tion at a press conf – a sin no mat­ter who’s President, some­thing Pitney still does­n’t seem to have grasped.
  As for McCardle, would you believe I’d man­aged to stay ignor­ant until now of the fact that we share the plan­et? Took my first look this morn­ing, and yuggh.

• tc says:

  August 30, 2009 at 4:26 pm

  An ignor­ance I promptly made mani­fest by mis­spelling Whatsername’s name. May it nev­er darken my key­board again.

• jim emerson says:

  August 31, 2009 at 2:59 pm

  Oh dear. I’d heard vague rum­blings about McArdle but, like tc, nev­er actu­ally tried to read her until moments ago. Won’t be doing THAT again.
  As for AS: Sometimes he’s slow to catch on – as with the inva­sion of Iraq (he thought it was a good idea, but it took him a while to real­ize it was the fantasy war in HIS head that he thought was noble and good and had a chance of suc­cess, not the actu­al thing that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion was doing in the real world). Same with Palin. He even­tu­ally came to under­stand his mis­take: He was actu­ally believ­ing Palin’s own story about going into labor in Texas and fly­ing back to Alaska to have her baby. That’s where all the ques­tions about Trig’s birth came from. But once you acknow­ledge that she’s a patho­lo­gic­al liar and that this story prob­ably nev­er happened in the first place (but was presen­ted to the pub­lic with the inten­tion of mak­ing her look “tough” and strong-willed, rather than reck­less and irre­spons­ible), you real­ize that all the oth­er incon­sist­en­cies don’t neces­sar­ily point to some kind of con­spir­acy. They just aren’t con­sist­ent with this par­tic­u­lar lie.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  August 31, 2009 at 3:53 pm

  I rather feel bad that in mak­ing my little joke I’ve exposed the McArdle infec­tion to folks who might not have oth­er­wise come in con­tact with it!

• Christian says:

  August 31, 2009 at 4:48 pm

  AS is cer­tainly a needed force in “con­ser­vat­ism” but so much of what guides Sullivan is a need to believe in not gov­ern­ment, but fig­ure­heads, like the mar­ket, Tories, Reagan and reli­gion. His tor­ture report­age is unas­sail­able, but the tech-wonk in him acts as if every ad or new gad­get or even blog­ging is bet­ter than reality…

• Discman says:

  September 1, 2009 at 1:07 pm

  My main com­plaint as of late about the Atlantic is its back page. Used to be Barbara Wallraff’s “Word Play” column, but it’s been turned over to Jeffrey Goldberg. I enjoyed Goldberg’s piece on “Inglourious Basterds” in the most recent issue and read his blog some­times, but that back-page column is a waste – not funny, not mem­or­able, just filler.
  I remem­ber a few years back, when the Atlantic ditched its pub­lic­a­tion of a short story in each issue, claim­ing its prin­ted pages were valu­able “real estate” that needed to be pre­served for its not­able long-form journ­al­ism. And now we have that Goldberg page. Really.