Project S.H.A.M.E. on Megan McArdle…
Angry Bear has had a history of disagreement with Megan McArdle via her Atlantic magazine posts (starting in 2007), at one point being called Mike and his merry madmen in print by Megan McArdle (in exasperation?). Still. the madmen included Mike, Dan Crawford, Spencer England, Ken Houghton, Robert Waldmann, and other notables brought in to help. I will have a history up later when I can sort them out.
It is with feeling some real vindication publicly when I saw Yves Smith post an entire column from Project Shame on Megan McArdle well worth reading. It begins:
Megan McArdle is a Koch-trained conservative activist working as a business journalist and pundit. She earned her MBA from the University of Chicago, received journalism training at the Kochs’ flagship libertarian think-tank, the Institute for Humane Studies, and has used her position at The Atlantic and, most recently, Newsweek/The Daily Beast, to run cover for and promote Koch interests and the Republican Party agenda. In early 2009, a GOP outfit backed by the Kochs hailed McArdle for her “leadership role in … re-branding the Republican party.” McArdle continues to conceal the extent of her deeply conflicted relationships with the Koch influence-peddling machine.
Read more at Naked Capitalism.
So, she sells it? I always thought she just gave it away.
i couldn’t find the article so i can’t say.
but people have such small heads i am not sure it is fair to bash them for the ideas that got stuffed into it when they weren’t looking.
poor megan, if that was her, has a tragically inadequate fashion sense. that may account for a lot more than you suppose.
Did you spot the footnote?
“The investigate piece that McArdle smeared was authored by S.H.A.M.E founders Yasha Levine and Mark Ames.”
Nothing like a little bit of personal aggravation to encourage such a hit piece, is there?
A correction…
It was “Cactus and his merry band of madmen”
Her post was here: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/07/question-answered/20847/
The response was here:
http://www.angrybearblog.com/2009/07/response-to-megan-mcardle-again-by.html
As per the response:
“Going back to 1952 at least, every Democrat, every single one, has increased the tax burden. Every single Republican lowered them.”
I had some posts after that, perhaps time to revisit them, that showed that not only did the change in the tax burden correlate with growth, the change in the tax burden in the first two years of an administration’s term correlated with the growth rate in the final six years. And not in the direction McMegan likes to see. Sure, correlation does not imply causality, but it just so happens that Presidents under whom growth in years 2 – 8 was fastest also were the Presidents who found a way to go back in time to years 1 & 2 and raise the tax burden. Or something like that. Go figure.
Tim,
Possible bias, but hardly definitive, and inadequate as innuendo…or were you referring to Megan?
Tim
yes, it’s a possible motive, and very convenient it is for you, too. saves you from having to think about the merits of the argument.
is it really so suspicious that people who don’t agree would write articles attacking each other.
now if Megan attacked me because I said she had no fashion sense, your reducing the whole thing to personal spite might make sense. but reducing a political argument as caused BY spite, is just juvenile.
“but reducing a political argument as caused BY spite, is just juvenile. “
Not entirely convinced. Ames I’m acquainted with from his (and my) time in Moscow in the 90s.
I think we might even have worked together: I certainly tried out for the paper he was running.
Let’s just say I wouldn’t put it past him to deliberately whale on someone for just such a reason.
And believe me, it’s very, very easy to write such a piece about anyone who has anything at all to do with the intersection of journalism and politics. From either or any political side.
Tim
i can’t disagree with that. still, the political motivation is huge, and the whaling looks more political than personal from here.
you can look at megan’s rhetoric and see it is entirely devoid of facts or argument. just a cutsey ad hominem that suggests to the true believers they don’t have to take seriously anything the other side says. this seems to be the standard by which “journalists” are selected these days.
“you can look at megan’s rhetoric and see it is entirely devoid of facts or argument. just a cutsey ad hominem that suggests to the true believers they don’t have to take seriously anything the other side says. this seems to be the standard by which “journalists” are selected these days.”
Well, that’s certainly how I make my living these days, yes. Because I reserve my vitriol for the idiots in the UK you might not see it though.
In fact, I’ve read most of what Megan has put out over the years (I’ve not followed her to the Daily Beast for some reason) and I’d say she’s a lot more fair minded than many. Certainly less partisan than I am. And a great deal politer and quite probably a better writer.
Certainly I'[d say she’s a better grasp of economics reality than Ames or his old buddy Taibbi. But then you and I also manage that so we’re not exactly talking major leagues on that point.
Tim
after all this time i am well convinced that whatever people hold in their heads arrived there almost by accident, though after a brief beginning what sticks is selected by how well it fits with what is already there.
that said, there is no hope that you and i would agree about much of anything. i hope you are a good person nonetheless.
i don’t know that i have ever read anything else by McArdle, but the article quoted here is a sample of the kind of mindless political inuendo that i despise.
and that’s whether it comes from the right or the left.
as to who knows more… that seems to depend on your point of view. i could never convince myself that economists know ANYTHING about the real world.
i am aware there are real idiots, but calling someone an idiot because his political ideas are different from your.. “knowledge of economics” seems to me to rest on a pretty shaky reed.
My fave Mark Ames article is the one where he boasts, in his 30s no less, of fucking a 15-year-old (search for the word “pervometer”):
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/beast-in-the-east/Content?oid=902762
My fave article about Mark Ames is the one written by a former associate of his who accuses him of being a rapist:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/the-gonzo-classic-that-wasnt-/261541.html
Hey Cedrick, you’re just copying that from the Breitbart article attacking Mark Ames last year. Breitbart told the truth about the Kochs, about financial reform, and about Mark Ames! Here’s the Breitbart article attacking Mark Ames that Cedrick copied from:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2011/08/30/Meet-Mark-Ames–the—-eXile—-Who-Created-the–False–Koch-Brothers-Conspiracy-Theory