You’re way more broad-minded than I am or than I’d ever want to be. If someone I knew insisted on publicly posting an endless string of fatuous comments making light of poverty, illness, aging, torture, and other horrors, then that person would definitely be removed from my ‘really good person’ list and permanently transferred to my ‘loathsome wanker’ list, regardless of how frigging charming they were in person.

1) I don’t get the Bastiat joke.

2) Look, I’m as post-feminist as the next closet misogynist, but couldn’t we stop judging women based on their appearances in, like, 1993? I don’t care if The Garance is prettier or if her face looks oily. It’s, like, unseemly, and stuff.

Well are they or aren’t they? Quit waffling!

Pick a side, goddammit, we’re at war.

Reading Ms. McArdle’s writings, I get the impression of a Bright Young Thing convinced of how Brilliant she is, with very little knowledge of what can be called The Real World.

Your friendship/acquaintanceship with Megan may be coloring your objectivity here.

Clearly you need to learn a bit more about how we Sadlynauts operate.

I had the pleasure of sharing Megan’s cubicle for much of the last five years. And nobody who shared that office would suggest for a second that I write this out of some kind of ideological kinship. Megan and I participated in so many loud, passionate arguments that I know for a fact many of our colleagues wished many time’s we’d just can it, for Chrissakes, or at least take it outside. I don’t read this blog — frankly never heard of it till just now — but there’s a decent chance that I’d be closer to your politics than to hers.

But this thread reminds me why the internet is a hellhole sometimes. Not a one of you has bothered to say anything about what she has written, instead enjoying a little free-for-all of imbecilic insults against an incredibly intelligent and very fine writer, a great colleague until recently and most importantly a supremely decent and kind person, as anyone who knows her would aver on a stack of bibles.

So go out and tell her where she’s wrong, or go back to the playground with your taunts, children.

Just about to finish up my Columbia PhD. Taught at Columbia, Barnard, and Western Washington U, so, on Ivy students: the smart ones at WWU are just as smart as the smart ones at CU and BC. The stupid ones are just as stupid. The only difference is that they’ve gone to better schools. The majority, wherever, are somewhere in between: totally forgettable. I’m speaking here only about undergrads, btw.

I literally couldn’t make it more than 30 secs into that bloggingheads link. Do I care about Matt Yglesias’s head cold? Does anyone?