Never heard of her before.
Went and read her old site.
Remarkably boring.
Lacks declarative sentences.
Even in conclusions.

TNR can have her – nobody reads it anyway.

Freaky, I was just reading about the Broken Window fallacy a few days ago.

Bastiat is everywhere!

Oh…the scope…of the diversity…it’s blinding me…

Great, another dipshit with a megaphone.

While I’d definitely hit it, this does make me ask what the fuck happened to the Atlantic? There’s been a rightward drift in the magazinefor a while, but now there’s a stupidward drift. Sad really, what’s happened to a once great magazine.

Or the Atlantic Monthly. Whatever.

From the comments on one of her first posts:

“It particularly does not mean this”
“…looking for inauspicious auguries.”
“is only now, just-maybe-barely-we-hope?, pulling out of a slump”
“…ponderous proclamations, the parallels…”
Two paragraphs starting with “But”.
Congratulations. You are now the worst writer on the Atlantic’s staff – and it’s only your first day. Tell Douhat he lost the title.
Posted by HeavyJ | August 20, 2007 3:36 PM

Perfect.

Garance Franke-Ruta was robbed.

T-Rex,
Amen, brother. Better looking, and not a ditz to boot.

“I said I was drinking a drink called a Frédéric Bastiat, and he didn’t get it.

As Mark Thornton suggests that Bastiat demonstrates a pronounced “Austrian flavor”, are suggesting that she drinks diethylene glycol? Someone should tell her it is poisonous, but then again maybe not

Another reason to never again buy an Atlantic Monthy

Quite the twit, she is.

That’s way more pithy than her tripe, I should be writing for the Atlantic Whatever…

Megatron (Is this another “transhumanist” thing? Do these people all want to be robots?) is well raked over the coals by the commentariat. Best one:

When does The Atlantic give a blog to that nasal woman whose ex-husband’s auto dealership is under investigation by the cops?
Howardette Roarke is the name, I think.
Posted by Ann Them | August 20, 2007 7:09 PM

And not to enter into the realm of “looksism,” but where do we get “attractive?” She seems to be listing to port in that picture (you’d think it’d be to starboard) & she could use a bit of powder to cut down on on that face shine. (As they say in showbiz: “Spackle the hag.”) I mean, regular, proportionate features, sure (eyes maybe a bit small & squinty, but she is trying for a big smile) but nothing that would compel me (& as a beggar I can’t choose too much). Though when properly spackled (the “it’s her again” link) she is a bit above average. But any attractiveness would doubtless disappear once her mouth opened. See, I’m not just all about “looks.”

In generally [sic] takes me a couple of weeks in a new office before I can reliably make it to the bathroom without getting lost.

Do any of these people ever read what they’ve just written? Or have preview? I don’t get paid one effing penny for what I write (justifiably so) but I have enough pride in my output to go over my shit, check preview, etc. And it’s not as if “n” & “t” are close enough on the qwerty keyboard for that to be a legitimate (but still s/b caught) typo.
Can’t find the bathroom w/o getting lost? (Let alone any informed opinions.) I’m sure she’s being cutely self-deprecating, but there’s got to be at least a germ of truth in there, & I doubt if The Atlantic is a massive warren of indistinguishable cubicles. The offices may soon be receiving some new carpet, though.

A quote from Transformers: The Movie? (The original one)

“Then it pleases me to be the first.” Imagine Orson Welles as the speaker for added effect.

Superfly:

That’s way more pithy than her tripe, I should be writing for the Atlantic Whatever…

Did you attend an Ivy League school? No? Then you lack the only qualification that got her the job.

Welcome to the United States of America. We don’t have an aristocracy, but for some reason knowing the right twits at the right East Coast schools makes rising to your Peter Principle station in life a lot easier.

I have enough pride in my output to go over my shit, check preview, etc.

If people would stop being better than me I could finally feel better than them.

I have enough pride in my output to go over my shit

Alright, this is a fairly strong fecal reference, and it almost borders on the coprophagous.

But hey, I’m a liberal, right? Go ahead and examine your output…

mikey

Hey, guys, the true artist is always interested in all she or he creates/excretes. That why I always examine my moko before wiping it off under the keyboard tray.
People are better than “I,” not “me.”

She seems to be listing to port in that picture (you’d think it’d be to starboard) & she could use a bit of powder to cut down on on that face shine…

Tipping the head sideways is meant to be kawaii, like an adorable baby animal that’s still getting its balance. The gleam across the cheekbones is supposed to indicate that Megan is too young & vibrant to resort to mature-lady strategems like makeup. As with the “wearing my big brother’s shirt as a jacket” outfit, Megan is (a) overdoing her concepts, and (b) too old to rock the “Prep School Princess” style effectively, except possibly among other libertarians. But that a libertarian for you… they get an idea into their head when they’re 16 and they never want to let it go.

Well, she still looks oily. She seemed to be very “mature-lady” in the picture here. Maybe the “glow” is the hard-drinking libertarian life-style trying to escape.
Good call on the “fashion” statement.
And in all fairness, the shot on this page looks pretty candid & relatively unposed, ‘cept for the smile, but it was probably some nitwit popping out @ her & saying, “Smile!” Hell, we could even give her points for not covering her face & screeching, “Oh no, I’m not wearing any make-up!”

Libertarian. Oh. I thought you said Librarian.

Sheez. Perhaps it’s time we stopped picking on Yglesias for that old supporting-the-war thing which suddenly seems so bygone and water-under-the-bridge.

See the problem is that, no matter what, they will only get more batshit insane stupid. The stupider they get, the more they push the Overton Window towards complete stupidity. And the stooges and morons we have in the media now will only want to help them. Somehow we need to stem the onslaught of complete right-wing stupefaction.

People are better than “I,” not “me.”

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

Okay, all you fans of people of different genders and graduates of different Ivy League schools. It’s video time! See a man of one gender who graduated from one Ivy League school debate a woman of a different gender who graduated from a different Ivy League school. They are so witty. They are so well informed. They both now blog for the Atlantic.

Re: 2 x 4s. It’s very rare that you’ll see both me and Steven den Beste on the same thread! I didn’t even have a website and it points you to an AOL (!) e-mail address! Get that shit to the Smithsonian!

M. Bouffant,
Well, that’s all as maybe, but I must confess: I think she’s sorta cute in that picture. Not so much in the other shot you linked to, but I’ve never cared for the glamour shot look. I am, however, to the “hard-drinking librarian” thing, and as I’ve said elsewhere, McArdle looks like about a dozen or so girls I dated in college. One was a libertarian – first self-described one I ever met, too – and used to say the most horrible things about teachers. God knows what horrible thing McArdle just heard to make her grin like that, too.

I’m with Matt on this too, she kind of reminds me of the girls at college many years ago, when wearing a too big shirt over a tee shirt was all the rage! Either pissed up, or pretending to be pissed up, and just a little too keen and/or dippy. However, having said that, cute, rather than the fake sexy glamourpuss in the other shot.

Check out Roy on her writing:

http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2007_08_19_archive.html#3544670285820580413

Not only a twit, but a vicious twit.

It’s a good thing no one has read or even heard of The Atlantic in the last forty years. I can only hope this imbecile woman finds the man of her dreams and retires to Connecticut.

I can only hope this imbecile woman finds the man of her dreams and retires to Connecticut.

In your dreams! Even in Connecticut, they have access to the intertoobz. That’s the dark side of this whole blogoverse thing — the annoying people are NEVER going to have to grow up & go the fvck away. Once she marries and starts dropping new little libertarians… well, you remember Danielle Crittenden? (*shudder*)

Hey! I went to an Ivy League school…two actually. You may ask yourself, “How do I work this?” And you may ask yourself, “Where is that large automobile?” And you may tell yourself, “This is not my beautiful house!” And you may tell yourself, “This is not my beautiful wife!”

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?

Bloggingheads is ongoing, videographic evidence that white people need to be exterminated from the planet.

Truth be told, I didn’t make it very far either. I clicked on each segment of that exchange, got bored with it, and moved on to the next one. Talking to a computer monitor-mounted video camera is an art mastered by few—like the Kid from Brooklyn, for example.

She looks like one of the Simon sisters… uh, Carly Simon sisters for you youngsters. Same social set I guess. Do you think Mick Jagger ever… oh, never mind.

Reading her writing, I am left wondering how she could have gained entrance into an Ivy. She’s not nearly good looking enough to have used a sexual bribe . . . maybe her parents made a sizable donation to the university endowment. Nor can I fathom how or why The Atlantic wanted her on its blog. There are more than enough mediocre gLibertarians blogging around the internets; she’s pretty much interchangable. Once again, it’s certainly not to provide any eye candy at The Atlantic’s offices. What gives?

Reading her writing, I am left wondering how she could have gained entrance into an Ivy.

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.

[…] know that the sweet, sweet, bloggy love which has greeted my arrival at The Atlantic cannot go on much longer. But it […]

[…] and teh Sadlies will keep us up to date on the sitchy […]

Wow. Dipshit? Twit? Ditz? Imbecile? And it’s only day one. Well done, Megan.

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.

Sorry, but this web site specializes in ruthlessly mocking wingnuts who say things like this. We don’t believe in seriously engaging arguments that we don’t think are serious.

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

Ah, sorry. My mistake. I’ve just had a look around and realized exactly that, and came back to the comments section to say as much. Well, enjoy then…

Damn it, I can’t resist, since I hit submit before I meant to: if you don’t mean to be taken seriously, fine. You’re being assholes to a really good person on the internet under the guise of anonymity. I hope it feels as fun as it looks.

[…] I said about white jeans was not a malicious personal attack intended to degrade her, unlike what some other people have said. Basically, I’m not a hater. What I said about the inadvisability of […]

I’m sure Glenn Reynolds and Jeff Goldstein and Jonah Goldberg are really good people on the Internet too, friends to puppies all. The problem is that for really good people they seem to hold some pretty bad opinions. So they get the internet equivalent of rotten tomatoes thrown at them.

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

Lane, we end up mocking Megan incessantly because a) we don’t find her all that intelligent, b) gLibertarians are standard toys for tooth-sharpening by many of us, and c) Megan’s arguments don’t deserve anything much more than classic snark.

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.

People are better than “I,” not “me.”

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

Pick a side, goddammit, we’re at war.

Two things:

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.

Lane Greene wrote:
You’re being assholes to a really good person

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.

Get your start in the entertainment business through the Internet by finding a role as an extra. Casting Calls

Get your start in the entertainment business through the Internet by finding a role as an actor Casting Calls