I actually let my Atlantic subscription run out years ago. At this point I almost think of it like I do the NYPost; a hellhole with a mythical past that exists only in archives and wistful dreams.
I know that’s hyperbolic, but that’s what McArdle is a giant step towards.

The Atlantic: More of What Everyone Else Does Too

It seems to me that those 1860s issues of The Atlantic were published in sweatshop conditions.

Also, I believe it would be immoral for me to pay you off with bonus payments of good writing or coherent thought.

Nonetheless, this post was a virtuoso piano performance, or a perfect game. Toodles!

Me! Me! ME1 Pick Me!!!1! I want to be in the gang!

Where is the roisterer roster? Where’s the idiot sign up?

Awww, I’m always left out of the cool crowd…

I subscribed to the Atlantic for a while in the 1990s. I let my subscription run out because I found too many of its articles to be boring, but I still thought a lot of it. Not anymore. I don’t understand why anyone considers Andrew Sullivan’s opinions to be of any worth whatsoever, but compared to McArdle, he’s as deep as the Marianas Trench.

it’s not everyone’s job on the internet to do the job someone else thinks they should do. it just isn’t.

yglesias is brilliant but he’s a careerist–he does his thing so that he can get bigger jobs so that he can get more money and power so he can get a bigger audience. that’s its own thing. good for him. sullivan plays the contrarian card now because he’s ashamed of what an ass he was for 20 years (from the bell curve to calling New Yorkers fifth columnists–what a record to run from!). he’s also very smart and a good writer. hooray for him.

sadly no (and poorman) are smart acerbic no-shit taking bastards who can dispense with right wing thuggery, glibertarianism, or mainstream mushness about mushing with equal aplomb. as well, both sites can come through with original and unique commentary from both a present or historical perspective in ways that surprises and illuminates. to get to those posts, one may well have to wade through inside jokes, snarky attacks on obscure right-wing bloggers, and the odd music symposium. boo hoo.

Let me rephrase my earlier post.

The Atlantic hiring Megan McArdle is like The Onion hiring Dennis Miller.

what, no love for Mr Dooley?? Dialect humor is a lost art (and the spelling at Clownhall doesn’t count).

what, no love for Mr Dooley??

What, no love for ***HYMAN KAPLAN***?

I just wanted to say that I lurk here every day, to prove to myself that there is an America that is not insane. Thank you and please continue to be that proof. Best wishes from Canada.

I’m new here,so I just pretend to get all the inside jokes.HAhahahaha!!!But I got those LOLcats.down.Teh wurld of teh snarkz iz a aserbik plaz.KTHXBAI11!!!

Oh, how I wish my memory were good enough to cite the quotation properly, but there was an early-20th-century great man of letters, someone majestic with three names, who said that writing for that magazine was not difficult at all. He himself set out to do so on his trip to Euroope, and “the boat had hardly left New York before I became a contributor to the Atlantic.”

I used to always but Harpers and Atlantic together.Now,not so much,just Harpers.My head hurts…

Hey Gavin,

Is Megatron related to Roll Call’s John McArdle, who broke the story of Senator Craig’s arrest?

Thanks for the sanity, and the humor. My own blog depresses me.

Is Megatron related to Roll Call’s John McArdle, who broke the story of Senator Craig’s arrest?

I don’t think so. John McArdle is only a staff writer there: He’s probably a dude in his early-mid-’30s who’s looking toward better things (and might or might not achieve them, depending)…

Andrew Sullivan I really just don’t get at all. I started reading some of his columns back in the late ’90s, when a friend of mine said some very nice things about his writing on gay rights, but it became pretty clear pretty quickly that the man was a shallow narcissist whose prose could nowhere near make up for the fact that he’s a sloppy, dishonest, unoriginal thinker. Even leaving aside his full-blown fascist outbreaks after 9/11–not that we really should because frankly they were so outrageous and poisonous as to be unforgiveable and to display him as a man with a seriously flawed ethical compass. I’d heard that he’d calmed back down again now, so I bit my lip and read his exchange with Sam Harris on faith and religion back in early 2006, just to see…

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/209/story_20904_1.html

This is Sullivan at the most reasoned and civil I’ve seen him, and he’s still a complete waste of space.

For pity’s sake, how do writers like this keep getting work? It breaks my heart.

Sadly, No is a near perfect balance of thoughtful commentary and childish humor.

You know. It’s edifying poop jokes…

mikey

I think I still subscribe to the Atlantic, but it’s gone to shit in the past five years. The best thing I ever read was the article about the school where super-tanker captains go to learn how to drive them mega-boats. But now the political writing is shite, Fallows is using the latest technology to give himself a Cantonese colonoscopy, Langeweische went elsewhere and Megan McFucking McArdle, who is two years younger than me, is (maybe) being paid by my subscription dollahs. Shit. I’d rather read Vanity Fair — even if you forced me to read that wrinkled douchebag socialite Dunne, or the pearl-clutching “We were at the Hamptons and we saw a darkie!” faux horror of Michael what’shisfuck.

SadlyNoItes, you make me want to be a better nastier person.

the boat had hardly left New York before I became a contributor to the Atlantic.”

That was probably William Dean Howells, who wrote justly in the magazine about the people blamed over Haymarket Square. No doubt Jane Galt would have advocated 2x4ing those people even before the bombs went off (and Mr. Howells, too, for good measure), while no doubt she also would have objected to an earlier Atlantic contributor, Mr. Garrison’s, queer views on Southern property rights.

Could that fucking magazine have one blogger — just one — who got Iraq right all along? Is it too much to ask? Of course it is. It used to pay Michael Kelly to write, after all.

It’s edifying poop jokes…

Exxxxcrement!

Yeah, sounds like Howells. There’s a critical study on his Haymarket stuff, although I can’t find a link.

Amusing story:
I was at a brewpub in DC two weeks ago, and met a holocaust historian from London who was in town doing some research. The conversation turned to politics as it often does, and then to blogs. He was familiar with Sadly, No!

You guys are totally worldwide.

More of What Everyone Else Does

apropos of nothing, i just noticed the acronym for this is:

Mo’ WEED!

Like, totally, dude.
Suez in SAfrica.

My own blog depresses me.

i would invite you over to my booth for donuts, but i sadly have no donuts.

Aloysius: I think Sullivan is (occasionally) worth reading in spite of the sloppiness, and perhaps even because of the sloppiness. The flaws are what make him interesting, as opposed to the hyperproductive brio of Hitchens’ writing. Strangely, though the blog has helped promote him, I think he’s better in long-form, and better still when speaking about long-form stuff.

It annoys me that for the one Atlantic article I’d probably enjoy per issue, they want me to subscribe to the whole fucking thing. As opposed to Harper’s, which I renew with joy.

(If you’re not reading Scott Horton’s blog, you’re missing out.)

I would invite you over to my booth for donuts
Is that one of those Republican-Congressman codewords?

Waitaminute. You tap on the next cubicle with a donut?

mikey

You’d think the Atlantic would have second thoughts about hiring someone whos nic is Jane Gault,and not ironicly.
That puts her in sisterbloghood w/ pam atlas.

If you think Sullivan is annoying, go to his blog and read who he has filling in for him while he’s on his honeymoon. He’s got three really good bloggers and this dipshit from TNR who takes the contrarian wingnut position. Anyone who quotes Max Boot approvingly is instantly dismissable as a dumbass.

Yes, the TNR wingnut (Jamie Kirchick) was an object of derision at alicublog recently. And he is a complete dipstick. The commentariat @ TNR regularly rake him over the coals.

Harpers anyone?

You are not a gang of idiots.

You are the Usual Gang of Idiots.

Take some pride in your work, man!

I would invite you over to my booth for donuts

Is that one of those Republican-Congressman codewords?

Given their tendency to hit on cops, yes.

Right on. Well said.

And, for the record, my blog depresses me, too. Though admittedly depressing me in 21st Century America isn’t all that hard. Nor was it in 20th Century America, though the new one is worse. I’m chronically depressed. Which is not to say, “always,” but just to say, “consistently once in a while.”

I can’t fathom the effort it takes to wallow in the absolute lunacy you guys do. Way to go. You make me a little less insane. That has got to count for something.

Well said.

Bravo.

*Sigh* — Mr. Martin Dooley, Esquire. Woodrowfan, if I ever come into some spare money & time (ha!), it is my ambition to produce a de-dialectized Finley Peter Dunne, because a lot of fine people who’d appreciate his snark just can’t work through his 19th-century version of LOL-l33t humor. (I had the advantage of discovering him when I was 11 or 12, at an age where L33t-speak of any vintage is still entertaining.) Oh, and that’s H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, Gavin…

Andrew Sullivan was mildly entertaining when he was editing the New Republic back in the mid-1980s, back before he’d worked his way into Sally Quinn’s Beltway version of “society” like a tick into a Labrador’s groin region. The Atlantic pretty well telegraphed its future ambitions to swing hard to the rabid-right when the editorial offices were moved from fusty old backwater Boston. But I’ll always have a soft spot for Vanity Fair, because that’s how I tracked down Sadly, No! (via Wolcottt’s blog).

Just wanted to add that I, too, am one of your lurkers. I’ve occasionally put in comments. But I read you all nearly every day and always enjoy it.
Keep up the good work.
(so many great blogs to keep up with…C&L, Instaputz, tbogg, Firedoglake, and many others.)

Gavmo,

Thanks-

my blog depressed me so much i stopped writing it, and got a job instead.

what a terrible choice that was.

That heejus ugly-featured cooze EganMay CardleMay is good for nothing. And when I say “nothing” I’m including a little posterior-to-pie-hole action. Not even good for that. Although, according to larkspur, Gavin was born for p-to-p.

Oh tasteless, if you’d only practice up on your yoga, you could reach your own pie-hole to your posterior and save us all from reading about your strange obsession.

Deep breaths, now.

Fuck the Atlantic. I myself only read Artic magazine, with the most recent in-depth articles about penguins and walruses. Hey, howsa bout thatt new big iceberg, heh, indeed. Doesn’t that heartless bint McArdle realize that she was the Economist’s diversity hire? As far as you all whining about the writing in the distant past of a rag that has no vestige of that past left, here’s some factoids: Redbook used to publish Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut short stories and Nabokov was published in Playboy. The magazine world will always be out there, but none of them will be the ones we remember. So shut your gob and gimme a thousand words deconstructing and analyzing suppressed gesellschaft of “Zombies Ate My Neighbors” for Stuff’s December spectacular.

Nabokov was published in Playboy.

So was Hunter Thompson and Steven King. But the t00bz do change the economics…

mikey

Do you seriously think we live in a meritocracy? Sheebus, have you people ever had jobs?

If you had, you would have noticed that many of your co-workers, especially upper management, are incompetent morons. Yet they are gainfully employed, funny how that happens. It happens because they were in the right place at the right time, kissed the ass of the right people, took the necessary steps and kept up a nice appearance.

The idea that in order to be a paid pundit you are required to posess superior intelligence, unquestionable integrity, a command of facts, logic, and an ability to accurately predict future events, is a total myth. One propagated by, you guessed it, pundits themselves!

Being a paid pundit is a job. People get the job by doing whatever is necessary to get there.

I can’t believe people are still amazed at paid pundits who are doing a 180 on Bush and Iraq. They’re whores! They will do whatever is necessary. Their skill is to give the impression they are expressing heartfelt opinions. They have been faking orgasms all along.

Sadly, No! is funny as fuck. Every single day. Funnier than Stewart or Colbert and without their massive resources. Sadly, No! is also right on about politics and things like maybe invading Iraq would be a bloody clusterfuck.

I think it’s time to get you all paid so you’ll stop being so bitter. But Rupert Murdoch and the Beltway mandarins ain’t gonna pay you, so we need to build an alternative to the Wingnut Welfare System. I call it the Moonbat Gravy Train.

“Do you seriously think we live in a meritocracy? ”

Well, lefty blogostan is an anarchic meritocracy, so I could see how folks could make the mistake of thinking the rest of the world is/should be that way. Mmmm. Gravy.

lefty blogocostanza is what it should be called.

Slightly off topic-
I appear to have been banned from commenting on McArdle’s blog, meaning the Atlantic now has joined Dan Riehl, Debbie Schlussel, and Ann Althouse.
I’ll admit I was not being a positive presence, but, well, fuck her and her “opinons”.

Do you seriously think we live in a meritocracy? Sheebus, have you people ever had jobs?

If you had, you would have noticed that many of your co-workers, especially upper management, are incompetent morons. Yet they are gainfully employed, funny how that happens. It happens because they were in the right place at the right time, kissed the ass of the right people, took the necessary steps and kept up a nice appearance.

Whatever happened to the good ol’ fashioned concept of sleeping one’s way to the top?

dear gavin et al,

roister on! you are excellent!

I just read the September issue and Kaplan’s thing about the B-2 bomber gave me the creeps. The article was one big mash note, not just to a really dangerous weapon, but to the manly men who fly them. It was read like a treatment for “Top Gun II” absent the slow-motion homoerotic volleyball game.

We’re drowning is a sea of rhetorical shit because eloquence passes for insight. “Good writer, sloppy thinker” applies to just about everyone writing for the major op-ed pages and opinion mags.

As much as I hate to single any of the Sadlies out for special praise, Gavin is Teh Man. He has a real gift for cutting through smart-sounding rhetorical turds to get at the basic structural stupidities of the Wingnut’s arguments. He then uses the simplest cultural elements available– pop culture references, images from childhood, simple diagrams– to zero in on those flaws in a way that highlights the underlying stupidity and shows just how absurd the argument was to begin with. Its vicious and brutal mockery, Akido-like in execution.

There’s getting your house TP’d, and then there’s getting your house TP’d by Christo. The Sadlies are most often the latter.

yglesias is brilliant

Is he, though? I mean, I’ll acknowledge that the arrival of Hurricane Megan has completely redefined the word “lazy,” but by any other objective standard he’s so lazy in his blogging. Not just the typos (though those are an indicator of laziness also), but the total lack of insight and the general half-heartedness. I do read his blog, even though it depresses me, because I decided it’s good for me to regularly check in with at least one blogger that I don’t have a full-on homo crush on (Josh Marshall, Atrios and teh sexxy boy band that is Sadly).

He DOES occasionally turn out brilliant columns, but that’s part of what irks me. When he gives half a crap, he’s capable of real insight and great writing. He just seems to have decided that his blog isn’t worth that kind of effort–or at least that the effort should go into the volume of shitty posts that he turns out rather than the quality.

At any rate, the only people that currently strike me as “brilliant” in their (non-humorous) blogging are Marshall and Glenn Greenwald. Granting the label to Yglesias is akin to giving someone a trophy for just being a good golfer rather than actually winning a golf tournament. You sort of have to DO something brilliant on a reliable basis to earn the “brilliant” label in my book.

sadly no brings the funny and the heart. xoxo

What Jake H said about Yglesias. He may have a great mind (I don’t necessarily see it), but it isn’t often reflected in his blog. Maybe this is ageist, but I think he’s too young and is often in over his head.

Glad to see I’m not the only one who has forgotten Cabell. Managed to get all of his books that Lin Carter had Ballantine reissue in the 70s.

At any rate, the only people that currently strike me as “brilliant” in their (non-humorous) blogging are Marshall and Glenn Greenwald

What amazes me about Greenwald is the quality of his argumentation coupled with the quantity of material he produces. Plus he wades into the comments section to wack idiots and correct misconceptions. And he writes books. How does he do it? One gifted workaholic.
Marshall’s insight was to build a liberal wire service a fill a void in the American media. The negative gop/conservative stories were sitting there waiting to be told but outside of McClatchy no one was touching them, like leaving gold on the floor. So he reinvested his add cash in staff and boom. Something like a phenomenon.

I still miss Billmon though.

Dead horse alert: Check out the remarkable libertarianism on display in this thread.

Does anyone here know about this?

“There’s getting your house TP’d, and then there’s getting your house TP’d by Christo. The Sadlies are most often the latter.”

this is the awesome. can we also imagine christo with a full-on crazy salvador dali facial hair situation? you know, when he started looking a lot like the purple pie man? because that would be wonderful. i heart you people.

The purple pie man
Met Roger Simon
Wearing Pajamas with feet
Then Roger Simon
Killed purple pie man
But apologized for being indiscrete…

mikey

One of McArdle’s sycophantic commenters, some guy named Max, admitted to never having heard of the Atlantic and compared it, unfavorably, to the Volokh conspiracy in readership and prestige.

If I were an Atlantic editor and read that comment I would shoot myself in the head with the biggest gun I could find, because the game is over.

Glad to see I’m not the only one who has forgotten Cabell. Managed to get all of his books that Lin Carter had Ballantine reissue in the 70s.
Haa. My copy of Jurgen is the 1940 Penguin edition. I sneer at Ballantine Books.

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