War On Christmas Update
Hi, I’m Megan McArdle. In this Christmas season, and believe me, I love Christmas, having lots of memories as I do of magical, snowy taxi rides from my parents’ cozy and ribbon-bedecked cottage to Dean & DeLuca and back, as well as skating at Rockefeller Center and everything else that makes Christmas magical to a girl with deeply proletarian roots — like René Lalique ornaments and Marc Jacobs under the tree, and a Christmas stocking with a white truffle in the toe the size of an orange, except these days most of the recipes I use call for the black kind which are French while the white ones are Italian, and I forgot what I was saying.
Oh, tree. No, stocking. I think what I really want this year is a small, purebred dog, perhaps a Chinese Crested Hairless or Chihuauserdoodle or similar breed, that I can — okay, actually tree, not stocking. Because I’ve noticed that many girls will exaggeratedly nurture a small, purebred dog in a serio-ironic way with several layers of sincerity and camp stacked one on top of another, as a hedge against the howling loneliness of single, urban girlhood, in which life is, in fact, a stage, and one’s most intimate relationships are managed and transitory with all experiences measured according to how well they approximate an imaginary culturally-determined and media-programmed ideal — next to which one is perpetually and irredeemably lacking.
Except, my God, I’m approaching 40. Do I want to be the dog lady? Or rather, can I finesse being ‘the dog lady’ even while knowing that I actually am the dog lady? Will only my gay friends truly get it — and why are there so many more of them today, proportionally, than only a few years ago? Oh wait, dog. I’ll dress it up in clothes and cook its meals and bring it to doggie day camp, like many girls do. It will silence this ticking, ticking, ticking of a hateful clock that I dare not name. Plus if I don’t want a dog after all, or if it’s irresponsible by barking too much or acting needy, I can give it to the ASPCA or the Chihuauserdoodle rescue or one of those places. I think they would be glad to have a purebred dog for free, or at a discount of its retail value.
I see Mr. Leonard Pierce has already asked for donations to send him to CPAC. This is fortunate because I came here to warn everybody about the S,N! annual charity drive to subsidize a huge Christmas party for homeless kids and their parents, with presents and a giant turkey dinner a bunch of free-riders who have made poor life choices.
You may argue that they are just ‘children,’ but at some point children, like dogs, have to take responsibility for themselves. Encouraging these miniature bums with visions of a collectivist Santa will only incite them further to parasitize those in society who, like myself, have worked for every morsel of Zabar’s Cacio di Bosco al Tartufo or $38/lb Fairway line-caught Chinook salmon gravadlax that we now enjoy or were given as children — except I personally came to appreciate the capers traditionally served with the gravadlax more and more as my palate grew more sophisticated. Because okay, are there no prisons? Are not the treadmill and the Poor Law in full vigour? I think America has a Poor Law, and it seems to me that it might be in effect. Matt, Ezra, can you check this for me?
Moreover, as I understand the sub-prime mortgage situation, there will soon be a significant jump in the supply of available homes. If these looters and moochers have any ambition at all, surely they can take advantage of this.
Going to this Amazon list and picking out a toy for a homeless kid is exactly what I was saying all along.
I see you’ve mastered McArdle’s style. Congratulations.
Megan, dear, you goofed – the byline says this article is by Gavin M. Admittedly a tiny blot on an otherwise perfect article; I suppose you’ve only joined the S, N! staff recently.
Welcome!
I will be taking some of the money I’m saving by sponging off our generous readers and giving it to local homeless charities, believe that.
I wonder if Megan means that she had Marc Jacobs clothes under the tree, or actually Marc Jacobs? The answer to that question could be quite revealing.
I’m speechless.
I’m speechless.
Yeah, me too. Nice one, Gavin: A perfect cocktail of vicious and sweet.
Kara Walker: Hey, who pinned that giant elf to my work?
Does Ms. Mc Ardle know who’s art she is standing next to?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_walker
I’m sure these two women have so much in common.
J-
a little too fast for me.
I call Fake Meagan. The real Meagan is much more tangential and self-absorbed.
I call Fake Meagan. The real Meagan is much more tangential and self-absorbed.
Perhaps, but I still want to shoot myself after reading it so I think we can call it good enough.
Of course if it’s the real Meagan only 1/3 of the comments will be available and we’ll all be banned in about 30 minutes
A classic of the genre.Thanks.
Phil Moskowitz, Lovable Rogue: It’s worth saying more than once.
A Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Definitely.
Then again, do we really want to do such a thing to a poor dog?
From her own blog today:
When I was at Penn, a friend who actually qualified as a proletarian, and whose proletarian consciousness would have been rated “Exceeds expectations” by the Comintern Membership Committee, indignantly informed me that almost half our class was the product of private schools.
“So?” I asked innocently.
“So those schools are less than 2% of the total American school system,” he said. As far as I can tell, that disparity has only grown in the intervening years; thanks to unfavorable demographics, getting into college now is much more competitive than it was in my day. As long as you’re drawing half your student body from schools that charge tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition, playing with your financial aid package is the poverty-fighting equivalent of sending a complementary fruit basket to the local orphanage at Christmas.
Fucking nailed it, Gavin. And you don’t live in New York, do you?
It’s a measure of my regard for Miss Meagan that for the first paragraph, I actually thought it was the real deal. It really does sound like her. You’ve captured her essence, as it were.
Fuck you, you bastards! I can never forgive you guys. Because of you I now read Ass-y-metrical Information every day…
Good lord. This is insanely good. And you couldn’t have picked a better target.
Man, there needs to be more comments on this post, for reals, it’s a thing of beauty. I must have read it like five times and it keeps getting better.
I think that’s because I keep changing it.
I’m honestly proud of the Chihuauserdoodle, btw. There ought to be such a dog!
This is awesome.
Well I was going to comment, Mr. Pierce, but after reading and rereading a post of such sheer fucking brilliance, I’m experiencing increasingly debilitating feelings of inadequacy, writing-wise. See what I mean?
Just effing brilliant, right up there with the Matt & Ezra post. But, if I may be unbearably pedantic, there is one McArdle tic missing: at least three occurrences of “moreover”—preferably in the same paragraph. The empty utility of the word means you can plop it at the beginning of practically any random sentence:
Moreover, I see Mr. Leonard Pierce has already asked for donations to send him to CPAC.
Moreover, encouraging these miniature bums with visions of a collectivist Santa
Otherwise, echt, truly echt.
[‘Moreover’ duly added!]
Gavin, my good man, there is such a dog. ¡Le Chihuauserdoodle, c’est moi!
Back away from the Cheetos, man. Just back away.
My only gripe is it’s too well written.
No typos, big words used in slightly incorrect ways, or simply bizarre grammar.
And “she” forgot to mention she used to have boyfriends.
She mentions that a lot these days.
Oh Gavin, YOU ARE THE SNARKIEST guy on the tubes!!!
Keep it Up!
a hedge against the howling loneliness of single, urban girlhood
Cormac McCarthy’s take on Midol?
That whole piece is brilliant.
But that pic. Whatever that expression is supposed to be, it only, and appropriately, reminds me of this:
http://americancorner.hu/userfiles/Image/grinch.jpg
Is her hero MoDo?
Scarily accurate, Gavin… reading it made me want to simultaneously throw up and go throw a rock through some capitalist oppressor’s window. I’ll go to the Amazon site and Paypal something as soon as the waves of nausea pass…
Rightwingsnarkle, since the average Cavvie weighs a good 15 pounds and is basically brick-shaped, they aren’t much in demand as purse dogs. (I wish I could say the same for my beloved Papillons.) It takes a very well-biceped giant elf to haul a 15-lb furry brick around as an accessory, although I suppose that Megan might buy one just for the novelty factor. This season’s Chihuauserdoodle seems to be some variation on a Maltese/Yorkie cross, because the morons buying them have been told ‘you don’t need to pay a groomer like you do with poodles’. Animal shelters nationwide have been warned to expect a tsunami of cripplingly matted five-pound designer mutts sometime around Labor Day, *sigh*.
I have a bit of a crush on Megan McArdle too.
There’s a big story behind every little dog.
Yep, this one kicked ass Gavin. Thank you !
Excellent work.
Man, if it were 25 years ago and I were back in college, Megan McArdle would be just the kind of stupid, clueless chick I’d be looking to bag.
Now she’s just fuggin’ pitiful.
From her bio on the website:
“She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set.”
As she might have mentioned (twice today!): Penn. Chicago. Penn. “The University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business.” Penn. And she still can’t form a throwaway reference to economics or statistics correctly.
Well, let’s see: I can either buy a poor homeless child a toy for Christmas, or I can donate to Mr. Leonard Pierce’s upcoming CPAC junket, but I can’t do both. Hmmmm. Which to choose, which to choose?
One word: Two-by-four
This is OT, but have you heard the latest from Lawrence O’Donnell from Hewitt?
HH: Would you say the same things about Mohammed as you just said about Joseph Smith?
LO’D: Oh, well, I’m afraid of what the…that’s where I’m really afraid. I would like to criticize Islam much more than I do publicly, but I’m afraid for my life if I do.
HH: Well, that’s candid.
LO’D: Mormons are the nicest people in the world. They’re not going to ever…
HH: So you can be bigoted towards Mormons, because they’ll just send you a strudel.
LO’D: They’ll never take a shot at me. Those other people, I’m not going to say a word about them.
HH: They’ll send you a strudel. The Mormons will bake you a cake and be nice to you.
LO’D: I agree.
HH: Lawrence O’Donnell, I appreciate your candor.
LO’D finally says what you leftist retards don’t have the cajones to say. Kudos to him.
Ace nails it:
You know, liberals really are the prototypical schoolyard bully. They are perfectly willing to badger and berate all those they perceive as easy victims. In fact, just think of their demands for your milkmoney as a form of taxation.
But the minute they face the threat (real or imagined) that they are going to get their clock cleaned, all their First Amendment Courage disappears in a yellow ink stained puddle down their leg.
Yeah, baby.
One word: Two-by-four
I will never forgive her for that post. She’d better hope I don’t run into her at Zabar or Fairway.
So you can be bigoted towards Mormons, because they’ll just send you a strudel.
We’ve come a long way since the days of Wild Bill Hickman.
As Mom used to say: “Moreover, however. . . “
As both an “obsessional critic” & internet stalker, I feel it is my duty to present Noël chez les McArdle.
Maybe he’s got a point, not about liberals being the prototypical* schoolyard bully, but about how people are scared to say anything bad about Muslims because they’re afraid of violence. That’s probably why you only hear good things about Muslims all the time, and blah blah blah. Seriously, the only example I can think of for this is Stephen Colbert always saying “A religion I deeply respect and admire” every time Islam came up on the God Machine. And that was him poking fun at exactly that.
Anyway,
http://thepaincomics.com/
* “Prototypical”? Really, that’s the word you want there?
Great work, but now that you have discovered how to replicate her, you must be destroyed. We can’t let that information get out.
And my sister has a Cavalier King Charles. Proof positive that humans have twisted survival of the fittest beyond all recognition. The thing wouldn’t last more than a chomp and a swallow in the wild, but it is so damned adorable that it would probably have been given its own lifeboat on the Titanic.
Yep, real easy for Ace to sit at his keyboard under the name “Ace” & rant about “Muzzies,” isn’t it? Another thing entirely for O’D., a public figure, to stick his neck out. ‘Though the fact that he is reluctant to speak out against Islam more than he does says as much about Islam as anything else he could say.
I was glad to hear O’D. on McLaughlin this wknd. calling the LDS church racist. Few others seem to have the guts to speak this truth.
And how is firmly disagreeing with the (racist, for example) precepts of a religion bigotry? No one “has” to be a Mormon, even if they’re born into it. It’s voluntary, and if they choose to believe anything that stupid, saying they’re full of crap isn’t “bigotry.” Are you listening, Bill Donohue?
Not only that, MBouffant, but how exactly is criticizing documented history bigotry? Was this O’Donnell guy calling to round up Mormons and put them into camps? Was he calling for it to be outlawed? How is it that a person standing up and objecting to stuff like this is just a mindless, hateful bigot?
genius, Gavin.
you had me at “Above: modeling Triangle™ shirtwaist”
JK (Rowling?) Thanks for the link. I’m heavily into Mormon abuse. Speaking of which, as I typed, Catholic-boy Tweety was astounded that Huckabilly said: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus & the devil were brothers?” Yes they do, Chris. (Matthews is scared that people will start to take a good look at Catholicism next.)
And the real reason I came back here: Megan McArdle’s Amazon wish list.
I’m heavily into Mormon abuse.
I started with just one Mormon a week. Everyone else was doing it. It was just a social thing.
But then I moved onto a Mormon every couple of days, and it wasn’t with friends any more, it was on my own. Still, I told myself that I could stop any time. I told myself that I was more creative and more productive after a Mormon.
Now I can’t fool myself any longer. I have a real problem. I’m a heavy Mormon abuser.
mb: wow. just…wow. she wants a fiestaware sugar packet holder? i could only make it through the first page of thirteen. i have to go away now.
13 pp.? I didn’t bother to look, though I did find the sugar caddy pretty damn funny.
S. Clyde: Blame it on the internet, like Pastor DonKey does. I knew Mormons were wacky, but one day I was innocently searching “mind control”, & on a page full of NLP sites & “Brainwash Yourself to be a Better Salesperson,’ there was something about Mormons. I haven’t been the same since. Kids, never click on links unless you’re sure where they lead. Keep the devil out of your devil-box.
Duuuuude! Fucking awesome. No fiestaware sugar packet holders, Chinook salmon on the list, or capers even. Basketballs will have to do in Boston.
Noël chez les McArdle
That joint sure is bleak. No carpet, no curtains. They must have just moved in.
I have fireplace tools just like those.
And farther on in that photostream is a photo with this sub-title:
We came out of the kitchen to find my dog hugging the Appletini mix
Hi Gavin, that was awesome. Sorry to be late to the show, but my job thinghie is ducking up my reading and common tating between EST hours 845ish-flyingspaghettimonsterknowsish.
dammit.
This stuff is bad, for sure, but not much worse than liberal thoughtgarbage.
“The modern world will continue forever. Televisions will keep getting bigger forever, and our kids will enjoy easier jobs than we have. Everything will continue more-or-less as it is today, except slightly better every year! It’s always been so. Every year has been slightly better for everyone, since before the dinosaur times.”
“The Middle East will continue to be ‘unstable’ and America will continue to be ‘stable.’ Nobody will ever go to bed hungry (except badpeople in badcountries who don’t embrace gooddemocracycapitalism.)”
Truth is, there isn’t enough fossil fuel on Earth for modern times to sustain until you or I die. Everyday life will permanently revert to The Stone Age in a few decades, regardless of what you and I would prefer.
Speaking of the war on Christmas, can we all agree not to shop at Best Buy this year? I appreciate all of you who downloaded this song over the past year (my tracking program suggests that there are a few thousand of you, though I’m not sure how many are from Sadly No, the only place I officially released it).
I’m assuming you’ve done so in order to prepare some type of group sing-along in front of Best Buy stores in your community. If so, you will need the lyrics. I would suggest singing only the first verse. By the second verse, you’ll be getting death threats. Trust me.
Best Buy Inn
http://www.drblt.net/music/BBInn.mp3
Here are a few of the lyrics:
History repeats itself
the baby Jesus has been shelved
like Santa Claus and his tiny elves
I won’t shop there myself
The Best Buy Inn
Is closed my friend
to baby Jesus
and his kin
the shepherd
and those wisemen
they could not get in
at the Best Buy Inn…
No one “has” to be a Mormon, even if they’re born into it.
You haven’t heard about the retroactive baptism part yet, have you?
I once knew an ex-Mormon who swore he was going to make a fortune and leave it to his progeny on the condition that they swear never, ever to pull that “ancestor baptism by proxy” stunt on his ex-believer soul.
Best Buy is anti-geebus?
Guess who’s getting my shekels!
No matter how many shekels you give Best Buy, it won’t make up for the financial loss they’ll suffer, as a result of the loss in Christmas-loving customers, not necessarily as a direct result of the impact (or non-impact) of my song, but as a result of the strong sentiment that so many Christmas lovers share all over this country.
[…] [Coming soon: Photos of the Christmas in the City party!] […]