Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Chutzpah McArdle


Megan discusses journalism ethics with a colleague.

Megan McArdle, who faked data about innovation to claim that reforming health care will lead to mass deaths, exclaims that she can't believe someone who faked data is still considered respectable.

I have a hard enough time believing the guy got a book published--I mean, maybe this book is 100% on the level, but who has the time to check all his footnotes to make sure. And when he has the gall to complain--or allow his publishers to do so in his place--that his previous work was unjustly prosecuted, well, both my sympathy and any willingness to suspend my disbelief sort of evaporate. It's like his real academic project is doing case studies of chutzpah.


Projection is apparently one of the pillars of conservatism, the others being obedience, sexual dysfunction, and bow ties.

5 comments:

Kathy said...

Isn't it the hidden gays who persecute gays the most viciously? The white man with a black ancestor who hates African Americans the most? The woman who has an illegal South American Nanny or gardener who is most vocally opposed to "illegals"?

Megan is a journalistic liar, especially about economics which she professes to be an expert about. She ignores facts, invents facts, calls people who quote facts liars...of course she is going to lead the pecking party against a ... liar author.

Clever Pseudonym said...

Susan - your link to Megan's post is hosed.

Authors, unless they are incredibly successful and bring in a lot of money with their books, do not "allow" publishers to decide how to promote their product. If the publisher felt Michael Bellesiles' past mistakes would keep people from buying his latest book (i.e. prevent them from making money), they'd do whatever it took to whitewash his former transgressions, with or without his blessing.

Smut Clyde said...

who has the time to check all his footnotes to make sure

It is a quandary of a question indeed. Editors? Reviewers? Journalists? People doing their job?

Mr. Wonderful said...

"prosecuted"?

And Susan, perhaps you were being "ironic," but you've got the KETTLE calling the POT black. Shouldn't it be the site-oppo?

BillCinSD said...

Mr. Wonderful, it's about Megan McArdle, that the picture/story is backward and wrong is the joke. Just like McMegan