You, Too, Can Be an Econoblogger!

Posted on by

I think I’m qualified to be the “econoblogger” for The Atlantic. That’s because the one they’ve got, Megan McArdle, is as bad at arithmetic as I am. Tbogg writes,

You really have to hand it to The Atlantic who chose to hire as their “Econoblogger” a woman whose facility with numbers would get her fired as a cashier at Wendy’s after two days.

That would be me, too, except that cash machines these days tell you how much change is owed. As long as that’s the case I could probably manage.

One difference between me and McArdle is that I’m aware that I’m bad with arithmetic, whereas McArdle seems blissfully oblivious. As Jonathan Chait wrote of her, McArdle is “frequently in error, but never in doubt.”

Another is that I’m better at basic smarts than she is, which might disqualify me for the Atlantic gig. Awhile back Brad DeLong nominated McArdle for the title “stupidest woman alive.” There’s an entire blog dedicated to her titled “Fire Megan McArdle.”

Just google “megan mcardle is an idiot” sometimes, and you’ll find links to some of the best writers on the web, reduced to blubbering at the magnitude of McArdle’s obtuseness.

In fact, opinions on McArdle constitute a shorthand intelligence test. Ask anyone on the web what they think of McArdle, and if they say they admire her, you’re looking at an idiot. Or a libertarian. But I repeat myself.

That last bit is the real key to McArdle’s idiocy. Whatever intelligence she was born with has been replaced by libertarian ideology, leaving her with the critical thinking skills of dryer lint.

I bring this up because McArdle has embarrassed The Atlantic once again, with a post called “The Health Care Reform Already Costs More Than We Thought It Would.” As Ezra Klein explains, McArdle has confused discretionary spending with new spending.

Now, I’m not a whiz with complex cost estimates, either, and this is a mistake I might have made. However, I wouldn’t have gone public with my criticism without checking with someone who has more knowledge of such things than I do. Also, I am not the business and economics editor for The Atlantic.

But, hell, if McArdle can be the business and economics editor for The Atlantic, so could I. And so could the chair I’m sitting on.

17 thoughts on “You, Too, Can Be an Econoblogger!”

  1. Maha, there is no way you would make the errors that bimbo makes. She is dangerous because she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know and doesn’t bother to check or double check. As Chait said: frequently in error, never in doubt.

  2. “The Health Care Reform Already Costs More Than We Thought It Would.”

    That’s not such a hard sell arithmetic wise, hell dam near half the country believes the global financial crisis was caused by 100,000 subprime mortgages given to unworthy colored folk!

  3. You have to give McArdle credit for consistency. It’s got to at least as hard to be wrong as be right 100% of the time. I mean, even a blind squirrel trips over an acorn every once in a while.
    The ““Econoblogger” reminds me of “Stalag 13” with McArdle as Colonel Klink – a blundering idiot who’s constantly fearful, and consistently wrong.
    Competent economist’s and bloggers who actually know about the subject are her nemesis, Colonel Hogan.
    And the editors of “Econoblogger” are like Sgt. Shultz, eternally saying, ”
    “I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing!” Or, “I know nothing–NOTHING!”)
    Maybe I can get a job at The Atlantic as their “Apostropheblogger.” Nah, I get them right every once in a while.

    • Maybe I can get a job at The Atlantic as their “Apostropheblogger.”

      LOL! And I could be the “Arithmeticblogger.” And then we could take turns explaining quantum mechanics, unless you know something about quantum mechanics.

  4. Sorry maha, I don’t know anything about knowing what those guys do, let alone know anything about measuring how short the atomic mechanics are.
    But you can ask Megan, I bet she knows all about measuring how short the atomic mechanics are. And if she doesn’t, she’ll tell you she does anyway. She would probably start by wanting to have a strong ruler – like Sarah Palin.

    Actually, I’m sure Megan knows less about quantum mechanics than she does about health care costs. It would be hard to prove, though. How do you determine whether she’s poorer at a field she’s never tried, than the one that’s she’s never been right in?
    It’s like which sport would she be worse at? Baseball, where she’s 0 for 100, or football, where as a field goal kicker, she’s 0 for 0?
    My bet is, she’d suck at any endeavor she tries.

    • Sorry maha, I don’t know anything about knowing what those guys do.

      I don’t either. I figure that qualifies us to be The Atlantic‘s science editors.

  6. “I got me a quantum mechanic living next door, he fixes Toyotas too…..”

    I know a little about quantum mechanics. I wish I knew something about fixing Toyotas.

  8. Joan,
    Be careful, because if you can answer the following question, you won’t qualify to be the “Frenchoblogger” for The Atlantic, it might prove you might actually know a little bit of French: Qu’est-ce que c’est?
    Oh crap, I think I got the apostophe’s right, so there goes MY gig!
    Damn you, ‘cut and paste!!!’

    Shit, French may be worse than English. At least in English, they’re at the end of words. Just in that ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est’ phrase, there’s one at the beginning, and one damn near the beginning. Wass up wid dat?
    Russian is far superior. It has NO apostrophe’s. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Of course, the word for ‘Hello’ looks like someone urped-up a large portion of Cyrillic ‘alphabet soup…’

  10. “Ignorance breeds confidence”

    Best quote of the day!!!

  11. Pingback: Tweets that mention The Mahablog » You, Too, Can Be an Econoblogger! -- Topsy.com

  12. I’m so stupid that I think I’m smart…that’s how stupid I am! I’m a regular compendium of knowledge. I know things that the average person could only dream of knowing. For instance..I bet you didn’t know that the International Dateline was discovered by John Dateline in 1837. See, and that’s just a random sampling of my immense body of knowledge.

  13. You can’t fool me, C U N D. I know that French phrase – I learned if from David Byrne in 1977! It means “psycho killer”.

    (Of course, unlike McMegan, I’m joking.)

  14. Shit, French may be worse than English.

    Merde, c’est vrai!

    Oops. There goes my shot at the McArdle Prize in Linguistics. (I also know, thanks to Steve Martin, “Omelet du fromage.”)

    I bet you didn’t know that the International Dateline was discovered by John Dateline in 1837.

    Ha! Good one. And let us not forget the indoor-plumbing contribution of Thomas Crapper. (Actually that one may be true?)

  15. CUND Gulag – You are right. Google trandlate gives no apostophe in translations.

    Консерваторы являются отказаться отходов неудачных генетических экспериментов.

Comments are closed.