WHERE ARE THE WANKERS OF YORE NOW - #9 RUNNER UP MEGAN MCARDLE

Megan was the 9th runner up.

The theme of Megan's life has been failing upwards. She wrote a whole book about how it's great that she failed upwards, and how wonderful a society we have that lets people like Megan fail upwards (the original title was Permission to Suck), and how wonderful it would be if all people like Megan could fail upwards, because what a grand life it is if you are absolutely useless and stupid and horrible and cruel and everything just works out for you anyway as long as you are born rich! 

All of these horrible, awful, stupid people somehow manage to make the rounds of all of our elite publications. Checking Wikipedia, it seems that 10 years ago, Megan was at The Atlantic. She then moved to Newsweek/Daily Beast. Then Bloomberg View. Then, where all the worst columnists go to die, The Washington Post (they have good people, too). The last time I remember anyone having a strong reaction to anything Megan wrote was *almost* 10 years ago, but just after the start of the SECOND ESCHATON DECADE so it just makes the cut. It was for this:

I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. Would it work? Would people do it? I have no idea; all I can say is that both these things would be more effective than banning rifles with pistol grips.

That was in response to the Sandy Hook shooting, where 20 of the victims were 6-7 years old, and all the victims were big pussies for not gang rushing the shooter.

 

A  hilarious thing was how many old creepy weird dudes (I am now an old weird and hopefully not too creepy dude) White Knighted her for this, much as they did when she was suggesting Iraq war protesters be bludgeoned by 2x4s ('She didn't know what a 2x4 was' was my favorite, back then.  A nerf noodle, perhaps!).  The McArdle Defense Force is still a thing!

She professes to genuinely regret being an Iraq war supporter, but her latest "apology" for it is a classic of the "ok, I admit conservatives were bad, but the REAL DANGER is that the libs might do something bad too that I just made up in my head" genre.

Turning the evils of conservatism into a warning, somehow, about liberalism is a standard column from her, usually of one of the following flavors:

1) Don't be like us, liberals, you'll regret it, even as we keep doing it!

2) Look at what you made us do, liberals.

3) Sure powerful conservatives are bad, but have you seen some liberal guy with a sign somewhere, like the one in my head, even worse.

As I said, it's been almost 10 years since she's inspired much of a reaction other than giggling. She still gets paid lots of money to write nonsense in service of the rich because we have a wonderful society that lets people like Megan fail upwards forever, and she'll suggest others club you with a 2x4, or should gang rush you, if you argue it should be any other way.

       

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