Atrios is looking back at ten years of blogging and holding a spring fundraiser while also listing the ten biggest wankers of the decade. The first entry (9th Runner-Up) is our very own McMegan.
“That’s reasonable doubt”
Guess who?
But could there be a scenario where he–wildly inappropriately–followed this guy, and brandished his gun, and then much to his surprise, the teenager tried to wrestle the gun away, and in the ensuing struggle, he got shot?
Does that seem the most likely explanation to me? No. Could I rule it out? Also no. And that’s reasonable doubt.
McArdle is saying that prosecutors are right not to bring charges against George Zimmerman, not because the “Stand Your Ground” law is written so bizarrely that it might make prosecution difficult, not because there is evidence that Zimmerman fired accidentally, but because she can imagine a scenario in which Zimmerman might have accidentally shot Martin.
Rapunzel Rapunzel Let Down Your Hair, So I Can Climb Up and Get Into Your Underwear
DougJ touched a nerve earlier, and I’ll just say you won’t see this kind of shit too often outside the red light district in Amsterdam:
Full disclosure: my husband once had a fellowship with the Charles G. Koch foundation, and works for Reason Magazine, which has been a recipient of funds from Koch charitable organizations. We also sometimes use Vanity Fair paper napkins and Dixie brand paper products, which are owned by the Kochs.
Say what you will about fluffers in the porn industry, but they’re not afraid or ashamed to admit whose dick they are sucking and know better than to pretend that that really isn’t a dick in their mouth- not to mention they would at least have the professional courtesy to know better than to try to slap this sort of flaccid bullshit in your face.
Criminy. How long before the Fonzi of Freedom has a job at the Atlantic?
Gun for hire
Since noon on February 16, Megan McArdle has written six posts, four of them questioning the authenticity of the (Koch-connected) Heartland memos and/or attacking the leaker personally, and one attacking the Democratic party for focusing on David Koch. Her husband works for the Koch-funded Reason magazine where he was recently a Koch fellow.
At what point does this start to bother McArdle’s colleagues — Fallows, Coates, etc. — and online buddies — Yglesais, Drum, etc.? Is this whole thing an even bigger circle jerk than I imagined?
Examining her own benchtops
McArglebargle really is beyond parody (although the mighty TBogg gives it a good go).
Last year, we bought a house for two main reasons: we were sick of moving, and I wanted a better kitchen. We were living in a flip house that had been designed by a contractor with a rather spotty work ethic, and some very strange ideas about what makes for gracious living. (Wine fridge in the kitchen–and less than three feet of total counter space. Two jacuzzi tubs–and a hot water heater the size of a thimble. Frightful things going on in the walls, which were revealed when the house flooded, and we had to move out.)
Any long time reader knows that for me, a good kitchen is important. And while we’d reached a sort of uneasy truce with the flip house, by dint of purchasing a kitchen cart and an island to supplement its storage, our wedding basically shattered that fragile peace. Even before we’d sent out the invitations, casseroles and platters were pouring through the breach in our defensive lines and setting up forward positions on the book shelf that divided the dining area from the living room. By the time of our wedding, the entire downstairs had been overrun, and it seemed to me that the soup bowls were eyeing the stairway with a thoughtful air.
…
But after that, I declared that I was done. Unless something broke, we would put no more money into the kitchen until that distant day when we had actually saved enough money to renovate. That’s where we stood in January of this year. Then our dishwasher tried to kill me, and I decided that maybe we should Do Something about the kitchen after all.
It was the day after New Year’s, and the dishwasher was very full. Also, my arm was very sore, due to some unspecific, slow-healing rotator cuff injury that had been exacerbated in the frenzy of getting ready for the previous night’s dinner party. I sleepily stumbled into the kitchen and opened the dishwasher so that I could unload it and put the rest of the dishes in.
Unfortunately, as they’d informed us when they installed the dishwasher, our counters weren’t level, which meant that one screw holding in the appliance was under more strain than the other. Sometime in the winter of 2011, it had ripped out of the cheap laminate, at which point its colleague decided to go on strike too. Every time we opened the dishwasher, it tilted towards you, and the racks slid forward.
Perhaps sensing my languor, on New Year’s Day 2012, the racks decided that the time had come to finally make their break for freedom. Just in time, I threw my aching left arm in front of the drawers, and stopped them from leaping across the floor with all our good china inside.
I also nearly stopped my heart–I haven’t felt such a sharp burst of pain since I ripped up a bunch of ligaments getting thrown into a fence by a horse. I must have emitted some interesting noises, since my husband, normally a late sleeper, came trotting downstairs.
“[Expletive deleted]” I said calmly. “We’re replacing this [bleeping] counter or I will [censored].”
Thence follows a seemingly endless analysis of her kitchen renovation which really must be read to be believed, its inanity rivalled only by that of the comments from her horde of winged monkeys about the merits of different countertops and the perils of machine washing the good china.
Up next, Megan gives us a blow by blow illustrated account of her most recent colonic irrigation.
Oh, By The Way…
Which is another way of saying that I neither should nor have anything more to say about Komenfreude, except…
McMegan, as is her wont, has hit bottom and continued to dig — with a second post complaining that all the pro-choice meanies missed her point that funding health care services means that one is funding abortions (yup — neither logic nor the concept of designated donations seem to be in McArdle’s wheelhouse). She goes on to educate her readers about the strange fact that overhead pays for actual expenses — which, astonishingly, many of us actually know. She makes no effort to address the claims of those who argue that the Komen Foundation’s overhead is incommensurate with its actual services. That would have required actual effort (and a calculator!).
She here ignores what more seasoned or cynical reporters would take to the bank: more people make a living off the disease than die of it.
McArdle’s claim rests on the fact that overhead at Komen runs about 10% of its annual expenses of roughly 400,000,000, with fundraising adding another roughly 10% — which in fact doesn’t sound too bad. But even a cursory look at the most easily accessed numbers suggests that a more curious writer would have had some questions about Komen’s books.
For example: according to the foundation’s 2010 annual report, money spent on adminstrative overhead exceeded that for treatment.
It almost matched what was spent for screening, and even (now politicized) research expenditures accounted for less than 20% of whole pie.
By far the largest line item service paid for by Komen is that for education, which accounts for about $140 million, or 35% of the operation’s budget. Now donors might want to know that cash offered up “for the cure” was by and large being spent on efforts that have nothing to do with either individual patient care or the science of breast cancer, but “education,” taken all in all is certainly an important element in an approach to any progressive disease — and the difference in outcomes for breast cancers discovered when they are local compared to later stages is formidable.
But even these numbers are a little squirrely. This post details a breakdown in which 37% of that budget goes for the actual delivery of “education.” 63% goes for everything else, from developing materials to postage — and professional fees and occupancy and so on. That is – there is a fair amount of overhead hidden within this education line item, and obscured from the top line budget. Again, a cynical or, perhaps better, a competent reporter would ponder the outsize proportion of money Komen chooses to spend on education, as opposed to activities that more directly connect to patient outcomes and the future of cancer medicine. Given how easy it is to slosh cash around consultant fees and production contracts, if I were looking for ways a charity might turn itself into a piggy bank, this is the kind of thing I’d be looking for.*
McArdle didn’t, which is of course, no surprise to anyone here. The only good news is that her trademark “I’m agin’ whatever the reality based community is for” act really does seem to be wearing thin; perhaps it’s just inattention on my part, but she seems to be having much more difficulty breaking out of the echo chamber she’s created over there than in the past. Once a Villager, always one, I guess — but there are high tables and low, and I’m thinking that McArdle looks more and more like she will remain well downhill of the (pink Himalayan salt) as her combination of sloth and mean-girl reflex continues to lose its lustre.
But all that is preamble to the real point of this post, which is that all of the Komen reporting, and especially the discussion of Nancy Brinkley’s truly impressive annual salary, reminded me of the late great documentary Marjoe, and especially this clip. (The action really gets on target at about 2:52.)
<div align=”center”><iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/1-C3trU9ljw” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
There is nothing new under the sun.
*The usual disclaimer: I haven’t done what I’m suggesting McArdle should have. I’m not a forensic accountant, and I didn’t write a story in which I try to argue that Komen’s overhead numbers are kosher. Nor am I claming here that they are not, just that if I were an editor I’d have a lot of questions to ask any reporter that came to me with the kind of unsourced and unsupported tripe we confront here.
Image: Jan Steen, The Doctor and his Patient, before 1679.
That sun is gonna shine in my back door someday
To paraphrase commenter sb, none of you are going to want to hear this. I’m not sure I even like typing it. But Megan McArdle has an excellent post about why life is different for poor black children then it is for middle-aged white men with sinecures at Forbes. It goes on forever, so there’s probably some crazy stuff in it, but it genuinely makes a lot of good points. Credit where credit is due.
That sun is gonna shine in my back door somedayPost + Comments (63)