{"id":186776,"date":"2013-10-11T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-12T00:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/10\/11\/thank-you-megan-mcardle\/"},"modified":"2013-10-11T19:40:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T00:40:00","slug":"thank-you-megan-mcardle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/10\/11\/thank-you-megan-mcardle\/","title":{"rendered":"Thank You Megan McArdle\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

I frequently write about Meghan “Math is Hard” McArdle, and when I do, I frequently portray her as  one of the most completely useless pundits out there.  (which says a lot)<\/p>\n

I have finally discovered that she serves a purpose.  She is an excellent reverse barometer:  If you reflexively disagree with her, you are almost certain to be right.<\/p>\n

Case in point, her Op\/Ed suggesting that police blotters should be made private<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Because some scumbags on the internet are posting people’s mugshots online, and demanding extortion<\/strike> a fee to remove the pictures, she wants to further restrict public records.<\/p>\n

My initial reaction was, “I’m against it.”<\/p>\n

Then I looked at her examples.  They were all hipster trustifarians who got caught with a joint, or some X, or got busted for drunk driving, like George W. Bush and<\/b> Dick Cheney, and because daddy has some money, they lawyered up and got a deferred adjudication.<\/p>\n

We as a society need to have this information, even if there are ratf%$#s are out there who are attempting extortion.<\/p>\n

I knew I was right as soon as I knew that I disagreed with McArdle, and on closer examination this was confirmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I frequently write about Meghan “Math is Hard” McArdle, and when I do, I frequently portray her as  one of the most completely useless pundits out there.  (which says a lot) I have finally discovered that she serves a purpose.  She is an excellent reverse barometer:  If you reflexively disagree with her, you are almost …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[974,1051,982,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hack-journalism","category-hypocrisy","category-stupid","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}