Megan McArdle

I learned a long time ago not to read Megan McArdle's columns when they're reprinted as op-eds in the Star Tribune. I don't remember why, but (like David Brooks) it was clear she never had anything worth saying, let alone worth me reading it.

I've often wondered why anyone paid her to be a pundit, and at some point I looked her up to see what her qualifications were. I must have been thinking about posting about her, but then decided not to, since it's kind of boring to rag on about the punditocracy.

But here's something she just wrote in her current gig for the Washington Post about how wrong she was when she said there was nothing to fear for Roe v. Wade and abortion rights with a Trump Supreme Court:

I won't say this is the wrongest I have ever been; that would be ridiculous, given that I supported the Iraq War, and thought the collapse of Lehman Brothers would instill a bracing sense of moral responsibility in the financial sector. But I have not been this wrong since I decided in 2016 to go on holiday after the election, because I thought there would be little worth covering in Hillary Clinton's presidential transition.

I don't know how anyone can be that wrong about that many consequential — historic — topics, know they were wrong, and still keep writing for an international audience. (How do you even show your face outside your front door?)

I have to say, there aren't too many women who could do it... usually it takes a man.

That's where looking up who Megan McArdle is comes in. She's a New Yorker. Her dad was the managing director of the General Contractors Association of New York, and her mother was a real estate broker. That means she grew up around the movers and shakers of the city, the people who were building things, people who talked big and made deals. Like Donald Trump, literally.

She went to the Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, where John and Robert Kennedy went, among many other recognizable names. She went to Penn for undergrad and then got an MBA at (wait for it) the University of Chicago, the font of right-wing economics. (All of that comes entirely from the Wikipedia.)

Yes, I'm making a lot of assumptions about what that means about her. But given her writing track record, the leaping feels pretty safe. 

Oh, hey, I guess I'm not the only one who thinks this... and this article has more details.