One of the stupidest things ever written about gay marriage, by Megan McArdle

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There's a lot to read about the Prop 8 oral argument before the Supreme Court, and this includes a lot of the usual bigotry from the right, but I have a candidate for the stupidest article yet to appear on the matter and it comes from the remarkably stupid Megan McArdle.

In "Why Gay Marriage Will Win, and Sexual Freedom Will Lose" -- yes, that's the real title -- McArdle argues, or whatever the verb is for insane verbal diahrrea, that what we're seeing in the inevitable legal triumph of same-sex marriage is the end of the sexual revolution and libertinism generally and a return to the bourgeois repression of the Victorian era:

That's right, I said it: this is a landmark victory for the forces of staid, bourgeois sexual morality. Once gays can marry, they'll be expected to marry. And to buy sensible, boring cars that are good for car seats. I believe we're witnessing the high water mark for "People should be able to do whatever they want, and it's none of my business." You thought the fifties were conformist? Wait until all those fabulous "confirmed bachelors" and maiden schoolteachers are expected to ditch their cute little one-bedrooms and join the rest of America in whining about crab grass, HOA restrictions, and the outrageous fees that schools want to charge for overnight soccer trips. 

And that's not all:

The neo-Victorian morality will protect who you want to marry -- male or female, or maybe even something in between. But the wider open marriage is, the less necessary it becomes to defend the right to carefree sex -- or children -- outside of marriage. One can imagine a Republican politician fifty years hence ruining his career when he throws over his husband and children for a younger man.

Um, sure, maybe. But what of it? Would that really be a problem?

Actually, McArdle doesn't seem to know what she wants. On the one hand, she longs for "the old marital norms" because she's apparently worried about the children of all those single mothers out there (who, of course, shouldn't get any government help, conservatives and right-wing libertarians like McArdle say), but on the other she seems to think marriage rights should be limited, or just that there shouldn't be so much marriage, so that there can be more "carefree sex," sex for the sake of pleasure, a lot more sleeping around, by which I assume she also means gays fucking each other in bath houses instead of making love in their marital beds in some suburban dystopia, lights off, the dishes put a way, the kids finally in bed, maybe getting off before Colbert is over, maybe not.

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No, this is the stupidest thing you’ll read

By Mustang Bobby 

(Ed. note: For more on this stupidity, see Dave Weigel, who did the research Allen didn't do and notes that there were in fact men at the school, not that it would have mattered. -- MJWS) 

Earlier this week I shared the wit and wisdom of Megan McArdle, who said the solution to school shootings was teaching the kids to gang-tackle the attacker, thus making it easier for the coroner to find the bodies. I called it "probably the stupidest thing you'll read today."

My apologies to Ms. McArdle. Or at least I should tell her to get out of the way; she's been overtaken by Charlotte Allen at National Review, who says that the reason all those kids died was that there weren't enough men and well-built 12-year-old boys at Sandy Hook Elementary:

In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the "reading specialist" — were female. There didn't even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza's knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school's public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

Seriously, where does she get this shit?


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Megan McArdle writes the stupidest thing in response to the Connecticut school massacre

By Mustang Bobby

(Ed. note: In case you missed it, see also Jon Chait's post, "McArdle Wins Worst Newtown Reaction Award." Her comments really were remarkably stupid even by her standards. -- MJWS)

Megan McArdle at The Daily Beast says that to prevent another schoolhouse massacre, kids should rush the attacker:

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.

Apparently she was serious.

Not that I would wish that sort of thing on anyone, but the next time it happens, let's all turn to Ms. McArdle and tell her, "You first."

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)