Ezra Klein Asks Mark Ames: “Dude, Where’s My Queen’s English?”

What You Should Hate / August 6, 2009

By Mark Ames

My article on Megan McArdle’s taxpayer-subsidized childhood, published in today’s Alternet, is kicking up an entertaining shitstorm. It’s Jiffy Pop time here in Harlem, I tell ya! I learned a lot of things so far, but by far the most shocking is this: Ezra Klein don’t know English grammar.

Ezra Klein, the liberal blogger at the Washington Post, switched sides in his debate with McArdle over health care, by turning against me in an article today headlined “Is Megan McArdle Right About Everything?” Yup, I been done in by my own ideological kin, folks. That would be fine, but here’s the problem: Ezra Klein needs an English TA. Especially when he tries using that silly High English Diction so popular with teacher’s pet types.

See, teacher’s pets are more concerned with polite rules and getting a pat on the head, than they are with defending, say, millions of uninsured Americans. So in attacking me, Ezra, the wunderkind with the mousse-caked hair and the giant smile that says “I’m so happy to be alive!”, slips up on the banana peel of Queen’s English for all the world to see, in the concluding sentence of his defense of Megan McArdle:

As I’ve argued at length, I think she’s wrong. But I don’t need to drag her family into that argument. And nor should I. [Bold mine–Ames]

Ahem. Ezra, son…you’re from Southern California, not Eton. Dude, seriously. That last sentence–it’s a howler. It’s what Bugs Bunny would say if he were mocking people like you. But you mean it– you’re so busy trying to sound British (eg “McArdle pere”) that you didn’t even notice that your “And nor” makes no fucking sense at all, in any dialect anywhere, including American English and even SoCal surfer English. It amounts to putting two contradictory transitions together, as if Ezra Klein were saying, “Yes no I.”

Is that what you’re saying? Because if so, whoa baby! Descartes, you’ve been toppled! “Yes no I.” Dude, seriously. Think about it. Fuckin’ trippy, dude.

Seriously Ezra, if your piece proves one thing, it’s this: you shouldn’t have graduated one year early from college. As proud as we all are of you for accomplishing that feat.

You proved another point: that one can always count on a fellow progressive to cover one’s backside–with poison-tipped knives.

Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.

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17 Comments

Add your own

1. Jack Reynolds | August 6th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Klein knows that McArdle is married to exactly the kind of blowhard who wets her panties, right? Either way, it’d take more than a few paragraphs of shallow, breathless, stupid apologetics to get into her pants. I thought Klein preferred *$(#)%@ little %*#@, anyway.
2. CapnMarvel | August 6th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Mark, I’m your biggest fan!
3. aleke | August 6th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Hahha liberals are scoundrels that will stab you in the back. Leftists are the only ones that are rational
4. doctor k | August 6th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
people who say articles like these are ‘low blows’ have the totally wrong idea. the ‘low blow’ is writing a gigantic wordy defense of the Golden Horde mentality of the health care status quo. responding to mcardle’s stinking shit with anything other than an exposition of her gross hypocrisy and absurd privilege is the correct path towards de-legitimizing the shameless water-carriers who make up the libertarian ‘movement’
5. wyseguy | August 6th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Ames, you’re a god.
6. DMC | August 6th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
From the comments section on that pathetic retort:
“His having tried this nasty approach will sully the careers of his children, sad to say.”
Does anyone seriously believe that exposing a hypocritical libertarian will kill off their offspring’s chances at getting ahead in their careers?
7. Groovius Maximus | August 6th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Ezra speak english? That unpossible.
8. firewalkwithme | August 6th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Fuck that little bitch.
9. Righteousbrother | August 7th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Which bitch, Klein or McArdle?
10. Kavuye Toon | August 7th, 2009 at 3:37 am
Captain save a ho!
11. Doom | August 7th, 2009 at 5:41 am
@6: I’m more disturbed by the implication that Ames would ever have children.
12. Mish | August 7th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Ames, what the hell are you doing?! It’s fine to lay the smack-down on McArdle, but going after Klein? You KNOW Klein is an emotionally dependent runt who will spiral into a neurotic breakdown after reading such this piece, which I can only describe as some sort of piledrivercombinedwithaskullfuckingandmaybeamesrapedyourmothertoojustforthehellofit.
13. Zipperfish | August 7th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
I don’t know, Mark’s response sounds a little sour-grapey to me. I mean going after the grammar is bascially chat-forum tactics.
Of course, I have no idea who this Ezra guy is, nor the Megan chick for that matter. And you know, somehow I feel better for that.
14. Kavuye Toon | August 7th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Re:zipperfish
My dude, you’re missing the hart of the matter A liberal blogger is trying to get his oh so intelligent, compassionate, and above the fray credentials stamped, then he steps in a piece of dog poopy.
You can learn more in the book I just read, it’s propertyly enrightitled “Cross Generational Taboo Queer Relationships Facilitated Via Sybian Fucking Machines in a living woman and a dead woman” by Megan McArdle and a dead old Woman covered in embalming slimes, yards of old dead skin long deserted by collagen und ironed flat and shined up with base coats of makeup invented to help disfigured ww1 vets return to society, and covered in tattoos of extinct animals!, Columbia University Press 2007
And that’s why poor Ezra never had a chance 🙁
15. dsip | August 9th, 2009 at 4:14 am
“Nor should I” is the kind of idiotic thing I’ve said for years now to sound smart. Boy am I embarrassed. Plus, talking like Bugs Bunny is usually a good thing–unless, like Ezra, you mean to sound smart, as opposed to Bugs, who makes fun of people trying to sound smart. Count me a double-idiot.
16. Aaron | August 10th, 2009 at 9:56 am
On “His having tried this nasty approach will sully the careers of his children, sad to say.” — I’m more entertained by the fact that whichever of Ames’s bastards lived may legitimately be expected to carry the stain of their father’s shamefulness, while Miss McArdle gets a free pass on the count of guilt by association with daddy’s Mob ties.
17. Matt | November 18th, 2011 at 1:58 am
I know you wrote this two years ago, but I’m still so wound up by this that I’m going to pretend this is one of the weakest responses to an argument I have ever read online. That’s why I’m writing this comment: Because it’s so weak that it had absolutely no effect on me whatsoever. Klein’s point is that you ignore the substance of the health care argument by making personal attacks. And then you respond to Klein by making fun of the final sentence in his post. Again, WHERE’S the controlled substance dude???