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Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. More

Megan was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra-dry skim-milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster-recovery firms at Ground Zero … all before the age of 30.

While working at Ground Zero, Megan started Live From the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. She has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic, along with its owner, in August 2007.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington, D.C., where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.
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Playboy, We Hardly Knew Ye

By Megan McArdle

Jun 1 2009, 4:24 PM ET Comment

I could forgive the dripping misogyny, but this isn't even a little bit funny.  And I don't mean that in the feminist, "You shouldn't laugh at dumb blonde jokes!" way.  I mean, it's not funny like listening to your Great Uncle Fred do his Milton Berle impression isn't funny.  Guy Cimbalo doesn't seem to realize that just saying "fuck" a lot is no longer comedy gold.  Yet historical records indicate that it lost its shock value sometime around 1966--eighth grade graduation at the very latest.

My ex-boyfriend and I had a collection of vintage Playboys picked up at a garage sale, which we used to, yes, read for the articles.  (The centerfolds had long since been scissored out, presumably by the chap who sold them to us.)  Those were good articles, written by good writers, about interesting topics--Bill Cosby on race, William F. Buckley on religion and society, Gore Vidal on . . . Gore Vidal.    Now we have Guy Cimbalo and his Frantabulous Late-Nite Borscht Belt Shockeroos. 

Srsly?


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