Columnist On Columnist Crime

These guys are all New York Times columnists.

 

IJAG: You're decision. Believe it if it makes you happy. Happiness always trumps truth.

 

At some point, you'd think an opinions editor would put his foot down...

 

Why?

 

Yeah, this whole thing's been great publicity for the Times op-ed page -- very convenient now that you can read those columnists online without paying. And a columnist catfight at a paper allows editors to pat themselves on the back about how they're supporting the vast marketplace of ideas, etc.

 

My (minor) point exactly.
TimesSelect was, by accounts, a disaster. Now, the content's free and they're whacking each other, with the added benefit of folks helping David Brooks make a further jackass out of himself. What's not to love?

 

This may be a bit of a threadjack, but has anyone actuallly been called out, by name not paper, in a another paper's story?

Happened to me in a game preview from paper in another town. Kind of pissed me off, but then just made me laugh and wished I was covering that game.

 

Used to happen all the time, back in what used to be called the "underground" press.

 

Serious question:

If Reagan's and the Republican Party's racism/exploitation of Southern bigotry was so blatant during the 1980 campaign, why did Paul Krugman agree to work on Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers?

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/resource/findaid/ecstaffe.htm

Cheers,

Mike

 

If you disagree with a president, are you supposed to leave the country until a new one is elected? If you are offered a job in an administration, does that require you to be in lockstep on every issue -- or can one take the attitude that he can be more effective from the inside than from the outside?

 

Frank,

Frank,

Ordinarily, I'd acknowledge and agree with your point. Of course one doesn't have to be in lockstep with all an adminstration's beliefs to serve it admirably--or to try to change those beliefs from the inside. But in his writing and during televised interviews and panel shows, Krugman has offered a thesis that the Republican Party grew in strength through an insidious race-baiting campaign over several years--which, according to his recent column and several posters on this board, was obvious in 1980. So either the GOP's conspiracy wasn't so obvious in '80 and there's a lot of political/historical Monday-morning QBing going on here, or Krugman decided the race-baiting was something he could live with and now has some explaining to do.

Just my $.02.

Cheers,

Mike

 

Come on. I think most of us have worked on newspapers whose editorial pages expressed political views that were the direct opposite of ours. I know I have. But in most cases the opinion people were not considered part of the newsroom, so I did not see it as my problem. Krugman would be a hypocrite only if he had been part of the race-baiting strategy team and now pretended he was one of the good guys.

Besides: