Columnist On Columnist Crime

[Ben_Hecht]

The second part was.

He should have just pointed out the fact that Reagan was a soulless old piece of mauve cardigan and left it at that.

Come on. Give the man his props. He had a friendly smile and nice hair.

Can we get a Kanye West verdict on Reagan?

NICE HAIR?!?!?!?!

I know you meant to put that in blue.

Love how Nancy luuuuuvs stem-cel research. When it's their own personal oxes being gored, all the garden-variety cons turn tail and
plead their own special cases.

 

[Singapore Slim]

Kanye'll just tell him not to get his tummy tucked.

Weak.

Stuck-in-bed-after-a-tummy-tuck-weak, or Gary Burghoff's-left-arm-weak?

Insensitive-toward-a-man-who-just-lost-his-mother-weak.

A mother of a mother, who I never knew and whose son I'll never meet, and don't wish to (we get it, you speed up the samples ... weak).

Insensitive is when I laugh in your face. Unless you're Kanye, get off the your shiny unicorn.

I'm not Kanye, but my mother did grow up with Donda. That was ****ed up, simple and plain, whether anyone here knew her, me or anyone else.

The problem with Reagan is that his legacy has become victory in the Cold War, something that's managed to trump his indefensible takes on race. But eh, there's really no reason for me to expect anyone to care about that. **** Cheney's take on apartheid was in lock-step with Reagan's, and no one cared enough about that to think, "really, do we want this man as the vice-president?" Or, de facto president, if you prefer. Draw your own conclusions from that.

Anyway, back to Kanye...Kanye was right when he said Bush doesn't care about black people. Bush clearly hasn't given black folks a second thought. After all, black people don't tend to vote Republican and the GOP tends not to need their votes (at least so long as Democrats keep trying to win elections by winning about 43 per cent of white votes and every black person but Clarence Thomas and Alan Keyes). He's savvy enough to sprinkle color into his administration, but he's frighteningly indifferent toward black folks. That's foul, but it doesn't make me angry.

Reagan, on the other hand, DID care about black people...in a really bad way. He was openly antagonistic toward black people and didn't even try to pretend otherwise.

And even though that was blatantly obvious at every turn, people ate that **** up and continue to do so. Says as much about this country as it does about Ronnie.

Fine and dandy, hem and haw, I could give a lick. I don't care.

 

[imjustagirl2]

From Pitts' column:

If all you knew of Ronald Reagan is what you saw on newscasts or read in the initial coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Miami Herald, you’d think him a cross between Wilford Brimley and John Rambo, a twinkle-eyed grandfather with a fondness for jellybeans who singlehandedly saved America, kicked the Commies in the butt, and maybe even found a cure for the common cold while he was at it.

I'm completely fine with that.

 

[forever_town]

It could be funnier. Try a writer's feud between two columnists on the same publication.

That happened to me, although it was on a Web site I and the other guy were on. The guy wrote a column in which he launched an ad hominem attack on the Dixie Chicks right after their comments. I wrote a column in which I attacked his facts. He wrote a response column that attacked me.

He didn't just post his attack column on our Web site. He posted it in a bunch of places.

 

[Ace]

These guys are all New York Times columnists.

 

[ink-stained wretch]

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

 

[forever_town]

These guys are all New York Times columnists.

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

 

[Ace]

These guys are all New York Times columnists.

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

Why?

 

[Boomer7]

These guys are all New York Times columnists.

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.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

These guys are all New York Times columnists.

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?

 

[Bob Slydell]

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.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

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

 

[Mike_Sielski]

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

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

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?

 

[Mike_Sielski]

Frank,

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,

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

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

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.

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:

A Small Correction
SYNOPSIS: Krugman corrects the misconception that he was a member of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors. He was on the Council's staff. This piece has some good personal anecdotes

I've now seen several pieces with a small misstatement about my career. For once it's not a malicious thing, just an error. But I'd like to correct it - and tell the slightly interesting story that goes with it.

The error is the statement that I was on Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. I wasn't - I was on the Council's staff. That's a significant difference. Council members are political appointees; they are expected togive speeches defending the administration's policies, and so on. Staff positions are, in principle, civil service jobs. Admittedly, in practice the Council's staff tends to reflect the ideology of its bosses, except in special cases. And my time there was a peculiar special case. Here's the story.

In the summer of 1982 the Reaganites panicked: the US economy was in a tailspin, the Latin debt crisis was exploding, and they briefly worried about economic disaster. So they called in a moderate Republican with sterling credentials, Martin Feldstein, to head the CEA. Feldstein in turn decided that he wanted a team of whiz-kids, so he brought a group of Cambridge-based young people down with him. To lure his top picks, he created two "super-staff" positions: domestic and international policy economist. The domestic policy economist was a guy named Larry Summers; I wonder what happened to him? I was the international economist.

A funny story: we weren't on the White House payroll. For obscure political reasons, many White House staffers were paid by other agencies, then seconded to the WH. I got my paychecks from the Maritime Administration; Feldstein occasionally called me "midshipman".

Larry and I made no secret of the fact that we were Democrats. So why did I do it? Not for career purposes, at least not in the narrow sense: I already had tenure, and what I needed to rise in the academic world was more technical papers, not a behind-the-scenes role in Washington. (My academic reputation - and my Clark Medal - are the result of a baker's dozen of theoretical papers on international trade, currency speculation and crises, economic geography, and macroeconomics.) Mainly I thought it would be interesting - a chance to see how the alleged real world works. And it was. As it happened, the politics were not a problem: since my job required no public defense of the administration, it was all internal stuff; Feldstein was to my right, but to the left of almost everyone else in the administration, so I never found myself having to defend a position I didn't support.

There's more about this in my essay Incidents from my career.


Originally published on the Official Paul Krugman Site, 8.29.02

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Oops.
Seems to be some air leaking out of a talking-point here.

 

[Ace]

For an economist, Krugman really is good with words.

 

[Mike_Sielski]

Frank and Fen,

A couple of points:

First, I wasn't looking to score "talking points," like some O'Reilly acolyte. I was merely asking a question.

Second, and more importantly, I wrote that Krugman might need to do some explaining, and he did, insofar as he didn't take a paycheck from the adminstration per se. That said, I'm still puzzled by the timeline of his agreeing to take the job at the administration's request and his and others' current accusations about Republican race-baiting.

Krugman's thesis is not a mere difference of political opinion (e.g. "small government" vs. "big government," different ideas about Social Security reform, etc.) made in good faith--the sort of disagreements that are common in politics and would understandably result in someone working with/for people of different ideologies. He's basically alleging that Republicans are racists and have been for a long time, and that's how they consolidated political power, and their strategy was recognizable back in 1980, even before Reagan took office. It's hard for me to accept that he could have believed this and worked for the administration in any capacity, whether he had to compromise his political principles or not. I mean, if you thought the people running the government came into power through insidious, disgusting means, and they asked for your help, wouldn't you tell them to go pound sand?

So, again, my question stands: Was Republican racism (as Krugman sees it) something he could live with and still help them out, or is it only through convenient hindsight that he argues this conspiracy was evident all those years ago?

This is fun, BTW.

Cheers,

Mike

 

[Ace]

Working on the Council of Economic Advisers, couldn't you assume that you are trying to helpthe entire country, rather than just the current administration?