(More) Stupidity from Don Luskin and The New York Sun

[Composed Thinker]

The Collected Works of a Paranoid Crank
By Russ Smith
Mr. Smith writes weekly columns for New York Press and Baltimore's City Paper.


Paul Krugman, an economist who teaches at Princeton University, is a crank.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't be particularly significant: Academia, notably at the elite institutions, is littered with Mr. Krugman's ilk. Isolated from the real world and worshipped by impressionable young men and women, professors collectively form a base of the Democratic Party that's as potent, in rhetoric if not fundraising, as the country's unions, trial lawyers, and the vast majority of Hollywood celebrities.

But Mr. Krugman is one of the most influential left-wing critics of the Bush administration. Thanks to Howell Raines, he has a twice-weekly op-ed column in the New York Times. Maureen Dowd, a colleague of his on that page, isn't nearly as consequential because her own column is all off-the-cuff fluff, a primer in pop culture that almost makes another Times staple, Frank Rich, seem serious.

Foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman — who ought to reacquaint himself with The Lovin' Spoonful's 1960s hit "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind" — appears as moderate as the Washington Post's David Broder compared to Mr. Krugman. The less said about Bob Herbert, the better. And the paper's newest pundit, the ubiquitous David Brooks, the "conservative" who's presentable to liberals, is intent on becoming this generation's Gail Sheehy.

Currently, in addition to braying about President Bush's tax cuts, the "quagmire" of Iraq, the "conspiracy" of conservatives to subvert the Founding Fathers' intentions, and the relative insignificance of September 11, 2001, Mr. Krugman is flogging a collection of his columns, "The Great Unraveling." It's as dishonest a book I've read in several years, and I've read books by Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Eric Alterman.

http://poorandstupid.com/chronicle.asp (This is a review reprinted with permission on Luskin's site.)

[maha]

1. Russ Smith is a crank.

All they can do is name-call. They can't refute what Krugman writes without lying. Luskin's "truth squad" columns are nothing but insults of Krugman interspersed with lies.

Example: (scroll down)

http://www.mahablog.com/id21.html

[Composed Thinker]

2. That pretty much sums it up.

I only wish I could read the other lies he's exposed by Eric Alterman and Al Franken and others. While I'm almost sure it's more of the same insult and criticize without naming a single lie, as we saw with that most recent Krugman review, it's good to read what the other side says, just to be familiar.

Edit:

I just went to your blog. I'm still iffy on the entire blogging phenomenon, but it's blogs like yours that get me to be more open to the situation. Keep up the good work.

[Composed Thinker]

3. BUMP