Paul Krugman and the art of calling out a colleague

This is just good! Salon.

The New York Times columnist demolishes familiar arguments made by unnamed hacks

Unnamed my ass! Heh. Photos of Bobo and T. Friedman. Also a reference to MFBTIR.

The New York Times opinion section, like the Senate, has this rule where you aren’t allowed to call out a colleague by name when you think he or she is full of shit. As in the Senate, this rule is silly and anachronistic and enforces a strained phony cordiality at the expense of honesty. It doesn’t ever stop Paul Krugman, though, who simply responds to his columnist peers’ dumb arguments without ever referring to them by name.

For example: David Brooks, whose most annoying schtick is to write something that sounds reasonable until you realize what he’s actually arguing (like, for example, “people often don’t intervene when they see something horrible happening” is a very interesting point, unless your real point is that this is because of hippies and the terrible ’60s), wrote earlier this month that American income equality is overstated, and that the real income gap worth examining is that between the college-educated upper middle class, who are doing well, and those with only a high school education, who have been left behind by our post-industrial economy. (In this case Brooks’ “actual” point is that “Blue inequality” is merely the resentment of educated liberals who hate success while “Red states” have the real authentic American inequality.)

Yeah, if you're gonna call someone out, call his ass out by name or it does no good. So he objects? He's probably not gonna get close enough you can deck him. Dammit.

MoDo might be the exception, in which case take a coupla steps back or it might be you who gets decked...