August 22nd, 2012
Holy shit. Ferguson slips under the bottom rope, digs around under the mat, and pulls out some tables, ladders, and chairs. And then proceeds to go hardcore on the goon squad which popped up to take down his Newsweek story. Sample awesome:
First prize goes to Berkeley professor Brad DeLong, whose blog opened with the headline “Fire-His-Ass-Now.” “He lied,” rants DeLong. “Convene a committee at Harvard to examine whether he has the moral character to teach at a university.” My own counter-suggestion would be to convene a committee at Berkeley to examine whether or not Professor DeLong is spending too much of his time blogging when he really should be conducting serious research or teaching his students. For example, why hasn’t Professor DeLong published that economic history of the 20th century he’s been promising for the past six years? It can’t be writer’s block, that’s for sure.
Runner up is James Fallows of The Atlantic for his hilariously pompous post “As a Harvard Alum, I Apologize.” Well, as an Oxford alum, I laugh.
In third place comes Krugman with his charge of “unethical commentary … a plain misrepresentation of the facts” requiring “an abject correction.” The idea of getting a lesson from Paul Krugman about the ethics of commentary is almost as funny as Fallows’s apologizing on behalf of Harvard. Both these paragons of the commentariat, by the way, shamelessly accused me of racism three years ago when I drew an innocent parallel between President Obama and “Felix the Cat.” I don’t know of many more unethical tricks than to brand someone who criticizes the president a racist.
If only he’d had a moment to spare for America’s great young talent, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
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Wow, that excerpt really does address directly and forthrightly the allegations of fact-distorting made by each writer, demonstrating conclusively that Ferguson did not distort any facts.
Actually, it does no such thing. In the legal profession I believe* this is known as “pounding the table.”
*Fact-checked by talking to an actual lawyer.
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I did read the entire article and was not convinced. On the policies and numbers, I will defer to the Nobel (Econ.) recipient. His intentional conflating of “taxable return” and “paying any taxes at all,” then saying “Oh I didn’t mean that obviously,” would strike me as intellectually dishonest coming from a random guy on the street, let alone a public intellectual of Ferguson’s standing.
I took JVL’s selection of the particular excerpt as an endorsement of its high relevance to the ongoing debate, unless “sample” really should be taken as “cut and paste whatever sounds good/scores imaginary points on the Sick Burn Scale.” I would prefer to give our esteemed host more credit than that. However, to my untrained eye the excerpt appears to be nothing but ad hominem misdirection.
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Now here I thought “taxable return” meant “taxable return.” He also didn’t equate “taxable return” to “paying any taxes at all” but rather to “paying the taxes.” The most reasonable construction of that, following on a reference to “returns” is “paying the income taxes.” But I guess I don’t have the power to read Scottish minds and divine their hidden intent-to-conflate.
It’s nice to know, though, that Ferguson’s (initially unacknowledged) factual defenses were insufficient to overcome an appeal to Paul Krugman’s authority. The technical legal term for that is “lazy.”
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You got me fair and square, Mike. Fortunately it’s just me seeing that, so my bad.
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Krugman is still seething from the devastating Pearl Harbor job (as Gorilla Monsoon used to say) he suffered a few weeks ago at that conference in Spain.
Nedward August 22, 2012 at 10:35 pm
Not sure if you’ve ever heard of this highly technical markup instrument they’re using now, called “a link” actually, but there’s one of them near the top of the post