Poor Bobo
Although it’s silly in the abstract, I actually kind of enjoy how the prohibition on New York Times columnists disagreeing with each other by name works in practice — Krugman is even more entertaining when he’s forced to completely demolish the arguments made by, er, certain random conservatives.
…as numerous commenters point out, it’s actually a twofer; presumably Bobo is the fake-reasonable apparatchik and James Stewart is the centrist with the “kick me Republican Daddy!” sign permanently strapped to his back. On Stewart, also read Gene Lyons; he was at the forefront of the Times’ utterly botched coverage of the Whitewater fake scandal.
…more on Stewart here.
That post absolutely screamed Bobo at me. It’s quite hilarious. The only difficulty was trying to figure out whether Bobo’s a “pseudo-reasonable apparatchik” or a “professional centrist.” I think it depends on whether his underwear is dirty that day.
He’s both!
THAT’S what makes Bobo special!
Krugman must lock the door of his office on the days Bobo’s columns come out.
Either that, or he’s got The Marx Brothers on an endless loop, so if anyone asks him ‘what’s so funny?’ he can point at Groucho on the TV, and not Bobo in the paper.
I think in this case he’s actually writing about James B. Stewart or some such nonsense, Balloon Juice linked to that column yesterday.
No, I think Bobo is the apparatchik and Stewart is the bulllshit centrist.
Here’s the link
Ah, thanks for the clarification!
I got through the headline there and longed for the return of the D-Squared digest archives. I’ll settle for quoting through a Delong link:
Anyone who reads past the headline on that article is missing the point. No, you can’t use a budget in which every number is a lie and a whole lot of missing numbers are lies of omission as a starting point for anything other than calling the liar a liar.
Just to clarify: that’s Delong quoting Daniel Davies.
Krugman also has James Stewart in his sights; a two-fer
Of brooks, there is nothing more to be said, but despite his egregious whitewater track record, stewart is usually saner on economics.
But after his taking ryan seriously, i’m not going to bother to read him again: fool me once shame on me, fool me twice, won’t get fooled again.
I like to imagine NYT as the country club from Caddyshack where Bobo’s Judge Snails is trying to eat lunch in peace when Paul Krugman’s Rodney Dangerfield comes barging in, “How you doin’ Bobo? Have you seen my Nobel Prize recently? No? That’s not possible It’s hanging right on my neck!”
I have to say that watching a Nobel laureate disembowel mediocre hacks is rather amusing. While I have certainly seen better examples of the art form, the cavalier dismissal of Bobo is priceless.
Well, intellectually, of course, no contest. But why do I see a vision of a limo delivering Brooks to the White House sometime next year to celebrate the signing of the ‘Grand Bargain’ between Obama and Ryan? Ok, must be the Barbancourt rum I’m drinking.
“He’s got to go”.
“He’s a Nobel Prize winner”.
“He’s got to go”.
Per Lyons–
The *Times* Whitewarer coverage was NOT botched. “Botched” implies it was intended to be sound, but something happened. *Fools For Scandal* makes it quite clear that the *Times* & the *Post* NEVER intended to do sound journalism on Whitewater.
Boy, Somerby doesn’t think much of Hilzoy’s family, does he?