Molly Ivins’ real target

(Welcome visitors from Just One Minute and The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid. Update: Also visitors from Betsy's Page.)

Is Molly Ivins' column (Suicide by a thousand cuts, Mar. 23) just one more attack on bloggers by a semi-hysterical MSM news professional?

Most folks say it is, but I'm not so sure.

Ivins certainly takes slaps at bloggers, but a careful reading of her column suggests her real target may be New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

Note that Ivins says:

I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter -- nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened. Or, as author-journalist Curtis Wilkie puts it, "Unless you can cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you shouldn't be allowed to cover a presidential campaign."

As Ivins knows, Krugman is an economist and academic with no professional training or experience as a reporter.

The closest Krugman has ever come to reporting occurred about the time he served as an Enron consultant during the company’s glory days. While Krugman then wrote favorably about Enron, he doesn’t claim he was reporting.

Ivins clearly intends the author-journalist's quote, “Unless you can cover a five-car pile-up …,” to be what boxers call “the finisher.” And she had to mean it for Krugman.

Accurately report a five-car pile-up? Everyone knows Krugman has trouble accurately reporting a country’s annual GDP.

So why is liberal/leftist Ivins telling us Krugman, her ideological bedfellow , shouldn’t be allowed to write opinion? (Let's save for another day consideration of the First Amendment implications of what Ivins is saying. - JinC)

I'll bet it's because Ivins just discovered what many people have known for years: Krugman’s an embarrassment to punditry.

Take a look at this Mar. ’05 Just One Minute Krugman takedown, which includes a link to Krugman’s laughable July ’03 claim:

There is very little evidence in the data for a strong recovery ready to break out. As far as I can make out, Mr. Greenspan's optimism is entirely based on models predicting that tax cuts and low interest rates will get the economy moving.

The economy has boomed since, and the Fed continues to raise interest rates in an effort to prevent it from expanding at too fast a rate.

This Donald Lufkin NRO post from last August shreds an especially nonsensical Krugman column about the virtues of France and its economy.

BTW - Luskin's post provides background and information that’s very helpful to anyone seeking to understand what’s happening in France now.

A final question: Now that Ivins has attacked Krugman, is Maureen Dowd next?

Both Betsy Newmark and Tom Elia have interesting and more serious takes on Ivins' latest.

Open posted at Mudville Gazette