Late last week we got word that venerable/hated by the left/right professor, economist, and columnist Paul Krugman was leaving the New York Times.
I have a feeling that thousand of subscribers who were hanging on by a thread with The Paper of Record have now cut the cord and unsubscribed. This is because the Times seems ever-insistent on disappointing its core readership during the Biden years with nonsense sanewashing of Trump’s dangerous rhetoric and strange actions while obsessing over anything damaging for Biden, such as his age. Krugman was a reason for some of them to stay, but no longer.
I first started reading Krugman during his Slate days, and I found he was quite adept at doing with economics what I do as a science writer in my day job, translate complex information into easy-to-understand copy. Then I was all-in with him at the Times. During two key inter-Democratic Party debates, Iraq and Obama’s stimulus, he was on the side of those issues that were eventually proven correct.
Most notably during the Iraq War, Krugman often staked out a lonely position on an issue during his 25 years at the Times. He was brought on as a neoliberal voice, which struck me as odd as he didn’t seem to be all that neoliberal to me, more of a button-down progressive. Almost right off the bat, he seemed to rankle a few people when he offered opinions such as accusing George W. Bush of lying during the 2000 presidential debates.
But “the Iraq War is a stupid idea being poorly executed” was definitely swimming against the Take Machine stream during those halcyon years when you had the president’s press secretary warning people to watch their mouths. Nevertheless, he persisted and ended up being right, it was a stupid idea that was poorly executed.
Then, during the early Obama years, Krugman took to his NY Times blog and begged the president not to listen to the likes of Tim Geithner and offer a bigger stimulus to pull us out of the Great Recession. This did not happen, and Krugman warned it would not be sufficient to overcome the recession effects, and he also called into question whether people in Obama’s economic team fully understood what was going on.
The stimulus indeed was not large enough as the recovery was delayed and even denied for some, and eventually even Obama economic gurus like Jared Bernstein admitted as such.
Of course, like any political opinion-haver worth their salt, Krugman has been vehemently anti-Trump and has been sounding alarm bells about him for almost a decade now. I’ve sometimes wondered if this puts him at odds lately with the Times’ brass and this part of Krugman’s announcement on Bluesky made me wonder some more:
Nonetheless, I decided to leave in search of more freedom in terms of both style and content. And that’s all I’m going to say for now. My “so long and thanks for all the fish” column will appear next week. As for future plans, watch this space 2/
— Paul Krugman (@pkrugman.bsky.social) 2024-12-06T14:57:07.578Z
“More freedom in terms of both style and content” raised my eyebrows. If indeed he left due to pressure from the editor/publisher to cool his jets on Trump, will the usual suspects in the FREE SPEECH WARRIOR! club rush to his aid? Maybe even call him…”canceled?” I have my doubts.
In any event, I look forward to seeing what’s next for the man.
The last word is in reference to Krugman’s Friday Night Music weekly blog post, where he shared what he was listening to, and what he was discovering. The man has some great music tastes! So, the last word goes to one of his favorites, the criminally short-lived singing/songwriting duo, The Civil Wars.
