Paul Krugman is too extreme for the New York Times

posted at 12:15 pm on September 13, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Memorials ]   

It is difficult to go overboard when writing for a newspaper as blatantly partisan as the New York Times, but liberal kook Paul Krugman is now floundering in the water, crying frantically for a life preserver.

After he said far too much in a cynical and insensitive post about 9/11 on the Times website on Sunday, touching off a firestorm of criticism, he decided to amplify on his remarks. On Monday, September 12, Krugman wrote:

The fact is that the two years or so after 9/11 were a terrible time in America….

It was a time when tough talk was confused with real heroism, when people who made speeches, then feathered their own political or financial nests, were exalted along with — and sometimes above—those who put their lives on the line, both on the evil day and after.

[I]t was a shameful episode in our nation’s history—and it’s one that I can’t help thinking about whenever we talk about 9/11 itself.

In his original post, Krugman went through the customary ultra-liberal posturing to reach the warped conclusion that 9/11 is “an occasion for shame” rather than for solemn remembrance. In support of this view he cites the exploitation of the terrorist attacks on America by “fake heroes … to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.”

At least the “fake heroes” Krugman derides—he names Rudolph Giuliani and George W. Bush—are people with the courage of their own convictions. Krugman by contrast closed comments on his post for what he called “obvious reasons,” those reasons being journalistic cowardice.

The bigger issue is Krugman’s total lack of respect for those for whom 9/11 is a day set aside not just to mourn but to struggle once again to make sense of the incomprehensible. The sudden loss of a loved one ranks high among life’s stressors. But 9/11 was no accident. The manner in which 3,000 innocent Americans were killed was as deliberate as it was brutal. To appropriate such a hallowed occasion for petty nitpicking over politics is to deserve banishment.

Let’s hope the Times has the wisdom to let Krugman drown.

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