From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Jurriaan Bendien wrote:The question that needs to be asked is what we achieve by polemically writing off Krugman and calling him nasty names. Krugman is a very learned left-liberal economist capable of very good critical inquiry into the US economy and suggesting positive alternatives. I personally believe we should aim to attract people like that to the socialist movement, rather than vent abuse language against them. By doing so, we just shoot ourselves in the foot more than anything else.
But that's what makes Cockburn Cockburn. He is the ultimate contrarian who coined the term "pwogwessive". Although I enjoy reading Krugman (and Maureen Dowd) myself, I enjoy it even more when some self-congratulatory liberal gets a spitball tossed at them.
I posted Cockburn's Krugman column to another list yesterday as a reply to a posting of Ed Koch's comment that Krugman was "lamebrained" in his attempts to anyalye Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad's thinking. Basically, Krugman is a voice of reason within the context of the NY Times and a preening horse's ass in any broader context. But as LBJ memorably said of J. Edgar Hoover, "It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."
Carl
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