I may be forgetting someone, but the way I see it, Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert were just about the only outspoken, confrontational liberals in the punditosphere. The only other two I can think of who might qualify are Harold Meyerson of WaPo and Thomas Frank of WSJ. Remember when the first NYT public editor, Daniel Okrent, finished his stint? He took a nasty shot at Paul Krugman (along with two gentler criticisms of MoDo and Safire):
Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.
Similarly, Andrew Sullivan took a nasty shot at Bob Herbert today:
Yes, he had a role as a liberal voice. But such a boring, familiar voice. There was something about his writing that simply forced you to stop reading, even when his motives were obviously honorable, his compassion deep, and his solutions sincere, if invariably trite.
I’ll admit that Bob Herbert said the same things over and over again, but they were things that almost no one else was saying and they bore repeating. I don’t think he was any more repetitive than any of the other pundits anyway. They’re all broken records, even Krugman, who is the only one I truly enjoy reading.
Sullivan and Okrent took shots at Krugman and Herbert, because one of the rules of the game is that outspoken liberals must be mocked — they’re shrill, they’re trite, they’re naive! Elite media is a big fraternity, where midnight circle jerks alternate with the ritualistic hazing of liberals.
Martin
Well, this is a byproduct of the major media outlets not knowing how to build a business model for the younger generation of news readers. I think it’s less an indication that liberal views are being crowded out than that traditional media is increasingly reliant on HoveRound and GoldLine advertising and demographics to stay alive.
And fuck Sully. He’s heading off to the landfill that is the DailyBeast.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
I’ll take boring, familiar and correct over shrill and out of touch voices such as Sullivan’s. Too bad Herbert doesn’t write with the prime purpose of drawing attention to himself.
Yutsano
@Martin:
Does that mean we can stop hyperventilating over his every outburst now?
Alexandra
While that’s all undoubtedly true, I can honestly say that I read DougJ and all the team at Balloon Juice far more often than I read anyone, even Krugman, over at the New York Times.
And Sully is infuriatingly maddening. Weeks go by without a peek and then I find myself looking. And agreeing with something trivial. Then it’s back to reading more often, just to scratch at that scab… although he’s been bumped way down my bookmark list, in between dKos and Ezra Klein.
Just when I thought it was safe to go back to the water, they pulled me back in… or something.
schrodinger's cat
Speaking of Sullivan. Did anyone check out that blog post at the Dish about Gandhi being gay? Unfortunately I clicked the link, it was review of the new book on Gandhi in the WSJ. The reviewer, some guy named Andrew Roberts, went on on and on about how terrible Gandhi was. I bet Andrew Sullivan thinks he(the reviewer) was interesting. Our MSM not that much better than a tabloid, where being provocative is more important than making sense.
RSA
Much better not to present numbers at all, and just make vague generalizations not subject to detailed criticism.
ppcli
I didn’t think that the criticisms of MoDo and Safire were gentler. They were in one way harder hitting – in both cases there were specific points (misrepresenting Gonzo on the Geneva Conventions, asserting a connection between Al Quaeda and Saddam) that the two stood accused of repeating regularly despite being specifically corrected. That’s serious – or at least it would be if people took seriously the idea that being unapologetically full of shit is bad in a columnist.
What he said about Krugman you could say about anybody – cites data that supports his case. What oped columnist doesn’t? We’re given no example of what is supposed to be so bad, even though Okrent claims it happens a lot. This makes Okrent look lazy and overmatched, and though it no doubt comforts Krugman’s opponents, Krugman emerges unscathed from this particular contretemps.
Edit: Ah, I am reminded by RSA’s post that there are some oped columnists who don’t do what Krugman is charged with doing. The ones who just fill their columns with data free fog. True enough. Thanks for the friendly amendment.
Rock
It is simply depraved to suggest that railing against injustice is trite. Sullivan has apparently decided that his need to be entertained by something new should be the guiding principle of the media. So instead of shining a light on oppression, we get contrarian bs that has the virtue of being new. The United States is being entertained to death.
MikeJ
If a conservative mocks a liberal, it’s all just good clean fun.
If A liberal mocks a conservative, that’s just being mean.
If a conservative mocks a conservative, he will be ostracized.
If a liberal mocks a liberal, it will be a sign that he’s an independent thinker and more serious than the mockee.
dr. bloor
@Yutsano:
Dream on. No one seems to realize that Sully, the Politico operatives et al would be reduced to greeting you at Walmart if supposedly smart people refrained from linking to their drivel.
Comrade DougJ
@ppcli:
I think they were certainly gentler, as they pointed to individual inaccuracies, rather than a “disturbing habit”.
Chup
Why does anyone care about anything Sullivan says?
He’s a warmonger and a fool — let’s just ignore him.
vtr
Did anyone but Bob Herbert write about the Tulia, TX disgrace?
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
Does Robert Reich count as a pundit? He doesn’t seem to pull any punches.
Southern Beale
FUCKIN-A and excuse me but EVERYONE says the same shit over and over again, JEEEEZUS that pisses me off. Hello? What “new ideas” do we have from the Republican punditocracy? Liberals are evil, the solution to every problem is tax cuts and deregulation. Same shit we’ve been hearing for decades — despite heaping mounds of evidence to the contrary, I might add.
And hello, but since when has social justice been at the forefront of the media’s “must cover” list? I mean Christ on a cracker, but whenever the media wants to talk to a religious person do they call Jim Wallis who preaches social justice or do they call on the Republican hypocrites like Pat Robertson? I’m so sick of this shit I could spit.
Thank you for pissing me off. Makes me want to write about this shit even more.
Southern Beale
So now that I got THAT out of my system, here’s what I did today …
ppcli
@Comrade DougJ: No doubt you’re right. I see the objections to Modo and Safire as genuine objections, of the kind that lower my opinion of someone, while against Krugman they’re just what I suppose a mathematician would call “hand-waving” until at least one genuine example is provided. This suggests that the candidate examples actually wouldn’t support the case very well, so Okrent falls back on fog. But perhaps most people would see it differently.
Emma
One of the things us liberals could do is to JUST STOP READING people like Sullivan. Every time you give him a link you validate the self-centered, self-righteous, elitist part of the male body that would get this thing into moderation.
MikeJ
@Southern Beale: More fun than my day. I’m cursing the fact that, yes, you only very, very, rarely need a monitor on a server, but that’s no reason to have a vintage 1993 17″ piece of shit that doesn’t even work taking up space. On the rare occasion you do need a monitor, like today, it would be nice if it worked. Grrr.
Trentrunner
Andrew Sullivan has been, is, and always will be, one thing:
A cunt.
Brachiator
@Comrade DougJ:
Sullivan’s complaint reminds me of the applause from fellow critics that Manohla Dargis got when she became a film critic at the
. She was praised for her “edgy,” “exciting” prose. But too often, from her early days at LA Weekly to her current gig, her writing is filled with inaccuracies, a faulty knowledge of film history, and occasional outright fabrications. But it’s hip, edgy and stylish.
You are right on the money when you note that Herbert “said the same things over and over again, but they were things that almost no one else was saying and they bore repeating.” But the land of punditry prefers snappy imposters like McMegan to solid writers like Herbert.
Church Lady
But Bob Herbert isn’t shrill. Which seems to be Sullivan’s point. He is good-hearted, but absolutely dull as dishwater. That doesn’t make him a bad person, it just makes him a somewhat uninteresting writer.
Church Lady
@Trentrunner: As I recollect, that is a word that will get the ban hammer dropped on you.
Yutsano
@efgoldman:
This is a very good point. I happen to work with several blind folks (the technology is amazing) and they can’t bring their seeing eye dogs to work. Plus I have a blind uncle with a GAWJUSS seeing eye dog, but they rely more on sound than sight to recognize an oncoming car.
kindness
Sully has some nerve saying he finds whomever boring. Sully is annoying more often than boring or right for that matter so it isn’t like he is any paragon to be compared to.
MTiffany
The ‘big fraternity,’ ‘circle jerk’ metaphor is a bit generous. Where the Villagers are concerned, ‘lemon party’ is more apropos.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@efgoldman: Beat me to it. Odd to see the attitude that safety measures are stupid, why don’t those damn pedestrians just LOOK attitude. As though safety in layers is just wasteful rather than effective.
bowery boy
i wonder how many people critical of sullivan read herbert regularly? im a red blooded liberal and i dont. its likely that reflects poorly on me but that surely says something about him as well.
Southern Beale
@Yutsano:
Really? Isn’t that a violation of the ADA?
PurpleGirl
Krugman lets his geeky side show — between cultural and/or science fiction references and video clips. I love it when he lets his inner geek out.
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
@Southern Beale: Now I want a Leaf!
Are electric cars carbon neutral?
Southern Beale
@efgoldman:
That’s a good point, thanks for pointing it out. My dad was visually impaired and my sister trained guide dogs so you’d think I’d be more sensitive to that issue ….
However, I did ask if we can reprogram our “noise” tape … why engine noise? How about … horse whinnies? Hand claps? Bells? A voice that says “MOVE MOVE MOVE!”
Nemo_N
It wouldn’t be necessary to repeat things if people were actually listening.
Also, form over substance.
ChrisNYC
They should get rid of the op/ed section altogether and use that space for interesting and informative stuff. I don’t read any opinion in major media anymore. It’s all so boring and, with people like Brooks thinking he can write about anything and everything though he is an expert in nothing, so ill-informed.
The op/ed space would be much better used if they published there informative, timely stuff — “here’s what the healthcare law really says,” “here’s what the Second Amendment means,” “here’s an explanation of the birth and growth of national debt.” It would be like a primer for current events.
Villago Delenda Est
Sullivan’s biggest problem is that he’s a quasi-orthagonian. One who could NEVER be assimilated into the Franklin caste of his native Britain because of his birth.
So he migrated across the pond to a land where that isn’t important…as long as your skin color is correct, of course.
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
@ChrisNYC: It is an antiquated tradition considering political opinion is available ad nauseam in Internetsville.
Southern Beale
@Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel):
They are working in that direction from a manufacturing perspective though I’d say it would be easier to give a definitive yes to that question if the U.S. government had some kind of cap and trade legislation in place.
We have solar panels on our roof and Nashville has solar-generated charging stations so I feel the impact is significantly less than a traditional carbon vehicle. But it probably would not be correct to say the Leaf right now is carbon neutral… though I always tell people we have a lot more “green” ways to generate electricity than we do for operating fossil-fuel vehicles.
MikeJ
@Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel):
It would seem like that would depend on where you get your lectrons from.
WaterGirl
@ChrisNYC: It strikes me that that’s what Kay does here, which I wish the other front-pagers would consider doing more often. They could also consider putting up a guest thread of the day, written by a regular commenter with knowledge in a particular area.
tomvox1
What is most important for “moderates” is to convince the maximum amount of people that being a Liberal is a foolish thing and hopelessly out of touch in today’s hard-hitting pragmatic realpolitik world of free market solutions (i.e. non-solutions) to society’s most intractable problems. This way citizens begin to feel comfortable accepting things as they are and not how they wish they could be. So people can just look out for themselves and stop trying to make the country a better, more decent and egalitarian place for all Americans by accepting that capitalism is inherently unfair and those who end up on the wrong side of it are simply losers who had it coming. We shouldn’t even bother to try to lift them up because they’ve earned their low caste position from their own laziness and moral defects. It’s simply not the government’s responsibility and anyone who claims otherwise is boring, repetitive and obviously espousing tired old ideas that have already been tried and failed utterly.
And so we are all dealing with the triumph of that philosophy among “reasonable” people while the country slouches inexorably towards complete plutocracy…
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: No real practical place for the puppehs to use the restroom at the building where I work unfortunately. It’s smack dab in the middle of downtown Seattle. I’d love it if there were a patch of grass or something nearby, but the GSA can rule that the accommodation is too expensive.
Corner Stone
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Prime real estate. You gotta grab some shit and shake it like a crying baby. Or a vodka MARTINI.
Either way.
Karen
Who cares what Andrew Sullivan says about anything. Sullivan spends most of his time obsessing about circumcision.
MikeJ
@Corner Stone:
So you’re saying don’t shake it.
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
@Southern Beale:
@MikeJ:
Ha! Long answer and the shorter right underneath. Thanks.
Southern Beale
@Yutsano:
Wow that is really surprising. I thought they couldn’t do that … they’d have to provide that.
Y’know, my dad was legally blind and my mom was in a wheelchair, so I really learned to appreciate the ADA stuff and resent people who ignored it. But you know what they say, walk a mile in someone else’s shoes ….
Josh
vtr, yes: Andrew Gumbel, for one. But Herbert just kept harping on it, as if it were as grave an injustice as Al Gore wearing earth tones.
jeffreyw
@Southern Beale:
Ah ha! The asshole was a…Leaf blower?
p mac
Well, Herbert’s replacement appears to be Joe Nocera, who signed off on his last column in the business section today. He is moving to the Op-Ed.
That’s not a bad trade: Nocera is an engaging writer, and he covers interesting topics. Such as today’s: an actual arrest for mortgage fraud… but not one anyone sane would approve of.
Corner Stone
@MikeJ:
Are you fucking crazy? Of course you have to shake the martini!
Villago Delenda Est
DougJ, how about Eugene Robinson at the WaPo as an example of an actual liberal in the Punditosphere?
He makes a tremendous amount of sense all the time…you can tell by all the teatard screaming in the comments section.
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: You’d have to see how the building is. It’s literally built into the side of a hill and surrounded by cross streets. I honestly don’t know where they’d put a pet area. I suppose if one of them pressed the issue they might have to do something. Not to mention the fact that a puppeh would be a MAJOR distraction for me. :)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Villago Delenda Est: Thank you for pointing that about about Sullivan. it’s so very true, and his obnoxious positions are kind of internally coherent when you consider this, I’ve observed. He’s still a dipweed drama queen, who’d not nearly as clever as he thinks.
Did anyone else find Herbert’s “pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war” quite cleverly put? Or am I the only one who chuckled, find it a grand evocation of “shitloads?”
Upper West
@ppcli: That statement by Okrent was terrible. It’s like a flea attacking a lion. Okrent had no idea whether Krugman’s arguments were supported by data. He just regurgitated right wing talking points to prove he’s really not just another Upper West Side liberal. Just another obscene example of false equivalency.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Corner Stone:
I beg your pardon, sir. Martinis are properly stirred, with a long bar spoon. But then they are also made with gin, so I might be a bit of a purist. Vodka and vermouth is, well vodka and vermouth masquerading as a martini. Does Sarah,Proud and Tall have a stance on this, I wonder?
Hann1bal
@Villago Delenda Est: I agree about Robinson. His columns are consistently thoughtful and readable.
Redshift
@MikeJ: I think it would be fair to say that the Leaf has the potential to be carbon neutral, which no combustion-engine vehicle does.
Villago Delenda Est
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
“Vodka martini, shaken, not stirred”
I think we all know this by heart by now.
Loved the scene in “The Spy Who Loved Me” where 007 and XXX order each other’s drinks, in accordance with information in their dossiers.
MikeJ
The Butler did it!
Redshift
@efgoldman: Heh. It reminds me of the “logic” of a lot of climate-change deniers, who reject climate science because it isn’t “proven,” but treat the pronouncements from their favorite (wingnut) economist of economic doom if we implement cap and trade or a carbon tax as undeniable truth, despite the fact that economics (especially that flavor) isn’t close to being a science.
Corner Stone
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): You are absolutely a “purist”.
I’m on record for this topic but let me bring you with me for moment, if I may.
Imagine an ex-wife, and a best friend of over 30 years, since the age of 5, having sex.
Now tell me you wouldn’t shake the shit out of that shaker.
Gin is a card game you play with friends. Vodka gets you down to the dirty of your soul.
Redhand
I think we need people like Herbert to “just keep harping on it” lest this Nouveau Gilded Age be permanently enshrined as the “new normal.” What’s happened to this country in the last three decades is an utter disgrace from an economic and social justice standpoint, not to mention the “rule of law.” (I know, I’m being “quaint” in a Geneva Conventions kinda way.)
The genuine progressive voices still out there include Robert Reich and Dan Froomkin even if their voices are limited to the blogosphere. In the MSM, not so much.
Comrade DougJ
@Redhand:
Me too.
kdaug
Had some similar thoughts along these lines recently (sue me), but the wife watches those wretched “Real Wives of [x]” shows.
What is that but a carrot? Stupid, vapid, preening plastic people who contribute nothing.
But the LCD? Money.
Unlikely earned. Inherited. Birth or marriage.
I think until we stop venerating the wastrels we’re circling the drain.
Comrade DougJ
@Villago Delenda Est:
He’s a shallower E. J. Dionne.
jazzgurl
The thing with Sully is that he appears reasonable at times because of the ineloquence, inaneness, and radicalness of the Conservative movement in the USA. Is anyone sane in this political party? Their puerile ‘whackadoodleness’ makes me think that most of them are uneducated, ignorant and incredibly insular when thinking, speaking and acting or should I say acting out!!
Mark S.
@Comrade DougJ:
Really? I like Robinson a lot better than Dionne.
ChrisNYC
@WaterGirl: Oh, I’m a big fan of Kay. And, yeah, I see how she does do that type of thing. Second the motion on the other front pagers.
patrick II
So, to the village Herbert is too boring and Krugman too shrill. That leaves a awfully small needle to thread.
Tom Q
@patrick II: Which is the way they like it. Smaller than Eddie Gaedel’s strike zone.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@WaterGirl: kay just rocks, period. More kay, all the time.
Some asswipe on the internet
This, from a man whose interns and lackeys actually produce the bulk of his work? Laughable. What a tool. Fuck you, Sullivan. You are far more boring and trite than Herbert, a thousand times over. Tool.
Triassic Sands
Yeah, Herbert writes about things that are boring to people like Sullivan, who makes a living writing really stupid crap.
I’d rather be “bored” by Herbert, than nauseated by Sullivan, which is why I quit reading Sullivan not long after I started. I “keep in touch” by occasionally following a link to something Sullivan has penned and he never disappoints — he’s always full of himself and full of shit, which may sound like a physical impossibility, but it isn’t since one of the two has no real substance.
Comrade DougJ
@Mark S.:
I don’t like either much. You know he’s killing it over there? Milbank. Never thought I’d say that, but he’s been great recently.
Bill Murray
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I go to the expert on this topic
snarkout
55, 58 – I think Okrent was wholly suckered by Donald “Stupidest Man Alive” Luskin, who was pursuing Krugman with rifle and clown shoes for years there. Okrent, who was a sportswriter (and not a particularly statistically adept one), was simply incapable of following Krugman’s argument or looking down to see Luskin’s clown shoes, and simply passed along the charges levelled by a guy who got fired by Jim Cramer for asshattery.
ed
Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas! Tulia, Texas!
Also, Sully is, and has always been, an utter wanker.
Chris
@Southern Beale: In addition to the “maybe” (re whether electricity production is carbon neutral), there’s a bigger point about electric cars: they are more efficient—usually much more efficient—in converting fossil fuel sources into motion, as measured through the entire fuel cycle, than gasoline cars. If someone had a magic wand that turned all existing gasoline cars into electric cars and waved it over the US so that the entire fleet were converted overnight, our carbon emissions would drop by more than half.* (As we improve and/or substitute other generation systems for existing coal-burning power plants in the future, the drop will increase.)
(Of course, other things would break, like, all the gas stations would go under and there would be massive unemployment from that. People always seem to go first to the “oh no, electric grid meltdown, not enough capacity” argument rather than the “gas stations out of business” argument, for some reason, but both are equally true: if you had a magic wand that only did part of the job that will take 50 years to do in reality, then, yes, other things would break. But when you take 50 years to do it in reality, you adapt the other things along the way, too. “The grid” won’t break, and neither will all the gas stations go out of business tomorrow, if more people buy electric cars this year.)
[* Edit to add footnote: I mean specifically car-transportation-based emissions. Which are a huge fraction of “all emissions”, very roughly 1/3rd, the other 2/3rds are “industry” and “commercial and residential life support”: building lighting, heating, cooling, etc.]
PeakVT
@Triassic Sands: Lolz.
Derek
Boring? What a portentously stupid comment to make about another political writer. Portentous in the fact it discloses the entirety of why Sullivan is an infuriating hack. It’s all a fucking diversion to him. I mean “diversion” in the kind effete, dainty, upper-crust way that “ivory tower” is used to slander any advocate of liberal ideals from academia, or really any kind of learning. It’s a game of literary critique for his co-pundits in the salon. That’s what so annoying about the way he formulates his opinion, it’s all about being intriguing and novel. Even his high-minded moralizing is tinged with an unctuous need to be a unique “voice”, or to adhere to irreducible and inflexible principles Politics isn’t a fucking game. That is goddamn “unserious” Which isn’t all serious and stuck-up, but the point of it all is address the basic issues of how life is lived.
To call another “voice” boring is to say the enterprise of writing on government is any way meant to an amusment, intellectual or otherwise. This is the true cancer of the media, the pundit, a leech that grows fat off plying a trade of criticizing while doing nothing to address the issue on which one makes a living from theorizing on. The whole damn thing is a game, that is sold as a sideshow.
As an aside, his constant paean to the virtues of “blogging” are kind of sickening. It’s just another way of making a living or hobby on opinions. It’s not that fucking special. A good comedian is a far superior critic of power, culture and dogma. A blogger can say anything, a comedian at least is kept honest by the need to clever enough to make people laugh at something true. No offense to any of my fine hosts on BJ, but I have a feeling as bloggers you’d be the most tired of having to hear that kind of nonsense.
Pat
Bob Herbert continuously repeats himself, as opposed to his colleagues, David Fucking Brooks and Thomas Fucking Friedman never fucking repeating themselves in their fact free fucking world.
Sullivan should take a rowboat back to England and take whathername, the brand new editor of Newsweek, with him!
bob h
I hadn’t realized that Okrent accused Krugman of intellectual filtering and dishonesty. If I had been Krugman, I would have demanded an apology and retraction.
Another Halocene Human
Sour grapes, Sully. You know, there are some people who find your blogging about your navel lint hairs boring. Also. Too.