Step one appears to be: Don't be Paul Krugman. If you don't know him, he's a Nobel Prize winning economist who writes for the New York Times, but I'd consider his name being attached to an article is a strong indication that it's not worth reading. Why? To quote Alex Tabarrok, commenting on a situation in which Krugman gave opposing advice a few years apart:
... one thing remains constant in all of Krugman’s writings, anyone who disagrees with him is portrayed as a mendacious idiot.
and, when Krugman responded, posted again with the observation that
the issue is not that Krugman changed his mind (I’ve done that plenty, Alex too). The issue is that Krugman a) regularly demonizes his opponents, including those who hold Krugman’s old positions, and b) doesn’t work very hard to produce the strongest possible case against his arguments.
Do you buy Krugman's argument that...
I realized that I also wanted to say something in response to the concern trolling, the “if you were more moderate you’d have more influence” stuff. Again, this amounts to wishing that we lived in a different world. First, there is no such thing in modern America as a pundit respected by both sides. Second, there are people writing about economic issues who are a lot less confrontational than I am; how often do you hear about them? This is not a game, and it is also not a dinner party; you have to be clear and forceful to get heard at all.
I can't say that I agree. I'd throw him in the same category as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, Ann Coulter, and other similar commentators who, despite getting a relatively large amount of media attention, generally aren't worth paying attention to.
What do you with regard to columnists that seem to regularly miss things? e.g. one of my criticisms of a few of the New York Times columnists is how their emphasis on gender issues seems to miss large parts of the problem - and thereby also missing promising solutions. e.g. a recent New York Times article, For Somali Women, Pain of Being a Spoil of War, talks a lot about the problems faced by women in that of the world. What does the article largely seem to miss - that women seem to be the only ones left to victimize in many of those communities - the one small note that "The famine and mass displacement, which began over the summer, have made women and girls more vulnerable. So many Somali communities have been disbanded, and with armed groups forcing men and boys into their militias, it is often single women, with children in tow, who set off on the dangerous odyssey to refugee camps." Solve the community breakup problem and I'd expect to see a resulting decrease in the sexual assaults and the like in those communities.
Of course, if you're not regularly reading the New York Times, is such a note particularly useful?
