It’s The Media

I agree with my colleagues about Krugman’s latest column, which is really unworthy of him. To add one more point, it should be noted that Krugman adduces exactly two pieces of evidence for his claims that Obama’s supporters are unfairly savaging Clinton. The first is about criticisms of Clinton’s LBJ comments. These criticisms were, I agree, stupid — sort of like Clinton’s surrogates bringing up Obama’s brief use of drugs as a young man — but 1)Krugman supplies no evidence that they’re “venomous,” and 2)the most prominent advancer of this argument was the New York Times op-ed page, a supporter of…Hillary Clinton. The second data point is the comments of David Shuster, which were indefensible but again I’d like to see some evidence that Shuster is an Obama supporter per se. And this is what’s so frustrating about Krugman’s column. It’s great to see someone in his position calling out the Whitewater non-scandal and the media’s treatment of Gore, but Krugman completely buries his very legitimate points about the media’s treatment of the Clintons by shoehorning it into his anti-Obama jihad, where it simply doesn’t belong. I’m sure there are isolated incidents of Obama supporters indulging in sexist attacks on Clinton, but I see no evidence that Obama’s Democratic supporters — as opposed to various media hacks — are generally playing by the “Clinton rules,” and Krugman certainly doesn’t supply any. And the fact that even his random anecdotes don’t actually support his position pretty strongly suggests that his central claim is false.