BLOGFIGHT!
Daniel W. Drezner–without the help of his editor, I might add–ably defends himself from Brad DeLong’s charges of screaming, leaping, baring fangs, and tragic clumsiness. The object of this spat? Paul Krugman.
Krugman is a brilliant economist who may well win a Nobel prize one day. But he is a rather shoddy and hyperbolic columnist.* And his assertion that the current job situation is the worst in 20 years is patently absurd–even though the economy has been pretty good most of those years.
DeLong is also a first-rate economist who tends to be more careful than Krugman when in op-ed mode but, alas, he seldom pings weblogs and is thus suspect.**
More seriously, Drezner’s argument and tone strike me as reasonable here: interpreting what Krugman actually wrote rather than guessing at what he might have meant is a reasonable course when analyzing an editorial. Indeed, as Krugman might advise, listening to the Gentiles is a wise course of action here. If a rising star political scientist at an elite institution isn’t able to follow your argument, it likely needs recasting.
*Superbly captured in this fine ballad by Eric the Viking Pundit. (OTB backup here in case the archive is bloggered.)
**And, sadly, I over-ping TrackBack every time I link to something on DeLong’s site and then edit the post. For whatever reason, TrackBack hangs for me on his site and Megan McArdle’s–I even try shutting the window as soon as the rebuild is through to no avail. It doesn’t happen with the vast majority of sites.
I’ve got the same problem with TB and DeLong’s site too. Brad’s a liberal I respect, but his characterization of Drezner’s criticism was such overkill. Has Luskin paid Krugman and his friends paranoid or something?
“And, sadly, I over-ping TrackBack every time I link to something on DeLong’s site and then edit the post.”
I’ve had something like this problem on both his and Pejman’s site: is the trackback url hanging around in the appropriate box even after a successful ping?
Moe
PS: Blogrolled you, btw.
Moe: Yep. Not sure why.
And thanks!
I have that problem when I link to the Goddard’s Political Wire. Everytime I edit, it re-pings.
“Yep. Not sure why.”
Then simply manually deleting the trackback url from the box after the first time you publish should work. At least, it does for me.
Moe–Nope, doesn’t work for me. It automatically picks it up from the link somehow. Indeed, I’ve even altered it so that it pings a non-existent address and it inserts the old one and tries to ping both.
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