Newsweek's unintentionally revealed, central truth

[kpete]

Sunday March 29, 2009 08:07 EDT
Newsweek's unintentionally revealed, central truth

In his just-released cover story on Paul Krugman's status as Obama critic, Newsweek's Evan Thomas includes these observations:

By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing order. Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are. Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring.

more:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/191393/
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/29/newsweek/index.html

[lostnotforgotten]

1. The Central Reason That Only Revolution Will Change Things

eom

[No.23]

2. Sooner or later, the painfully obvious...

becomes obviously painful.

It's the nature of truth.

No matter how hard we try to hide it.

[WCGreen]

3. But aren' we a conservative Nation....

Wwhen you champion the preservation of the status quo loud and hard, you are trying to preserve what is yours and fuck everyone else.

That is why most news readers on cable are now leaning toward or are openly conservative. They have been brought into the fold of the rich and fabulous and they will say anything to discredit anyone who is trying to cfhange the way thigs are.

[grasswire]

4. this goes double for old Washington establishment

...and eventually any "news" person brought to Washington becomes part of the establishment there.

[amandabeech]

5. I think that the real reason Krugman is on the outside is the work he did to win the Nobel.

This is Newsweek summary:

Last October, he won his Nobel. Most economists interviewed by NEWSWEEK agreed that he richly deserved it for his pathbreaking work on global trade—his discovery that traditional theories of comparative advantage between nations often do not work in practice.

This is the theory that underlies all the trade agreements that the U.S. has entered into that have ended up wrecking havoc with our job market.

If the theory is wrong, and the public can point to Krugman's Nobel Prize-winning work for just that point, then it would appear that we've lost all those jobs over a theory that doesn't work (as if we needed to be told).

Nationalizing the banks, otherwise known as forcing them into receivership, isn't really that big a blow to money and power.

The real money to be lost is in making enormous profits off cheap labor. More folks can belly up to that trough that can get huge bonuses on Wall Street.

I think that we have been cognizant of money getting power for some time.

Evan Thomas does snark his way through this composition, but he does include the key to Krugman's real dangerousness and, in the end, does intimate that Krugman's cold autumn is probably more real that his critic's warm spring.



As a side note, Thomas is a semi-regular on a political talk show called, "Inside Washington," which was at one time broadcast on one of the local D.C. network affiliates. The show is now on PBS and on the local D.C. 24-hour news channel.

This weekend, the host of the show, Gordon Peterson, asked the panel what they thought about Obama's new initiative in Afghanistan. Thomas looked somewhat ill as he compared the troops, advisers, and civilian helpers to words used to describe our 1964 escalation in Vietnam. Thomas hoped that Obama's plan would succeed and that it would be different than LBJ's plan in Vietnam, but Thomas could not shake the similaries in situation and language.

[amborin]

10. you have clearly not read one of K's papers; you totally mis-state his general positions on trade

[amandabeech]

12. Please provide cites and elucidation.

Are you saying that Newsweek's characterizations are also wrong?

[azul]

6. When the existing order is a rancid bubble of toxic crap that has just burst,

it would seem the prudent and sensible course to step aside and start over, rather than wallowing in the mess.

We need a new media charter to start the new greaseless order.

[progressoid]

7. Error: You've already recommended that thread.

Damn.

[sendero]

8. Obama has been Borged...

... I guess we shouldn't be surprised, anyone would have been.

[williesgirl]

9. k&r

[Mike 03]

11. kpete, I honestly don't get it. I don't see Obama as trying to maintain the old pattern, and as a

huge admirer of Krugman, I don't understand the lack of focus in his criticism.