Tuesday, November 13, 2007

RE: Krugman and Race   [Mark Hemingway]

Awhile back, I wrote about Krugman's ridiculous accusations that Reagan engaged in race-baiting and the thing that struck me is that Krugman is throwing out all these accusations without ever mentioning that he worked for Reagan in the White House's Council of Economic Advisors. Presumably Reagan wasn't such a racist (or for that matter his tax plan so disastrous) that Krugman had ethical problems working for him and formulating his policies.

Yesterday, over at the WSJ's website, James Taranto made the same point and also noted exactly how much of a tired hobbyhorse this is over at the NYT. Krugman's mentioned the Reagan/Nashoba incident four previous times over the last two years; Bob Herbert has mentioned it eight previous times going back to 1997. Enough already. Nobody believes Reagan is a bigot.

UPDATE: I'm getting a lot of emails pointing out that of course people believe Reagan was a bigot. Let me clarify what I meant — nobody who has seriously examined the man and his political career believes that Reagan is a bigot.

11/13 02:38 PMShare