Jumping To Conclusions

Yes, this is yet another post about Paul Krugman -- but I'll leave the details to others. Power Line comments on our favorite New York Times columnist:

Krugman's second Ohio nugget relates to Miami County: "Miami County reported that voter turnout was an improbable 98.55 percent of registered voters." Well, that would be quite a turnout, all right--impressive even by the standards of Democratic Philadelphia. I think I know where Krugman got that figure; it is on page 58 of the Conyers report authored, as noted above, by the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee.

Of course, Krugman has never been one to trouble himself by actually doing research. As far as I can tell, he never does any: he simply reads a far-left book or a Democratic National Committee press release, and summarizes it in his column. (And for this the New York Times pays him?) I'm not talking about hard, obscure research here; I'm talking about going to the website of the Ohio Secretary of State's office, where official voter turnout numbers are recorded. Miami County's turnout in 2004? 72.2 %.

How true. I don't know why many people haven't caught onto this already: Paul Krugman is a blogger. The vast majority of his pieces are simply passing along what other people have already written. He does no original research; he never picks up the phone to talk to an actual source. (Most bloggers don't do these things, either -- but they aren't paid by the Paper of Record, either.) What he does is find a news report, or story, that superficially "proves" what he wants to say -- Republicans are evil, of course -- refuses to dig any deeper, and then spends 750 words ranting about it.

In other words, he's a blogger.

Say what you want about Tom Friedman's ridiculous name-dropping and overextended metaphors, or Bob Herbert's tired warmed-over 1960s liberalism, or David Brooks' oversimplified sociological essays, but they all get out of their offices long enough to learn something about the subjects they write about. Krugman can't even be bothered to ask, "Is this really true?" before reprinting Democratic talking points.