Many people - myself included - spent some time this week wondering whether David Brooks even bothers to read the very newspaper his columns appear in twice a week. The lies in his most recent
bit of crapulence made it abundantly clear that he either ignored Paul Krugman's column
just days earlier, or, like a good right-wing trooper, he read it and deliberately decided to mislead his readers anyway.
Well, our hero Prof. Krugman comes as close as he possibly can to directly laying the smack-down on Brooks today:
Hell hath no fury like a scammer foiled. The card shark caught marking the deck, the auto dealer caught resetting a used car's odometer, is rarely contrite. On the contrary, they're usually angry, and they lash out at their intended marks, crying hypocrisy.
And so it is with those who would privatize Social Security. They didn't get away with scare tactics, or claims to offer something for nothing. Now they're accusing their opponents of coddling the rich and not caring about the poor.
...
But defenders of Mr. Bush's Social Security plan now portray benefit cuts for anyone making more than $20,000 a year, cuts that will have their biggest percentage impact on the retirement income of people making about $60,000 a year, as cuts for the wealthy.
In the genteel (and small) world of the op-ed pages, a columnist can't call a colleague out by name. But there is no doubt in my mind that Krugman has Brooks in his sights, and the good doctor of economics is pissed. Card shark? Used car artist? Scammer? This may not be the strong language of a good Brooklyn-style verbal take-down, but for the New York Times, it's some pretty harsh stuff.
Of course, Brooks and his ilk deserve all of this and more. Three cheers (as always) to Paul Krugman for having the courage to speak truth to jackasses.