Monday, August 22, 2011

Opinion leaders share opinions on Washington Post opinion leaders


Mark Sumner

George Will spent last week moaning about how Kennedy lost the Cold War and this week making comparisons between Chris Christie and Woodrow Wilson. Has anyone done a Turing Test on Will's writing lately? I do believe this stuff is being cranked out by tacking together random urls from Wikipedia with a handful of javaScript. This is one step from gibberish -- and not always one step in the right direction.


Jon Chait

Reading a Charles Krauthammer column used to be a challenging exercise. To be sure, it frequently involved sophistry, but the deception was always clever. You read through the column nodding your head until the conclusion, and you'd have to read through it a second time to discover the trick, like a condition which was possibly true in the third paragraph had become necessarily true by the seventh. It was like having your money taken by a skilled three card monte artist. But those days are long gone, and now Krauthammer just hits you ever the head and takes your wallet.


Come on Mark and Jon tell us what you really think.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:28 AM

    But you didn't include Krugman on Robert Samuelson.

    "I don’t usually find myself in hearty agreement with Robert Samuelson, but he’s right about this. The Statistical Abstract is a hugely important resource; experts in a particular field may not need it, but it’s invaluable to non-experts in need of basic information."

    This is a case of even a blind squirrel will occasionally find a nut (very, very occasionally for Robert Samuelson), but a notable opinion leader on what is the generally the nadir of WaPo op-ed page. (Because Will writes three good baseball columns each year and Krauthammer is certifiably nuts.)

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  2. dilbert dogbert7:51 PM

    Geo Will: Christ on a crutch! The only Kennedy's most will remember are the Dead Kennedy's. As an old fart I don't remember the Dead Kennedy's but I do remember Kennedy. When will these old has beens be put out to pasture. Not soon enough.

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