Asymmetrical Information

Addressing Krugman, rather than your thoughtful remarks, it occurs to me that mis-stating the name of that Michael Douglas film might well be the least of the errors in that sentence. Rising Sun is a murder mystery. That's what it's *about*. If, as is suggested by the preceding sentence, Krugman's point is that the zeitgeist was pessimistic (or something along those lines), I suppose one could say that Krugman's not totally off the mark to include it as an example. To an extent, the notion of Japan in ascendancy vis-a-vis a declining USA formed part of the backdrop against which that murder mystery played out, a notion that was certainly floating around the collective consciousness for the screenwriter to draw on. But that isn't the same thing as saying it's what the flick is *about*.

So we might be inclined to give most people a pass on that one. But not his summary of Grand Canyon. I've always liked this film a lot, in part because its thesis is, to my mind, almost the reverse of the point for which Krugman is employing it. Far from being about "the menace of crime," it is actually about one man's (Kevin Kline) refusal to accept that modern life is somehow ordained to be a dreary, soul-less, meaningless trip from birth to death. It is true that he meets one of the other major characters (Danny Glover) while in the process of being the victimized by a criminal. But that's as far as it goes. The crime does not lead him to despair; rather, it causes him to begin grappling with his existential dilemma and find an accomodation with it. In the end, he discovers the joy in small, simple pleasures. In so doing, he escapes from the very doldrums to which Krugman would have us believe the movie condemns him. In short, what the movie is actually *about* is the precise opposite of what Krugman suggests.

This happens a lot with Krugman. Often enough that one genuinely must wonder whether he a) intentionally distorts facts to fit his agenda or b) simply doesn't care if his facts are correct. Which is worse, for a man in his position, is a difficult determination to make. Either way, it makes me especially unwilling to give him a pass even for such a small thing as making more out of a plot point from a not-especially-good movie like Rising Son than seems merited.

And that allows me to return, after a fashion, to your remarks. Everyone makes innocent mistakes. We all occasionally make mistakes that could have been avoided with a little extra effort (as I did a few days ago, only to be slapped down by the Curmudgeonly Clerk). But some make mistakes so regularly, and in such a consistent fashion, that we must at some point stop allowing the excuse that they are merely innocent errors to be our default assumption. Even if that is all they are, after enough of them the writer gives up any right to ask for or expect any slack.

Krugman is one such - and the magnitude of his influence, along with the prestige of the platform from which he promulgates them only serve to increase his responsibility in this regard and, accordingly, to reduce the leeway he should expect (all of which he exhausted long ago). An occasional error is forgiveable. Consistent, apparently conscious error (not to mention a reputation for failing to issue corrections) destroys credibility.

What I despise about most punditry in major media outlets is the unethical approach to retractions and corrections. A goodly number of these mutts casually engage in character assasination, sometimes of private citizens, and never issue corrections. The straight news stories can be problematic as well sometimes, but what goes on in opinion pieces is beyond the pale. I would not favor any change in libel law, but this is the price that is paid.

"Rising Sun is a murder mystery. That's what it's *about*."

Well, technically. In reality, the murder mystery is an excuse for the protagonist to meet a bunch of people who tell him that Japan is in the process of taking over the world and that Americans are idiots for not realizing it.

Michael Crichton is one of my favorite writers--hell, given my druthers I'd probably like to *be* Michael Crichton--but "Rising Sun"--regardless of whether you agreed with the message he was sending--was primarily written to slam Japan, and the people of the US for not realizing the danger Japan posed.

hi all,
"rising sun," why not "black rain" (another michael douglas vehicle)? also, in "grand canyon," we have the spectacle of steve martin's director being shot in a mindless act of violence in a botched mugging. the abandonment of a baby found by a passer-by, who wants to keep the little tike, without going through the legal adoption process, etc (have i got the wrong movie?). sounds like a motif of crime--together with attitudes to its occurence and the growth (or otherwise) that arises from it.

anyway, the point i wanted to make is that "falling apart" is an illuminating slip that i suspect tells us something about dr. krugman's thinking and what currently preoccupies him. i riff on the association of yeats: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold..."

feel free to riff on:
"The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

The 1982 movie “Blade Runner” dealt with the same theme. Except in “Blade Runner”, Japan has economically conquered the world. Everyone is living in poverty in the US and Japanese is our official language.

Ten years after the movie the economic situation had flipped and Japan was in big trouble. In was unbelievable in ten years, how dramatically American business and workers learned from their mistakes and improved when faced with tough competition.

Yeah, those wily Japanese; they simply lulled us into a false sense of security by having their economy stagnate for ten years, and refraining from procreating quickly enough to keep their population from becoming the world's oldest. The final assault in pursuit of world domintion will begin with the development of nuclear-powered walkers. Remind me to consult Crichton about the line on next week's NFL games.....

"Remind me to consult Crichton about the line on next week's NFL games....."

LOL.

Yeah, "Rising Sun" wasn't exactly prescient in its view of the near future.

Why is anyone even paying attention to the now discredited Paul Krugman? The recent increasingly good economic news makes this intellectual mediocrity look ridiculous. Isn’t it laughable that his book was released right on the eve of our improving situation? One would think that Krugman might opt to hide somewhere in the Himalayas or Siberia.

Firstly, the minor errors pointed out about movie titles and themes are nothing compared to the real error in Krugman's mention of the movies. Specifically, he tries to imply that they were sufficiently popular to serve as hallmarks for the state of the popular culture at the time. But they were not, none of them did particularly well at the box office, none of them were very high in the top grossing films of the year of their release, and none of them had a dramatic impact on film or popular culture. The zeitgeist of the early 1990s tracks more along the lines of the more popular movies like "Terminator 2", "Wayne's World", "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves", "Father of the Bride", "The Fugitive", "Sleepless in Seattle", etc, than the 3 borderline cult classics Krugman mentions. And no matter how you interpret the actual "big movies" of the early '90s, it's extraordinarily difficult to do so in a way that matches Krugman's stilted interpretations of a few handpicked not-terribly popular movies.

Secondly, Jake, that is not what Blade Runner is about at all. If you'd actually watched the movie you'd realize that Japanese is not the official language of the US (rather, what you see and hear in the movie is, as mentioned in the movie, a pidgin language of asian and non-asian languages), and that Japan did not take over the world in Blade Runner. The movie is about a lot of things, but Japanese dominance is not one of them.

Sure, ebook corrections could be disseminated instantly, and I would never see them. No backlit screen output, no matter how good its quality, can substitute for actually seeing something on paper. News briefs and forums work fine on my CRT; books and long articles, not a chance.

Unfortunately, paper IS subject to the sorts of limitations described.

hi david,
"The recent increasingly good economic news makes this intellectual mediocrity look ridiculous."

sond of one head slowly shaking...

Jane Galt wrote (quoting Paul Krugman):

Popular culture reflected a deep sense of disillusionment. Among the big movies of the early 90's were Falling Apart, about a laid-off worker who erupts in rage, Grand Canyon, about the menace of crime, and Rising Sun, about American decline and the rise of Japan.

I think that there is a larger issue here merely than Krugman apparently getting the title of a movie wrong. Krugman is regularly and rightly criticized for cherry-picking his facts in a way that is misleading in order to make his arguments. In this case he appears to be trying to make the argument that there was a sense of disillusionment in America and as evidence he cites three movies which (according to him) represent that disillusionment.

The problem is that the three movies he selected were not representative of what most Americans were going to see at the box office in the years 1991(the year of Grand Canyon) and 1993 (the year of Rising Sun and Falling Down). In fact none of the movies he listed are even in the top ten of their respective years (1).

If you look at the top ten movies in those years, they’re a pretty diverse lot with two action movies (TII, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves), two thrillers (Silence of the Lambs, Sleeping with the Enemy), one chick flick (Fried Green Tomatoes) and five family-oriented comedies (City Slickers, Hook, Adams Family, Naked Gun 2 ½, and Father of the Bride). Not a whole lot of disillusionment in fact arguably at least two movies are (FGT and CS) are arguably inspirational in that they feature stories about people learning to find joy in their lives.

In 1993, the top movies were admittedly a bit darker but not necessarily reflection disillusionment. The top movie was about dinosaurs (Jurassic Park), followed by a farcical comedy (Mrs. Doubtfire) with one romantic comedy (Sleepless in Seattle) and several thrillers in which good triumphs ultimately against evil (In the Line of Fire, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Fugitive), one purely action flick (Cliffhanger) and an award-winning movie about a man risking his life during the Holocaust to save the lives of Jews (Schindler’s List).

Frankly I think that Krugman’s real problem is not merely that he appears to have gotten the name of a movie wrong, but that he cannot even be intellectually honest when talking about movies to bolster his argument and to support his thesis about a “deep sense of disillusionment” in the “popular culture” picks movies which were clearly not representative of what Americans were going to the theaters to see in 1991 and 1993 respectively. He should have found a movie that was at least in the top ten or found a different barometer of the mood of the popular culture because movies clearly do not support his argument.

TW

(1)Top Receipts for 1991
http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Years/1991/top-grossing

Top Receipts for 1993
http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Years/1993/top-grossing

Crichton always veers off a cliff whenever he tries to warn people about stuff where he feels ahead of the curve.

The Andromeda Strain gave his uber-plague impossible advantages, namely that it got by and even grew without any kind of consumption. It just produced new organized mass out of nothing. Perhaps Marvel should sue for Crichton's appropriation of Pym particles.

Rising Sun relied on a conspiracy that included a major portion of Japan's populace. It got just plain silly in the number of places that required the average Japanese citizen to be utterly bound to a set of behavioral roles regrdless of how much contact they had with the West.

The recent Prey is pretty much unreadable for the sheer contempt it shows for any reader with any knowledge of physics. Neal Stephenson did a much better job in The Diamond Age the better part of a decade earlier but then Crichton usually relies on other writers to do the groundwork in exploring new ideas.

Jane Galt wrote (quoting Paul Krugman):

Popular culture reflected a deep sense of disillusionment. Among the big movies of the early 90's were Falling Apart, about a laid-off worker who erupts in rage, Grand Canyon, about the menace of crime, and Rising Sun, about American decline and the rise of Japan.

I think that there is a larger issue here merely than Krugman apparently getting the title of a movie wrong. Krugman is regularly and rightly criticized for cherry-picking his facts in a way that is misleading in order to make his arguments. In this case he appears to be trying to make the argument that there was a sense of disillusionment in America and as evidence he cites three movies which (according to him) represent that disillusionment.

The problem is that the three movies he selected were not representative of what most Americans were going to see at the box office in the years 1991(the year of Grand Canyon) and 1993 (the year of Rising Sun and Falling Down). In fact none of the movies he listed are even in the top ten of their respective years (1).

If you look at the top ten movies in those years, they’re a pretty diverse lot with two action movies (TII, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves), two thrillers (Silence of the Lambs, Sleeping with the Enemy), one chick flick (Fried Green Tomatoes) and five family-oriented comedies (City Slickers, Hook, Adams Family, Naked Gun 2 ½, and Father of the Bride). Not a whole lot of disillusionment in fact arguably at least two movies are (FGT and CS) are arguably inspirational in that they feature stories about people learning to find joy in their lives.

In 1993, the top movies were admittedly a bit darker but not necessarily reflection disillusionment. The top movie was about dinosaurs (Jurassic Park), followed by a farcical comedy (Mrs. Doubtfire) with one romantic comedy (Sleepless in Seattle) and several thrillers in which good triumphs ultimately against evil (In the Line of Fire, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Fugitive), one purely action flick (Cliffhanger) and an award-winning movie about a man risking his life during the Holocaust to save the lives of Jews (Schindler’s List).

Frankly I think that Krugman’s real problem is not merely that he appears to have gotten the name of a movie wrong, but that he cannot even be intellectually honest when talking about movies to bolster his argument and to support his thesis about a “deep sense of disillusionment” in the “popular culture” picks movies which were clearly not representative of what Americans were going to the theaters to see in 1991 and 1993 respectively. He should have found a movie that was at least in the top ten or found a different barometer of the mood of the popular culture because movies clearly do not support his argument.

TW

(1)Top Receipts for 1991
http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Years/1991/top-grossing

Top Receipts for 1993
http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Years/1993/top-grossing

"Cut us a little slack, my friend."

Where's the fun in that?

If we couldn't post on our blogs "how could [X] miss the fabulous debunking of [Y], which is easily findable via google?", who would ever read our blogs?

Krugman is regularly and rightly criticized for cherry-picking his facts in a way that is misleading in order to make his arguments.

And this is different from any other partisan commentator on the planet in what way exactly?

Robin:

I agree that neither the plot nor the story of Blade Runner is about Japan economically conquering the world.

But I described the atmosphere and the background scenes of Blade Runner. And they show Japan has economically conquered the world. Everyone is living in poverty in the US and Japanese is our official language because all the signs in the background are Japanese.

Remember, the US was still reeling from the economic effects of the Carter Administration in 1982. Japanese companies had forced out of business thousands of US factories and the visual portrait painted by the movie Blade Runner appeared to be the future for US.

Jake is completely and utterly 100% wrong about Bladerunner. It says NOTHING about the economics of anything, Japanese or otherwise. It just uses lots of Japanese brandnames on big billboards to give a cyberpunk/Japanese feel. Everyone is NOT living in poverty -- the environment has simply been destroyed and everyone lives in squalor, rich or poor. In fact, everyone healthy enough to do so is leaving Earth for the "off world colonies". Nothing to do with anyone economically conquering anything.

Jake is simply wrong about the atmosphere and the background scenes of Blade Runner. Period.

"Falling Apart"??? How could Krugman not remember the name of such a great movie? I've just lost a little respect for old PK.

Let's not reinvent the past.

Rising Sun, both the book and the movie were, to a great extent, about how the US was being left behind by Japan. In fact I always thought that was the main point, not the murder. The murder was simply what kept the story together. After all what does the title refer to?

Krugman did not say, as some here seem to believe, that they were the most watched movies. But they were watched. And the idea that a movie must be a top 10 to be considered influential or representative of the reigning zeitgeist is historically baseless.

Yet again the Krugman haters get the facts wrong and failt to address the real point PK is making, which is that in the early 90s there was a generalized sense that we had lost the economic race to Japan. That was quite true. Movies and books and magazine articles repeated that meme over and over.

GT wrote:

Krugman did not say, as some here seem to believe, that they were the most watched movies. But they were watched. And the idea that a movie must be a top 10 to be considered influential or representative of the reigning zeitgeist is historically baseless.

Pointing out that none of the movies he cited were even in the top ten most watched movies and that the top ten movies did not reflect this supposed “deep sense of disillusionment” (the top movies in 1990 and 1992 even less so) does in fact undermine the supposed evidence for his argument in that it shows that none of the movies he chose could reasonably be considered “big” at least not in terms of the number of Americans who went to go see them.

If he wants to make an argument for a supposed “deep sense of disillusionment” in the early 1990’s he should stay away from movies because based on what people were generally going to the theaters to watch, they clearly do not support his argument.

That's your opinion, not a fact. PK offered his opinion.

If you think that in the early 90s people there was no general sense of disillusionment be my guest.

And I guess if Krugman had said that in the early 90s we were worried about machines from the future killing us that would have been justified by your logic.

I don't think this is the quibbling jane had in mind but maybe she can post something about this type of arguments?

Thorley and Robin beat me to it in regards to the "popularity" of the films listed. And I would cinsider someone calling them big films to give the impression of their popularity. Let's check some facts(all through www.imdb.com):

Grand Canyon - grossed a little over $33M ( no rental data avail.)

Falling Down - grossed almost $41M in the US. Rentals have totaled a little bit above $18M

Rising Sun - grossed over $63M in the US and rentals are over $33M

It would appear that Krugman may have a case with Rising Sun but otherwise it doesn't seem these films really were "big". Decent movies and box office showings but "big" in a zeitgeist way? I don't know.

GT wrote:

That's your opinion, not a fact. PK offered his opinion.

The problem though is that Krugman tried to support his opinion with facts that really did not support it.

If you think that in the early 90s people there was no general sense of disillusionment be my guest.

If there was any, it certainly does not appear to be reflected in the movies which most people went to go see. If there was such a sense, he should have actually picked a standard which might actually honestly support his argument then three relatively minor movies.

And I guess if Krugman had said that in the early 90s we were worried about machines from the future killing us that would have been justified by your logic.

I don't think this is the quibbling jane had in mind but maybe she can post something about this type of arguments?

Jane and others have already written a number of posts regarding Krugman’s dishonesty when it comes to trying to support his arguments with misleading facts. This is simply the latest instance of what has sadly become a familiar pattern with him.

If Krugman had said, "Three movies with mediocre- to-poor box office results....", it would have rendered the point he trying to make much less salient. Therefore, he punches it up by describing them as "big". As far as what commonly happens in the pages of most fish-wraps, this is quibbling, but it does goes to show what it takes to be a nationally syndicated columnist. Not much, in terms of putting forth intellectually honest arguments.

Thorley,

That's why I have such a hard time taking Krugman bashers seriously. They seem to live for these small quibbles and are unable or unwilling to ever address the basic issue.

PK makes a simple point. That in the early 90s there was a sense of disillusionment. And he illustrates that with the example of three different movies.

Now maybe you disagree with his basic point, that there was disillusion. But neither you nor anyone else here ever addresses that very basic point.

Instead you disagree with the examples he gives to support his view. In your opinion unless a movie is in the top 10, or close to it I guess, it can't be representative of the public's mood.

Note that you provide no support whatsoever for this view, a view I and many others would totally disagree with. I am no film buff but I can think of many movies that perfectly captured some part of the 'national mood' and never reached top 10. Clerks, for example. You just made up the idea that only top 10 or highly grossing movies can be an adequate reflection of the general culture.

If you disagree with PK's central point I would have been interested in why you think that. I recall the early 90s and my memories coincide with Krugman's. But maybe you have different recollections.

Instead you quibble on side issues and take your views on what movies are relevant as the ultimate truth.

If I understand you, then, GT, a "big" movie is one which confirms your view of public sentiment. Adjectives become fairly useless at this point, since they mean whatever the user wishes them to mean. I think the the New York Mets were a "great" baseball team last year, because, well,... I just do! Hmmm.... this should open some interesting fronts in human communication!

Don't be stupid, a 'big' movie is one that everyone knows about and most have seen or are at least familiar with the plot.

These three movies clearly meet that criteria.

No Will.

PK made a comment about a state of disillusion in the early 90s. He used as examples a few movies.

If you and I were discussing how kids in dead-end jobs feel I would use the Clerks example. I would consider that a big movie, due to the impact it had, even if it did not sell that many tickets.

Rather than focus on what is big or what is medium why not address the basic point?

Do you disagree that there was a sense of disillusionment? If so, why?

Will Allen wrote:

If Krugman had said, "Three movies with mediocre- to-poor box office results....", it would have rendered the point he trying to make much less salient. Therefore, he punches it up by describing them as "big". As far as what commonly happens in the pages of most fish-wraps, this is quibbling, but it does goes to show what it takes to be a nationally syndicated columnist. Not much, in terms of putting forth intellectually honest arguments.

I agree, I don’t know yet whether I would classify the early 1990s as a period of disillusionment as Krugman did. However one would think that if this were a fair evaluation of that period rather than an unsubstantiated opinion, that Krugman would have offered some honest evidence to support his thesis instead of something so blatantly intellectually dishonest as cherry-picking three movies which may (or may not) support his thesis and trying to misportray them as “big movies” when the evidence clearly shows that they were not even in the top ten and that the top ten movies - which were viewed by far more Americans than the three Krugman cited - did not support his thesis.

One has to wonder if he utilizes the same sort of tactics when he writes about economics.

No GT, the problem is that Krugman uses three movies with mediocre to poor viewership (describing them as "big", whatever the hell that means) to support the notion of a sense of disillusionment in the poulation at large. This is sloppy writing, for at least three movies with a dark outlook are made every year, which I suppose then could be give as examples of the population's near continuous disillusionment. Or maybe the fact that three happy movies are made every year can be given as example of how people are nearly continuously content. Who knows? Three movies means exactly nothing, therefore it is sloppy writing to use them as examples of anything.

Now, in the 1930s, dozens and dozens of movies were made (many of them musicals), on a near continuous basis, showing people living in opulent settings, so a case could be made that there was a demand on the part of people to use movies to escape the grim realities of the Depression. Your earlier point is apt; if the three movies Krugman cites can be used as examples of disillusionment in the population, then three science fiction movies can be given as examples of the desire of the population to wear jumpsuits. It is silly and pointless writing.

So do you agree or disagree with his point?

If your only disagreement is with his examples that is one thing.

If you disagree with his point about disillusion, that is another.

Bones wrote:

Don't be stupid, a 'big' movie is one that everyone knows about and most have seen or are at least familiar with the plot. These three movies clearly meet that criteria.

*snickering at the realization that in order to bail out Paul Krugman, his apologists now have to accept the argument that “Glitter” and “Gigle” could both qualify as “big movies” because they were hyped in the media for their failure to get people to go see them*

The definition you are offering seems insufficient and overly broad if one truly wishes to make a reasonable distinction to separate movies which are “big” from those are not. I think that a measure of how many Americans went to go see a movie is a pretty reasonable indicator and box office receipts and video rentals and sales are some of the best measurements of that. Otherwise it seems you are doing what Will Allen suggested which is merely inventing an arbitrary definition which means what you want it to mean, even when it seems pretty inadequate to be make a meaningful distinction.

GT, in order to agree or disagree, I would need some information by which to form an opinion. I don't think Krugman has any information to make his assertion, an assertion that was purely the product of his imagination (and depending on how "contentment" and "disillusionment" are defined, Krugman's guess may have a 50-50 chance of being correct), so he tosses out three "big" movies as examples of his imagined disillusionment. I suppose the movies that had happy themes that year are merely "medium" movies. This is crappy writing, and I'll be happy to define "crappy" in detail.

Gosh, Thorley, we may have opened a new career path for Krugman: movie reviews. I can see the blurbs now.....

Paul Krugman (NYT) sez, "Grand Canyon is a BIG movie!!!"

Paul Krugman of the New York Times writes, "Sleepless in Seattle is a movie of mere average size, so see it only if you are willing to cast off your disillusionment."

I really like Blade Runner so I'll continue kicking this dead equine for a while. As I said, Japanese is not the language spoken in the Los Angeles of Blade Runner. This conclusion is easily reached because 1: Japanese is obviously not the official language of the Police of Los Angeles; and 2: the voice over clearly mentions a pidgin language spoken on the street. Secondly, it's clear that Japan has not taken over the world because of the presence of so many Japanese immigrants in Los Angeles. If Japan were a richer nation than the US in the 2017 of Blade Runner then the poor of Japan would, logically, stay at home rather than take the huge leap of immigrating to another nation, especially a poorer nation.

As others have mentioned, the people in Los Angeles live in poverty not because of Japanese economic triumph but because of pollution and a mass exodus of people (and talent) off world. Also, the book the movie was based on (Phillip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep") mentions a relatively recent nuclear world war, further explaining the squalor.

I kinda liked Bladerunner also; Rutger Hauer's soliloquy, just prior to "dying", is pretty good writing.

So you have no opinion on the early 90s?

Interesting.

Post after post and not a single one is willing to address the main point.

Do you agree or not with Krugman's view that in the early 90s there was a sense of disillusionment in the nation?

It's a simple question. It doesn't require any technical knowledge. Just being alive and thinking 10 years ago suffices.

Meanwhile, and on a somewhat related topic, when can we expect apologies from the usual crowd of suspects about Krugman and the CA energy crisis? This is now a settled matter. Anyone read David Warsh's piece?

GT, do you normally misstate the positions of those you are having a dialogue with? Why do think this tiresome rhetorical tactic is worthwhile? I have no real opinion as to what something as nebulous as the general sentiment, among 260 million people was, for a relatively brief period, over a decade ago, and I would need to examine a tremendous amount of high quality polling data for the period before I would begin making generalizations. Then again, I could simply pluck three movies out that supported my guess, label them "big", and offer them as examples supporting my guess. Hey! Perhaps I can be a published author, and write a regular column for the New York Times! Who knows?! Maybe a Nobel Prize awaits!

Wow, no opinion whatsoever. A need for mountains of polling data!

I guess if your wife asks you what's the weather going to be tomorrow you reply you need to finish your PhD first?

It's a simple question. I'm not asking for an academic essay. You were alive and living in the US 10 years ago, right? If I ask you whether people were more optimistic about the nation in 1984 or in 1978 you probably don't need mountains of polling data, right?

Or do you do an exhaustive research every time you make a generalization of any kind?

Must be a difficult life.

GT wrote:

Post after post and not a single one is willing to address the main point.

Do you agree or not with Krugman's view that in the early 90s there was a sense of disillusionment in the nation?

Since Krugman appears to have been deliberately misleading people as to the evidence he presents to support it, it would be unwise to agree with anything he wrote unless there is other evidence to support it.

It's a simple question. It doesn't require any technical knowledge. Just being alive and thinking 10 years ago suffices.

Fine then, since Krugman had to fudge to make his argument, I’ll take the opposite opinion and say “unknown because any such generalizations are at best a snap shot of what a majority of people may have felt at a given moment but not necessarily representative of what they felt over a longer period of time.”

In other words you can make pretty much any blanket statement you want like “people were generally disillusioned in the early 1990s” (whenever that is) but the best you can do is try and pick a few poll snap shots and try and argue that this was generally how most people felt most of the time (which I do not believe was the case). A lot of people do that whether it is some mythical golden age of the 1950s or the supposed radicalism of the 1960s and 70s or the “decade of greed” in 1980s or what have you but its usually nothing more than someone picking out a few events and trying to claim that this was how “everyone” or “most people” acted/thought/believed/whatever even though that probably is not the case.

Will Allen wrote:

Gosh, Thorley, we may have opened a new career path for Krugman: movie reviews. I can see the blurbs now..... Paul Krugman (NYT) sez, "Grand Canyon is a BIG movie!!!" Paul Krugman of the New York Times writes, "Sleepless in Seattle is a movie of mere average size, so see it only if you are willing to cast off your disillusionment."

ROTLFMAO!!

Well as long as he stays away from cards or golf (where people rely on a certain level of integrity) and sticks to writing polemic screeds in the NYT about how everything is really the fault of GEORGE BUSH!, I think Krugman will manage to eek out a living.

Actually, GT, it really isn't difficult at all to refrain from making broad generalizations about something as nebulous (by the way, ever hear of something called a weather report, or of the fact that on any given day, tomorrow's weather is more often than not similar to today's?!) as the general sentiment of 260 million people for a brief span of time over a decade ago. One simply refrains from doing so. It really isn't all that hard to utter the words, "I don't know", unless one has an enormous ego to fufill, an axe to grind, and a book advance agreement to satisfy, in which case one starts grinding axes and grabbing half-assed examples out of thin air.

Given that "disillusioned" means having had your illusions taken away, I think widespread disillusionment is a good thing. JMHO, of course. But of course, PK has to go all doom and gloom over it. It's probably Bush's fault, anyway.

I?ll keep that in mind next time any of you two post some comment or opinion on something. I?ll be interested in knowing how many mountains of data you plowed through before you reached your conclusion.

Of course, this is all nonsense. The idea that you can?t come up with an opinion on something as simple as what we are debating is ludicrous. Lack of data has never stopped either of you in the past.

A lot has been written lately about the psychology of the Bush haters. Maybe someone will do a piece on the psychology of the Krugman bashers? At least those that are obsessed by Bush can reason that he is the president and sets policy. But what explains the particular fixation with Krugman?

The Krugman bashers try to convince themselves that the problem with Krugman is that his reasoning and selection of examples is biased by his views. But what they never address is how is that different from any other columnist, or human being for that matter.

This obsessive nitpicking (?aha, he said BIG movie!?) besides being ridiculous is also completely one sided. Tell me Will, or you Thorley, who is your favorite columnist? Who do you look forward to reading on a regular basis?

How long do you think it will take to me find the exact same type of mistakes you accuse Krugman of in whoever is your favorite commentator? Minutes? Hours?

And no, this is not an ?everyone does it? justification. This is simply something you should already know, human nature. The standards you have set for debating Krugman, where very little point he makes must be perfectly explained and backed up is one that no human writing can ever live up to. You have created an absurd benchmark and apply it only to Krugman. But you?d get the exact same results if you looked at Will or Krauthammer or Pruden or Gigot or Brooks or whomever it is you like. And unless you have come up with some sort of new metric for this there is no evidence Krugman is any worse than the others.

Unless you are a teenager with a ?they are all idiots? outlook of life this approach makes no sense. All columnists are biased. All books have errors.

I don?t know what you want from a columnist. What I look for in a columnist is not perfection, something that doesn?t exist. Neither do I look for an unbiased opinion, an oxymoron in my view. I know that people will pick and choose the examples that benefit their point of view because that?s common to all humans. The day may come when some artificial intelligence coupled with a huga database will be able to take all available information into account and judge it all fairly. But that?s not happening today and no human does that.

What I look for is for interesting and unique insights. I still have found no example of any other columnist explaining and predicting a complex situation correctly like Krugman did with the CA energy crisis. Have any of you? Did Will or Brooks ever do anything comparable to that? Kristol? I must have missed it.

We should not cut the now discredited Paul Krugman any slack for his movie mistakes. After all, this is a book and not a quickly put together column. In other words, there was plenty of time to do it right. It would not have taken him more than ten minutes to google. This is further evidence of the man’s sloppiness.

"I don?t know what you want from a columnist"

No, Paul Krugman is an author of a book which is supoosedly fact checked to the extreme. By the way, isn't he the same fellow who cried wolf regarding the American economy?

David,

Krugman is only discredited in your eyes and that of fellow PK bashers. In the real world he is considered the one of the most important and influential columnists by both sides. He is a top economist, won many awards, and done work his attackers can?t even understand, much less emulate.

You don?t get to cut or not cut him any slack since your opinion has no impact whatsoever. The millions that value his work as columnist (including myself) don?t look at you or those that think like you for guidance.

The only thing we can try to do, for those interested, is debate how people reach the conclusions they do. That?s all.

GT, it is you who is obsessed; obsessed with the notion that crappy writing must be defended to the point of absurdity. Is this example particularly egregious? No, but I said that several hundred words ago, and not being egregious and being crappy aren't mutually exclusive conditions. Do other writers, particularly columnists on deadline, regularly engage in crappy writing? Absolutely, which is why I would be very hesitant to name one as being a favorite. If forced to name one who strives to maintain a sense of fairness, purely on a very superficial sample, I might choose Robert Samuelson of the WP, but I have no doubt that he has printed junk; when writing a regular column, it is unavoidable. It must be remembered, however, that this piece of dreck by Krugman was printed in a book, a forum in which the standards are rightfully much higher, given the far longer, and much more deliberative process. This isn't the worst bit of junk writing in the world, or even the worst by Krugman, but it is plainly, obviously, junk, and it is very, very, peculiar that Krugman groupies such as yourself feel compelled to pretend otherwise. Is this some sort of religious or Faith-based compulsion?

OK, so it's crappy writing according to you.

But you seem to agree that others have equally crappy writing so there is nothing special about Krugman (or do you want me to look at Samuelson's articles and start dredging unsupported assertions?). So if they are all the same why do you focus on Krugman?

Oh, wait now you say that because it is a book it must be held to a higher standard.

So tell me, what current affairs book that you like do not make the mistakes you accuse Krugman of?

And how much time do you think it will take me to prove that wrong?

It's a simple question Will. Just tell me who does a better job fact checking in either columns or books.

Most other writers who put out crap don't trade on a reputation of academic brilliance and aren't mentioned as potential Nobel Laureates. Call me crazy, but I hold people with Krugman's reputation to a higher standard than Ann Coulter. I already mentioned Samuelson as someone who did a better job of attempting to be fair, and if you believe differently, feel free to show otherwise. If you have examples of crappy writing, go ahead and produce them; I assure I won't go to your absurd lengths to deny that it is the case, for unlike you, I have no Faith to defend.

I asked a simple question. Just tell me who writes books or columns on current affairs and does not make the mistakes Krugman does. I didn't say it had to be Coulter. I never mentioned her. You did.

SO the only one you can think of is Samuelson? That's it?

So you think that Krugman puts out crap but can think of only one other person, of the thousands that write books and columns, that is better than he is?

That means that 99% of what is current affairs writing is crap in your mind?

On Samuelson, let's see.

He writes last Wednesday that "Good politics and good policy often diverge".

Hmm.. How does he know this? Did he look at all instances of this and measure it? Doesn't anybody fact check him? I can just imgaine how breathless you would be if krugman said the same thing.

And then he goes on to say that " A strong economic recovery should shield the steel industry from large job losses even without tariffs"

How does he know this? Clearly he made it up to support his free trade bias. What a hack! Did he call up and talk to the steel industry representatives? The workers? If economic growth is so great for the steel industry why have they been in troublke for decades, in good times and bad times alike?

Clearly Samuleson writes crap and needs someone to chekc the nonsense he posts.

(end of sarcasm)

See how easy it is?

If you think Samuelson's comments are in error, go ahead and explain why; who knows, maybe I will agree. The piece by Krugman excerpted above is crappy writing because it makes a strong assertion regarding a very nebulous phenomenom (similar to Samuelson saying good politics and good policy ALWAYS diverge), and throws out inapt and ianane examples to support the strong assertion. If Samuelson had written "A strong economic recovery WILL shield the steel industry from large job losses even without tariffs,and the fact that the U.S. didn't have have steel tariffs in 1944 shows this", then your analogy would be apt. GT, I must go, but this really is becoming increasingly odd. Why is it so important to you to defend what is plainly an instance (albeit small) of bad writing?

That's it Will?

If Krugman didn't make strong assertions and couched every comment with an "to the best of my knowledge" you'd have no problem with him?

GT, you really need to read more carefully. It is the inane and pointless examples, coupled with guesses disguised as knowledgeably informed strong assertions,that makes it bad writing. Are you truly, sincerely, unable to discern the difference between Samuelson's comment about steel tariffs, and how I modified it? The first is a statement of probability regarding a hard to predict outcome, and the second is a certain prediction, coupled with an inane example. If Krugman had simply said, "My sense was that there was widespread disillusionment among the population in the early 90s", one might disagree, but there is nothing stupid about such an assertion. When one says that there was definitely widespread disillusionment among a population of 260 million, and three "big" movies ("big" having no apparent meaning, other than the writer's preference of that adjective) are examples of that disillusionment, one is engaging in inanity and poor writing, for as been already established (ad nauseum) the three movies are nothing other than an example of what three screenwriters produced. Good writing means that one provides examples that are truly supportive of the assertion being made, and bad writing involves providing examples that are not supportive of, or irrelevant to, the assertion being made. Is this truly a mystery to you?

I'll sum up for "GT", since he seems to be confused: Krugman tries to parlay a few sentences containing dubious "facts" into broad sweeping conclusions. Some of his readers seem not to mind this (perhaps because they already hold the same conclusions and don't care much about the facts, but I don't want to speculate...), but in terms of cold, harsh logic he falls flat on his face.

And it's not as if proving mass dissillusionment in America in the early '90s is a minor point either, especially in a book, there's very little excuse for this level of error in that type of book. More remarkable is that he's supposed to be a "journalist", even if only a lowly columnist. He's supposed to be well schooled in the art of investigation and reasoning. But again, he, his copy editor, his fact checkers (assuming they exist) fell flat on their faces.

Ok, so if I find a sweeping generalization from Samuelson then you will admit it's the same thing?

That's easy.

Two columns ago he starts with the sentence "Ours is an age of excess". His example? A big house being built in his neighborhood. That's it. Oh and Grasso's pay package. With those two examples he paints our whole era. Wow. Makes Krugman almost timid in his assertions. I mean, why didn't he say "well, in my opinion it may be the case given what I have read and lived that ours is an age of excess"?

Oh, and Samuelson goes on. He says that "We Americans are constantly grasping for symbols of superiority: something to show everyone that we've done better than those around us." But he provides no evidence. He doesn't quote a single poll, much less the mountains of polls you'd think necessary. Yes he talks later about how many cadillacs and other luxury items Amricans buy now compared to 1980 but tells us nothing of how much richer we are today. The horror!

I can just imagine how you would react if Krugman wrote that same sentence as part, say, of how values are changing in America.

But Samuelson, like Krugman, isn't writing crap. He has to rely on the intelligence and common sense of his readers. When Samuelson writes that ours is an age of excess and when Krugman writes about the early 90s they have to assume a certain amount of understanding. If they were to qualify and exhaustively research every point ever made nothing would ever get published.

Oh, and spare me the "But Krugman wrote a book" roputine. Give me the name of any current affairs book and I'll show you they make the exact same mistakes you accuse Krugman of. Any book at all.

So when I forced you to tell me who is better than Krugman the only name you could come up with is Samuelson. I only had to look at two of his columns to show that he made the exact same mistakes you accuse Krugman of.

So it seems noone is better than Krugman in this respect. is that your point? That they are all crap?

That's a teenage philosophy but so be it.

GT: Compliments first, I was enjoying the first 2/3 or so of your posts; strongly opinionated but even-toned.

Criticisms second:

The Krugman bashers try to convince themselves that the problem with Krugman is that his reasoning and selection of examples is biased by his views. But what they never address is how is that different from any other columnist, or human being for that matter.

Krugman is only discredited in your eyes and that of fellow PK bashers. In the real world he is considered the one of the most important and influential columnists by both sides. He is a top economist, won many awards, and done work his attackers can?t even understand, much less emulate.

In two paragraphs, you both posited and answered the question. It is precisely because Krugman is an important and influential columnist that his work will be targeted for a higher level of scrutiny, particularly by those who disagree with his perspective. (Not all of those persons are 'bashers,' however, so a lowered incidence of stereoslurring would be welcome.)

To err is human; to err in a consistent pattern is also human, but not in an excusable sense. The reason this point about "big" movies is being harped on so thoroughly here, is that it is typical. I will make a leap and presume that Krugman is writing to a general audience, not some niche segment with non-standard definitions for "big." That being the case, a small error in word choice becomes inexusable in this context because it has been used to inflate weak evidence and thus support an even broader point.

What is it about Krugman fans that they refuse to acknowledge that this kind of behavior is damaging, and instead try to dismiss it as petty nitpicking by "bashers?" Is their collective affinity to Kruman's positions so dependent on Krugman's explanations that if Krugman falls, the positions associated with him fall likewise? If so, Will Allen's comments about defending faith resonate rather well. If not, then social psychology just discovered an entirely new field of study.

Oh, and in case you missed it Falling Down was the subject of a cover story by Newsweek in 1993 where they talked about white male paranoia.

A quick Google search shows that a Council of Foreign Affairs paper that says " Indeed, from the mid-1980s until its slide into stagnation in the early 1990s, Japan was considered by many the measure of U.S. economic success or failure. "The United States," Congresswomen Helen Bentley was quoted as saying in a 1990 Fortune article, "is rapidly becoming a colony of Japan." A cursory glance back at the cover stories of major periodicals during that period is instructive: "Japan's Clout in the U.S." (Business Week, 1988); "Where Will Japan Strike Next" (Fortune, 1989); "Japan Invades Hollywood" (Newsweek, 1989); "Containing Japan" (Atlantic, 1989); "Yen For Power" (The New Republic, 1990). One could retrieve from the television network archives a wealth of stories about the ominous nouveau riche Japanese gobbling up real estate or whole industries that similarly captured the mood. Then there was the stream of books, some thoughtful and some simplistic "revisionist" analyses of Japan, along with a spate of hysterical agitation-propaganda: The Coming War With Japan, by neophyte academics and Michael Crichton's Rising Sun, the pulp novel and movie, already appear to be period pieces."

And there is more from Samuelson. Remember, all my previous quotes were from the last 2 columns. So I look at the next one and what do I find?

The very first sentence says: "We live in an age when people increasingly refuse to act their age."

Wow. Samuelson must hate America. We don't act our age. We live for excesses. Too bad he never proves any of this.

I guess Will won't be able to read any columnists anymore.

anony-mouse,

I will ask you what I asked Will. Who, in your opinion, does a better job than Krugman? I'm not talking about who you agree with politically. Rather, sicne you and the others accuse Krugman of making these constant mistakes, I have to assume you think there is somebody who deosn't do that.

Will thought that Samuelson might be it but it took me only two columns to show that isn't true.

And as my other posts show the movies Krugman mentioned were big. One had a Newsweek cover story about its social implications. Another became an icon of the "Japan is overtaking us ' meme.

It is only you, the Krugman criticizers (is that better?) that think they were not important movies.

And even more.

Jane's very first sentence in this post tell us that Krugman is a financial journalist. But Krugman has said many times he doesn't consider himself a journalist and he has written pretty little about purely financial matters.

Does that mean that Jane is writing crap, as Will would say?

Or does it mean that Jane has to rely on the intelligence and common sense of her readers to understand what she is saying even if it is not technicallyn 100% true or backed -up?

Yes, GT, what you produced by Samuelson is bad and uninteresting writing. It doesn't illuminate anything. Such writing is best avoided. Now, really, what do you find so hard about simply acknowledging what is plainly obvious? Are you Krugman's mother?

Also, you really seem to have very serious reading deficiencies. I never said that sweeping generalizations are the only component of bad writing, although I agree that sometimes they will suffice. What I have said, repeatedly, and you seem to be unable to comprehend, is that Krugman's excerpt from the book is particularly bad due to the use of inane examples, examples which are not particularly illustrative of the point being made. I think Samuelson's large house example may fall in this category (I'd have to read it), but certainly the Grasso example is probably quite good, since 140 million for running what is supposed to be non-profit institution is very exceptional (unlike the unremarkable and unexceptional fact that three sad or unsettling movies might be made in the course of a year), to say the least. Are you truly unable to comprehend the difference?

Finally, I never said that Samuelson was incapable of producing bad writing. All writers are, even, God Forbid, Krugman the Magnificent, and it really is extraordinarily odd that you feel it necessary to defend Krugman as if he were some sort of deity whose prose cannot be criticized. Since you seem to want to criticize what you wished that I wrote, instead of what I actually did write, let me remind you that what I wrote was that my impression, based on a superficial impressions, was that Samuelson endeavored to be more fair in his writing. If you feel otherwise, fine. What this has to do with using three forgettable movies as examples of the general sentiment of 260 million people is unknown, but, then again, there are many things about the entire thrust of your argument in this thread that are unknown.

I see GT has now supplied a definition of "big"; if an editor of Newsweek and a CFR writer took notice, then it's "big". Gosh, who da' thunk it? I also see that you continue to misrepresent my position, GT, to what end, God only knows. Perhaps it helps strenghen your Faith. I made norepresentation that Samuelson was incapable of error, I merely said that my impression was that he endeavored to be more fair. What is it about simple sentences that you find so difficult to comprehend?

Finally, as to Jane's description of Krugman, when one takes money for a regular spot in a major print media publication for a number of years, then yes, one is a journalist, regardless of whether one acknowledges it or not. I supppose, by your reasoning, if Krugman were to contest whether he was a mammal, you would take issue if Jane were to describe his as a warm blooded, hairy animal, who gestated within his mother. This would be odd (much like taking issue with the notion that a accomplished economist's major subject matter in his writing was financial in nature), but, then again, much of what you have written in this thread has been odd. Oh well, this has been entertaining, if nothing else....

On Samuelson: Glad you finally accepted that what you dislike in Krugman is common to all other writers. That was my point all the time. I do not claim that Krugman makes less mistakes than others, as you continue to misrepresent me. I simply point out that PK is no worse than any of his peers. That's different.

On big movies: Yes, I think most reasonable people would accept that if one of the two major weeklies in the nation dedicate a cover story to the social meaning of a movie that it has had a big impact. That's what weeklies are for. If you want to continue believing that they weren't big movies, that they are not indicative of anything be my guest.

On Krugman as a journalist: No, you are wrong. Journalist has several meanings but most people understand it as referring to someone who is reporting the news, not to a columnist. Even more so when the description is of a financial journalist. James Surowiecki is a financial journalist. His counterpart in the NYT would be someone like Floyd Norris, not Paul Krugman. Most people understand the difference between an Op Ed columnist and a financial journalist that is published in the business section.

Holy cow, GT, who knew that an editor of a newsweekly had such dictatorial control over what 260 million people considered "big"! This is so laughably absurd as to be beyond comment. Do you really want to defend the covers of Time and Newsweek as arbiters over what the public considers "big"? What Time and Newsweek have on their cover is nothing more than a guess by a small number of people abpout what they think the public will consider "big". Sometimes they are right, and sometimes they are wrong. That's it, and to think otherwise is to completely misunderstand popular culture. It is a bottom-up hierarchy, not one where outcomes are dictated from a controlling top.

In case you missed it, I made no generalization (you really have a difficult time reading) regarding Krugman based upon the excerpt from the book; I merely noted that it was an example of crappy writing, while also clearly noting that crappy writing was not exclusive to Krugman. On the other hand, you seem to be very exercised to contest whether the excerpt was an instance of bad writing, which is what leads me to believe that you are bothered by any negative comment pertaining to your icon, since the excerpt in question really isn't worth expending any energy defending, although, as I also have noted, it is not the most egregious example of bad writing. In general, any statement in a piece of punditry which begins "The American people believe..." or "the American people feel..." or any other cheap gas-baggery along those lines, should be dismissed outright, for what follows is very likely to be tripe, particularly when it is coupled with inane examples which illuminate nothing.

Now, I have generalized about Krugman in the past; he is a hack, after all, but not for reasons so pedestrian, albeit crappy, as demonstrated in the example from his book. No, I reserve the word "hack" for people who engage in character assasination by false insinuation, followed by dishonest and unethical responses to objections to the insinuations. We have previously debated this, and I don't wish to again, particularly with one who argument is essentially Faith-based. However, have no doubt, I will apply the label of "hack" to any writer who behaves similarly.

Finally, you seem to concede that the word "journalist" has several meanings, and I was unaware that you had been made arbiter of which ones were "correct", but please alert any number of people whose works appears solely in opinion pieces that they cannot consider themselves journalists. I'm sure that many will be suprised, but will be deeply appreciative to have received your arbitration.

Yes Will, most people understand the difference between being a journalist and being a columnist. You appear not to. And I noticed you did not address the "financial" qualifier. Most people I know look at the business pages for a financial journalist. If Jane had simply said journalist it would be easier to make your argument. But Jane wrote "financial journalist".

And no, Newsweek and Time may not be arbiters of what is important but they sure better be good judges or otherwise they will be out of business soon. See the difference? I didn't say they determined what is important. But they must reflect it if they want to sell.

Maybe you think that having a cover story about the social implications of a movie tells you nothing about that movie's impact. I disagree. Many others would as well.

That's why I responded to your comment about crap writing. You assume that everyone must agree with you with what is an important or big movie.

I guess it turns out you and the others engaged in 'crappy' writing. So to paraphrase one of your first comments in this thread:

If instead of generalizing about what is or is not a big movie you or the others had said "Well in our personal opinions, with nothing else to back it up, we have decided that only a movie with a top 10 audience or close to it can be considered big enough to serve as an example of the national psyche" it would have rendered the point you were trying to make much less salient. If I am not the arbiter of the word journalist who made you the arbiter of the meaning of a big movie?

I, for one, don't agree with your definition. I, for one, many times use movies or scenes from movies (many of them small or indie) to make a point about the national mood. "Clerks" is a good example. In the past I've used "Rising Sun" as well.

So, can I expect to see every one of your future posts either including full backup for any assertion or prefaced by a standard disclaimer along the lines of ?This is just my unsubstantiated opinion??

We wouldn?t want you to stoop to crappy writing after all.

Uh, GT you still aren't reading very well. I never defined what was a "big" movie, I merely said that Krugman used the word to inflate his assertion, insead of using something more descriptive, like relative popularity. See, the whole point is that using words like "big", which can mean just about anything, really isn't good writing, especially when applied to something as nebulous as national sentiment. Writing with precision has value, writing with imprecison is often, well, crappy. Now, imprecise writing in a forum such as this, where there is little to no time for reflection or revision, is pretty tolerable. When takes months to write a book, howver, expectations of precision in the use of language are far more reasonable.

As to Time and Newsweek, I urge you to review their covers for the past 10 years, and then make the assertion that something appearing on the cover is "big"; if so, you have made my point nicely about the relative uselessness of the word "big" in this context. Thank you.

GT, this may be unbelievable, but your interests don't define something as large as national sentiment, since national sentiment encompasses every last citizen of the United States, which is why generalization about national sentiment, from the streets of New York and L.A., to the back roads of Texas or the Lousiana Bayou, to Cuban enclaves in Miami, to any number of other places, is so hard to generalize about. Good writing avoids it, except in very specific contexts, with use of very precise language. Bad writing, and many, many, commentators fall into this particular trap of bad writing, lazily embraces it, and as a result ends up bloviating without illuminating. Tens of millions don't relate to "Clerks" or "Rising Sun" in even the most tengental manner, so using them to illustrate something as large as national sentiment is pointless. If one wished to use those movies to illustrate sentiment among a subset of American sentiment, it may have some value, but it is extremely difficult to generalize about the sentiment of hundreds of millions of people, which is why good writing usually avoids it.

As to who practices journalism, as I said, there would be hundreds, if not thousands, of people who write opinion pieces only who would differ as to your contention that they are not journalists, and if you find the word "financial" a poor description of one who has a background in economics, and writes from the viewpoint of an economist, fine. Whatever.

Surely anyone with a minimum interest in current events knows that when someone says "The American people believe" or "The national mood is" they simply refer to a prevalent attitude as they perceive it or measure it but that no sane person pretends that this applies to 100% of the population. When conservatives said that Americans support the Iraq war even they knew that millions vehemently opposed it. I guess we could all preface our comments or writings with extensive qualifiers and explanations where we make clear that there is no such thing as a national public opinion but intelligent discourse would be impossible. I know of no person, of any political persuasion, that thinks that this added clarification would be anything but unneeded baggage. If you require that even the most basic of things be explained to you, you can't get very far. If you want to call that sloppy or crappy or imprecise so be it. I call it reality and a minimum requirement of mutual understanding.

You must live an isolated life, and understand little of the magazine marketplace, if you think that Newsweek and Time can survive for decades, be the two most widely read newsweeklies in the nation, and yet not have an understanding of what the public deems relevant.

I disagree on financial journalist. No matter how many times and ways you try to say otherwise I think there is a clear distinction between someone like Floyd Norris (a financial journalist) and Paul Krugman (an economist and Op Ed columnist) even if both write for the NYT.

Finally, and I'll leave it at that, my sentiments don't define the national mood and neither do yours. Krugman believes that the three movies he cited are indicative of part of the national mood in the early 90s and so do others (including Newsweek and the CFR analyst). You don't. Just say so and don't pretend you are the arbiter of what is big or what is not, what is relevant and what isn't. You have no more knowledge or authority to determine what is a relevant indicator of the national mood than either I or Krugman. You have provided no counter evidence of any kind. In effect you are reduced to claiming that your opinion is better than Krugman's.

I'm sure you believe that.

As I'm sure that Krugman and the millions that read his columns and buy his books disagree.

GT, I don't know whether you are unable to read, or simply wish to appear to be obtuse. My entire point is that neither I, Krugman, the editors of newsweeklies, nor anyone else, can really get a handle on something as nebulous as "national sentiment" based on little more than what movies we consider "big", whatever the hell that word means, and to say otherwise is to engage in sloppy thinking and bad writing. That you think an editor for Newsweek, guessing as to what movies will be popular, and therefore help sell his magazine, can arbitrarily determine "bigness" is too silly for words. Pop culture marketing is a a fairly random affair, as anyone in the movie or music business can attest, and as stated earlier, to say that Rising Sun is any more representative of "national sentiment" than Sleepless in Seattle, is purely an arbitrary choice by the writer, and fairly inane, but by all means, go ahead and worship in the Church of Krugman.

----------quote-----------
Two columns ago [Robert Samuelson] starts with the sentence "Ours is an age of excess". His example? A big house being built in his neighborhood. That's it. Oh and Grasso's pay package. With those two examples he paints our whole era. Wow. Makes Krugman almost timid in his assertions.
----------endquote---------

Oh really. Ever read The Mercedes Menace...by your idol:

-------quote---------
A few years ago, when I moved from MIT to Stanford, I was struck by the prevalence of luxury automobiles. In Cambridge really flashy cars were rare - even if you peeked into the garage of a large mansion you were unlikely to see anything fancier than a Saab or a Volvo. In Palo Alto, by contrast, it was Lexus and Mercedes territory wherever you looked, including the driveways of fairly modest homes. Clearly the denizens of Silicon Valley cared a lot more about their wheels than the people back East.

But last year, when I moved back to Cambridge, I discovered that things had changed. Ostentatious cars had started to proliferate everywhere - even in MIT's faculty parking lots. And I was surprised to realize that this bothered me - not because I envied the people who could afford these machines (oh, all right, I envied them a little), but because I had the sense that something had gone wrong with the values of the place I used to know.

[snip]

A Mercedes is a classic example of a status good - an item that people buy, not so much for the direct satisfaction it yields (they're good cars, but they're not THAT good) as for the statement it makes about their wealth. An even better example is a Rolex watch, which is no better at telling time than an ordinary $30 digital throwaway, but marks its wearer as someone with money to burn. (Rolexes are pretty - but in my experience the typical owner is not a man notable for his aesthetic sensibility).
-------endquote---------

And, oh yeah, GT, can you point to any Samuelson columns slandering people as million dollar stock fraud felons, and bribers of sitting governors?

And if you can, when Samuelson was confronted with evidence he was wrong, did he straightforwardly apologize? Or did he say, That just makes it worse.

Welcome to another edition of Brad's movie reviews. In this review, we look at the 1993 blockbuster Falling Down starring Michael Douglas.

IMDB.com categorizes Falling Down as a comedy (among other genres). I think they might have mistaken this movie with that other 1993 blockbuster, Falling Clown. (Which brings up a little aside, if Klugan is so smart, why doesn't he check IMDB.com for his movie references, sometimes that adds just enough info to make it look like you have an unbelievable memory.)

So anyway, Falling Down does not really reflect a deep sense of dillusionment. It reflects cartoon violence set to a tour of the LA freeway system. It captures the audience not with any kind of empathy for some screwball defense worker played by Michael Douglas (who, BTW, was cast in this movie in the hopes that the female demo would buy tickets hoping to see his butt), but with familiarity with the freeways and his route to the Venice Pier.

It is the same familiarity with freeway routes in LA that fascinated us all as AC drove OJ from the cemetary in Lake Forest (just a few miles from my home) up the 5 to the 91 across to the 405, west on the 10, exit Bundy with lights and sirens clear from Orange County. Except in real life, the bad guy doesn't kill himself.

This has been Brad's movie reviews. Tune in next week when we review Judge Dredd as a testament to distributed urban administration.

-Brad

Yes Will, I understand your point. You have made it several times.

You think that sweeping generalizations based on arbitrary examples is crappy and inane.

But as I showed to you with Samuelson (and I'm willing to show to you with any other writer/book/columnist you care to use as a counterexample) what you accuse PK of is something everyone does.

Absolutely everyone. Including Jane. Including yourself in your comments.

All it would take for you to prove me wrong would be to give me the name of a columnist that has never done this or a book that doesn't suffer from this flaw.

But you can't.

So why point it out only for Krugman?

And you continue to confuse your opinions with facts. It is my opinion that cover stories of the main newsweeklies are indicative of the national mood. Not a perfect indicator (none exists) but useful nonetheless. Yet you summarily reject that with no supporting evidence of any kind other than your opinion. That's worse than what you accuse Krugman of since he generalizes based on a few examples. You generalize out of thin air.

Crappy, huh?

GT, if you understand my point, then it is extremely strange that you continually misrepresent it, and it can only be concluded that you are either dishonest or obtuse; and I doubt it is the latter. As I said, many, many writers, fall prey to sloppiness inherent in generalizing about hundreds of millions of people, based upon arbitrary and flimsy evidence. If it makes you feel better to defend the practice, feel free. Finally, in case it hasn't occurred to you yet, a person who is making a strong assertion has the burden to supply strong evidence, not the other way around.

By the way, GT, you may wish to calculate the combined readership of Time and Newsweek as a percentage of the American population, and then reflect upon the relative utlity of the editors' educated guesses as to what covers will sell to that narrow band of the population as a proxy for the sentiment of the American people. It really is quite silly, and no it isn't rendered any less silly because others may engage in the same silliness.

I did not misrepresent it.

I disagree with it.

Once again. You think that sweeping generalizations based on arbitrary examples is crappy and inane.

And you criticize Krugman for that.

But that is something everybody else does.

So why do you focus just on Krugman? Why not on Jane? Or George Will? Or Samuelson?

It's as if we were comparing the relative merits of different societies and someone berated the US because there is crime. But there is crime everywhere. So that distinction is completely unhelpful.

Of course, in the case of my imperfect example, you can actually compare with relative ease since there are ways to measure crime across nations.

But in your example there is no way. Unless you think that Krugman uses sweeping generalizations more than others (and you have provided no evidence for this) then your criticism is a bit strange.

As for Newsweek you keep making the same assertion over and over but that does not make it true. It is your opinion, and nothing more, that they are useless as indicators of public opinion. That is a sweeping generalization based on nothing. They may not sell to 100% of the population but that proves nothing. I never pretended it was a perfect indicator.

Yet more dishonesty by G.T.. You wrote,"Just say so and don't pretend you are the arbiter of what is big or what is not, what is relevant and what isn't.", which clearly implies that I have asserted that I have some way of determining what is big or relevant, when my entire point was precisely the opposite. For the final time, why do you deliberately misrepresent the views of those you are conversing with? As to why Krugman, in case it has escaped you, he was one of the subjects of the original posts; if the excerpt had involved another's writing, the opinion would have been the same, and I have already stipulated several times that many fall prey to this sort of error, while also acknowledging that this is far from the most egregious type of lousy writing, although it is still lousy. As to other misrepresentations on your part, I never stated that cover stories of newsweeklies are useless indicators, I stated they were insufficient in and of themselves, and I gave as proof the fact that every cover story of the past 10 years could not be considered big, even for the small sized readership (more like 3% of the population; WOW, THAT'S BIG!!!), unless the word "big" is stripped of meaning. And no, please don't say that the miniscule readership of a CFR writer can make up the difference, in terms of reflecting the American sentiment, for this conversation has already become sufficiently absurd, which is why I will now end my participation.

"The zeitgeist of the early 1990s tracks more along the lines of the more popular movies like...."

That must be why Falling Down got its own Newsweek cover, right? Christ, did I hallucinate the '90 recession? The angry white male?

Now, now Will.

You have to learn to play nice.

Stop accusing those that disagree with you of dishonesty.

Krugman has as much right and authority to say that certain movies are representative of the national mood as you have to deny it. Neither is more, or less, correct.

Krugman may not have proven that the 3 movies reflect the mood but neither did you prove that they don't.

He offered his opinion and you offered yours.

You think your opinion is correct and his is wrong. I disagree.

Now,now, G.T. if you stop misrepresenting the views of people you converse with, then you won't be accused of dishonesty. Really, I'm curious; why do you do this? You still either miss the point, choose to misrepresent it. I make no assertion regarding national sentiment, other than it is extraordinarily difficult to gauge such a thing (I would take equal issue with the statement excerpted by Jason), and assert that it is sloppy writing to do so without reams of evidence, because of the nebulous nature of the phenomena. Krugman, on the other hand, is the one making strong assertions without strong evidence, and it is incumbent on a writer making strong assertions to present strong evidence. You are asking me to prove a negative, which is a silly thing to do.

What you keep missing is that saying that the 3 movies are useless in gauging the national mood IS a strong assertion. For which you offer no evidence other than that it is your opinion.

The evidence is the fact that a small percentage of the population saw the movies, and if a small percentage of the population saw the movies, there is no empirical basis for extrapolating the entire population's mood, no more so than it was worthwhile to extrapolate the national sentiment regarding Alf Landon vs. FDR in 1936, based upon telephone polling a population in which telephone ownership was not widespread. Krugman has feelings. In case it has escaped you, feelings aren't facts. I have no idea what the national sentiment was in the early 90s, but I can say without fear of contradiction that three movies is not empirical evidence one way or another. Krugman is guessing, which, yes, he has a right to do, but they should be labeled as guesses.

To clarify, the sample of people who viewed these movies is not a random, therefore it is not empirically valid to draw conclusions about the population at large, even if it could be determined that they had very similar reasons to choose to see these movies, which, of course, hasn't been determined. This is why I stated I would need to see a large quantity of high quality polling data before I would venture a guess regarding something as hard to measure as national mood. Without such data, there is is empirical no basis for making an assertion, and we are left with guesses.

You keep repeating tha same points, that strong assertions based on selective examples are useless.

And that the size of a movie's viewing audience and a newsweeklie's ciculation determine if it can used as anindicator of that national mood.

But that's just your opinion, not a fact. You are making strong assertions based simply on your opinion. You provide no proof that a movie that is not in the top 10 can't be a mood indicator other than that you belive that to be so. Same with the Newsweek argument.

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