In the same way he tried to capitalize on the horrific Tucson shooting as an excuse to attack Sarah Palin and conservatives, Paul Krugman has used his New York Times blog to attack Rudy Giuliani and President George W. Bush this morning in a most disgusting way:
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te (sic) atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
There is nothing wrong with reflecting on the events of ten years ago and making social and political judgements on our leaders’ reactions over the past decade. In fact, most of us here at “The Bigs” have done so this morning at Big Government.
But this is clearly different. As Krugman was posting his diatribe at 8:40 AM ET this morning, the air in lower Manhattan was still ringing with the haunting sounds of the bell used to commemorate each of the fallen heroes in the World Trade Center that horrible morning. As the Washington Times’ Kerry Pickett points out, surely Krugman was inspired by President Bush’s appearance at the solemn memorial service and the warm reception he received from the crowd there.
Mr. Krugman couldn’t contain his vindictive hatred of the President and had to rush to the “blog of record” to let his venom flow. The sanctimonious and self-righteous tone of Krugman’s post is something we’ve grown used to by now: “and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not”. But this use of the 9/11 memorial as an occasion to accuse President Bush and Mayor Giuliani of political war profiteering is beyond the pale, even for Krugman.
To top it off, Krugman self-righteously proclaims, “I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.” If by “obvious reasons” he actually means “Because even the left-leaning readers of the New York Times will find this post inappropriate and tasteless and I can’t handle the shit-storm that will inevitably hit this page if I allow comments,” then yes, we understand. But here at Big Journalism we have no such concern.
We’ll leave our comments open. Let Mr. Krugman hear from you.
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