The Commentariat -- May 5, 2013
Ad-libbing into War. Peter Baker, et al., of the New York Times: President Obama's remark last year that use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would "cross a red line" was "unscripted." But, "as a result, the president seems to be moving closer to providing lethal assistance to the Syrian rebels, even though he rejected such a policy just months ago. "
What's the best thing for an "austerian" economist to do when his theories are debunked? Gay-bash John Maynard Keynes! ...
... Tom Kostigan of the Financial Advisor: "Harvard Professor and author Niall Ferguson says John Maynard Keynes' economic philosophy was flawed and he didn't care about future generations because he was gay and didn't have children.... This takes gay-bashing to new heights." ...
... Niall Ferguson: "Sorry." ...
... Good. The Boston Globe is reporting this as a top headline: "Prominent Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson apologized Saturday for saying in a public speech that economist John Maynard Keynes' policies were too short-sighted because he was gay and did not have children." ...
... NEW. P. D. Pepe (see Comments) is quite right; Pankaj Mishra's review of a book by Ferguson is an excellent read. (So are Ferguson's whining complaints about Mishra's review, which follow the original article.)
... Matt Gertz of Media Matters: Ferguson "was harshly criticized for a 2009 column in which he compared Obama to the cartoon character Felix the Cat, writing that Obama was 'not only black' but 'also very, very lucky.' More recently he claimed that New York Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman's supposed 'inability to debate a question without insulting his opponent suggests some kind of deep insecurity perhaps the result of a childhood trauma.'" ...
... John Aravosis of AmericaBlog: "Ferguson rather-famously has had a long-going feud with liberal economist Paul Krugman. Krugman has been married twice, the first time to an artist, and has no children." ...
... Kathleen Geier of the Washington Monthly: It turns out gay-bashing Keynes is a longstanding right-wing meme, & Ferguson himself has commented on Keynes' homosexuality at least twice before. Also, Ferguson is not exactly a paragon of "traditional family values." ...
... Henry Blodget of Business Insider: "... this is the first time we have heard a respectable academic tie another economist's beliefs to his or her personal situation rather than his or her research.... Keynes' policies did not suggest that he did not care about future generations. On the contrary. ... For the sake of both future generations and current generations, Keynes believed that governments should run deficits during recessions and then run surpluses during economic booms." ...
... Ezra Klein: "Quite a few studies and surveys have found that gay couples save much more than straight couples.... The fact is that Ferguson would like our government to act a bit more like the nation's gay couples than its straight couples and stop doing so much spending and investing now and begin doing more saving for later.... Somewhat ironically, the financial lives of gay couples fit right-wing economic theories pretty well." ...
... A couple of other bad things that have happened to conservatives recently because ... the gays:
(a) Obama won re-election ... because Mitt Romney is gay. He has a dancing horse, for Pete's sake. ...
(b) The Supreme Court declared the Affordable Care Act Constitutional ... because Chief Justice John Roberts is gay. His children are adopted.
Ben Pershing & Jon Cohen of the Washington Post: " Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II has an early lead over businessman Terry McAuliffe in their race for governor, a new Washington Post poll shows, even as most voters in the commonwealth have yet to engage in the nationally watched contest." CW: either way, Virginia is going to have another lousy governor.
Andrea Lorenz of Reuters: "Heavy-handed gun laws and a culture disapproving of gun ownership put citizens in a vulnerable position during the door-to-door search for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev last month, NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre said on Saturday. 'How many Bostonians wished they had a gun two weeks ago?' LaPierre asked in a speech at the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Houston."
News Ledes
CNN: "A series of massive explosions illuminated the dark sky over Damascus early Sunday, igniting renewed claims that Israel has launched attacks into the war-torn country. Syria's government said the explosions were the second Israeli airstrike in three days. The latest target, officials said, was a military research facility outside the Syrian capital. A top Syrian official told CNN ... that the attack was a 'declaration of war' by Israel."
AP: "The Texas fertilizer plant that exploded last month, killing 14 people, injuring more than 200 others and causing tens of millions of dollars in damage to the surrounding area had only $1 million in liability coverage, lawyers said Saturday." CW: if I'm not mistaken, I have a million dollars of liability coverage on both my homeowners' and auto policies.
Guardian: "Seven US service members were killed on Saturday in one of the deadliest days for Americans in Afghanistan in recent months and the latest of attacks against international troops since the Taliban announced the start of their spring offensive."
AP: "A 46-year-old soccer referee who was punched by a teenage player during a game and later slipped into a coma has died, police said. Ricardo Portillo of Salt Lake City passed away at the hospital, where he was being treated following the assault last weekend...."
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Reader Comments (12)
Niall Ferguson is what the English call an arrogant prick. When a man of his stature stoops this low then he is no longer in the league of people we can take seriously. Keynes lived a colorful life hobnobbing with the Bloomsbury group. He was also a sought after escort for the unmarried daughters of the wealthy English who lived in Florence during the early twentieth century–––AND he obviously came up with a damn good economic system that if we had heeded we would not be in the pickle we are in now.
P.S. Excellents reads: K.Geir's piece as cited above and then Pankaj Mishra's from the London Review of Books –-the link given in Geir's article.
Re: That horse isn't dancing because he's gay; he's dancing 'cause he goin' out to stud.
Tipping point; economist gay-bashing other economists, we've finally reached "stupid". Way to go everyone!
Harvard must be very proud of the crop of profs they've got in the barn these days.
Here's a puzzle. Wouldn't you think an a proponent of the austerity club would argue in favor of cutting production, i.e. makin' babies, rather than increasing output?
The asswipe in question started up a whole other production line before shuttering his first baby makin' factory. Outsourcing indeed.
I'm baby-free; I always thought there was plenty of babies to go around. Not like they're in short supply.
@PD Pepe: Mishra's review, and Ferguson's petulant "I-am-not-a-racist" objections to it, along with other observations, make me wonder if conservatism isn't 95 percent racism (or fear of the "other") & 5 percent resistance to change.
Ferguson claims he's not a racist because he doesn't say the sort of thing George Wallace said. This is a most naive misunderstanding of how white racism has "evolved." The sons & daughters of people who would scream at black schoolchildren or take fire hoses to civil rights marchers have learned -- like Ferguson -- to modulate their behavior. During the presidential campaign I read an article which included interviews of some Ohio voters. The reporter talked to a couple of white truck drivers who were Romney supporters. The language they used to explain why they favored Romney -- whose policies were not in their economic interests -- was dog-whistle-sophisticated, but the bottom line was that they were protecting themselves from black people. Most people know what they can & can't say -- and when & where they can & can't say it.
Ferguson is no different from those truck drivers (who also prefaced their remarks with "I'm not a racist"). Gussying up racism with footnotes doesn't make it less racist. (Nor does catching yourself mid-word, Rick Santorum.) Ferguson's racist excuses may be more extensive than the truck drivers', but they're still just phony excuses to claim racial or cultural superiority over other peoples & -- worse -- to promote policies based on that false assumption. Ferguson's nostalgia for white men in pith helmets drinking gin-&-tonics while "servants" fanned them on the veranda is pretty sickening.
Ferguson's homophobia goes hand-in-hand with his racism. In both cases, he shrouds his prejudices in "intellectual theory." Keynes couldn't have been a good economist because he was gay; the U.S. should take over the world because British imperial "enlightenment" was such a great thing.
It's clear that Ferguson's homophobic moment wasn't a "slip of the tongue." First, he really was making what he thought was an intellectual argument, and it was an extended one, in which he asked a rhetorical question, answered it & elaborated on it. Second, he has mentioned -- in writing -- Keynes' homosexuality before, and in one instance he did so in a very crude way. (BTW, Ferguson completely misrepresented Keynes' meaning in his famous remark that "in the end, we're all dead.") The difference is that instead of couching his homophobia in dog-whistles, he thought he could highlight it in a public forum. In Ferguson's circles, overt racism is of course taboo, but homophobia is still cocktail-party funny.
Finally, if you follow Ferguson's logic, no one who is gay and/or childless is qualified for the majority of leadership positions because they can't possibly be thinking of long-term solutions. Somebody shoulda told this to George Washington.
Marie
Review: just got done with the book review and exchange of letters between Mishra and Ferguson. Asswipe forgot; or chooses to politely to ignore, one great aspect of empiricism, you get to spread your exceptional seed among the lesser races.
He's more of a historian than a economist. I thought both the review and the exchanges were wonderful to read; Thanks PD
Another thank-you for an enjoyable LRB review and response. Ferguson has such a snarling, immature, angry demeanor in person. I can picture him as he wrote his responses to the review. I'm sure his computer screen required heavy duty spittle removal after. He is an exceedingly unpleasant asswipe both in person and on the page.
Okey dokey. I get to speculate carelessly about Niall Ferguson, asswipe of the week, since he is busy speculating carelessly (and homophobically) about Keynes--and I gather, by implication, Paul Krugman.
I think it is quite possible that Nially Baby is a "closet gay" much in the manner of Michele Bachmann's husband--who spends all of his days "trying" to therapize gays into becoming straight. Ya know that old quote from Hamlet: "The lady (homophobe) doth protest too much, me thinks?" If the foo shits--wear it!
On the subject of racism in America. Yes alive and waaaay too well--and not going away for several generations. I am so sad I will not live to see a world population completely miscegenated! And to see all religions morph into secular humanism. "You can say I am a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." RIP John Lennon!
Oh...and lest we forget!
http://www.alternet.org/mitt-romneys-advice-recent-female-grads-have-quiver-full-kids
..."This week, Mitt Romney delivered an interesting commencement speech to the (very Mormon populated) Southern Virginia University's graduating class. Sharing his secrets for "abundant living," Romney urged the new grads to go out, get married, and procreate like crazy.
'Get married,' he said, and “Have a quiver full of kids if you can.”
Also, hurry. Staying single until your thirties could be a big mistake. A quiver full of kids aren't born over night.
“Some people could marry but choose to take more time, they say, for themselves. Others plan to wait until they’re well into their 30s or 40s until they think about getting married,” he said, “They’re going to miss so much of living, I’m afraid.”
Girls, forget about establishing a career before you get married or have children. Why spend your body's prime child-bearing years working, when you could be breast-feeding on a much smaller salary?
As Romney reminds the class of Southern Virginia University, wealth is not guaranteed. Not everybody knows how to cut corners, exploit workers, and watch the profits rise. Even fewer are born into the power necessary to accumulate wealth in America. Anybody biologically capable, however, can make a quiver full of babies."
"Find a mate and procreate." Catchy. I guess I'd call that the hard bigotry of low expectations. A guy who thinks he's qualified to be the "leader of the free world" advises half the world (especially the educated among them) that they should stay barefoot and pregnant.
Also, a la Ferguson, producing a quiver full of kids will allow their husbands to qualify for leadership positions. Thanks, little ladies!
Everything is perfect in Right Wing World. (Also, because ... no blah people.)
Marie
Long ago and far away after 9/11 I met a colleague of my husband's who taught English Lit., in the egg and butter section of Stop & Shop. She cornered me, all excited about a book she had just read by Ferguson called "Empire," and since we had shared literary and political discussions she wanted to share her enthusiasm about said book. I had to wait a bit to get it at the library, but after reading it I wanted to contact this colleague and tell her how wrong and scary I thought Ferguson's ideas were. I never did, but I wonder whether she ever changed her mind about what he was advocating. Thank you, Marie, for bringing this all to our attention today and for your input. And Kate––I don't think this guy is gay––if anything he was/ is a womanizer. I also think his rise in Britain and then here have a lot to do with his ability to sound/write like a real historian. You just have to watch the PBS series he did on the evolution of currency to realize how seductive he can be.Those dimples and twinkle in the eyes go a long way even in the halls of Harvard academia.
On second thought: It was unfair of me, I think, to say that Niall might be more of a womanizer. Just because he left a wife and kids for another woman doesn't make him one.
@PD Pepe-
And because Niall Ferguson left his wife for another woman, does not mean he is not a "closet gay." Not likely, for sure, but not unheard of. Self-loathing people--who live their lives in denial--thereby living a lie, often project their self-hatred onto innocent others. Just sayin'