I went back and checked Paul Krugman’s disclosure about his Enron ties over a year ago – the disclosure that the New York Times implies exonerates Krugman from the charge of not informing his readership about his Enron ties this year. In fact, Krugman didn’t disclose his fee a year ago, passing off the board membership as some sort of jolly extra-curricular. The first report of his Enron money was in the Times yesterday, and Krugman still hasn’t disclosed it in his column. Here’s the disclosure of a year or so ago: “Full disclosure: Before this newspaper’s conflict-of-interest rules required me to resign, I served on an Enron advisory board that turns out to have been a hatchery for future Bush administration officials. (What was I doing there? Beats me.)” Hmmmm. What was he doing there? Could $50,000 have something to do with it? A reader also suggests that Enron’s purpose in this was the usual bipartisan insurance policy. Krugman might well have ended up in a Gore administration. His presence on an advisory board kept Enron’s contacts open with both parties. Then there’s this wonderful addition: “I can’t say that I got to know Mr. Lay well, but I presume that he is an honorable man.” So we know that Krugman also used his New York Times column to burnish Ken Lay’s reputation. In that light, don’t you think it would be appropriate, given Krugman’s current outrage at Enron’s corruption, that he follow many others’ example, and donate that $50,000 to a charity to help the defrauded shareholders, some of whom have had their retirement savings gutted?
MEDIA BIAS ADDENDUM: It will be fascinating to see whether any of the usual left-liberal journalist watch-dog magazines or bodies say anything about Krugman. The flagship left-liberal media-zine, Jim Romenesko’s MediaNews, routinely recycles smears against conservative journalists, but hasn’t mentioned this one. Figures.
POSEUR ALERT: “Why, during one of the most trying periods in U.S. history over the past half-century, would the mandarins of the West Wing interrupt their normal course of business to allow our team to roam the halls, rig lights, and set up makeshift studios? … because, I like to think, the pages of Vanity Fair, more than any other two-dimensional space in our culture, have taken on a status equivalent to the High Sierra of the Public Image.” – Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, in his Editor’s Letter for this month’s issue.
The Dish 