Article in Politico, which in my view has a pro-Republican bias, reports on reactions to Krugman's short blog entry Sunday:
Krugman, winner of a Nobel prize in economics, touched off an uproar when he wrote on Sunday, “The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.”
Prior to that closing sentence, Krugman wrote, in a blog entry titled "The Years of Shame":
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The 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.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
One of the conservatives quoted in the article was Glenn Reynolds:
But conservative blog Instapundit urged conservatives to cool it. “Don’t be angry. Understand it for what it is, an admission of impotence from a sad and irrelevant little man. Things haven’t gone the way he wanted lately… he tries to piss all over the people he’s always hated and envied,” wrote blogger Glenn Reynolds.
Krugman wrote several things that were true and require bravery to say publicly, particularly for a pundit with his large public profile. But he also stepped on himself with some unfortunate or obtuse comments.
The commemorations were "oddly subdued" because the principle memories most people likely were focused on were the events of 9/11 itself, which were horrific and tragic as well as, in the case of those who tried to save lives and in many cases lost theirs, heroic. Not the political response following the relatively brief period when the country was about as unified as we ever get about anything, which Krugman did not refer to. That relatively brief moment of national unity was also an important memory for many who long for that now.
I don't see how the memory of the event has been "irrevocably poisoned" by what came after the brief national moment of relative unity. I think our own Doc Cleveland and A-man made much more discerning, and spot on, comments in their pieces the other day that were not needlessly and unnecessarily offensive or hurtful to readers.
Nor have the endlessly poor national decisions which followed the events of that day made the commemoration an occasion for shame. There is nothing which can turn the anniversary of an event marked by tragedy and immense suffering, on the one hand, and heroism on the other, an occasion for shame. Shame is an appropriate reaction in the face of dishonorable conduct. Few, if any, of the vast store of memories many of our fellow citizens have chosen to share from 9/11/01 itself are of acts thought to be dishonorable.
As Michelle Malkin's otherwise tasteless comment quoted in the article suggested, this was most likely an unfortunate case of Krugman hitting "send" before he'd reread what he'd written with a fully self-critical eye. I don't know if he has retracted yet any part of what he wrote, or if he is someone likely to retract, or apologize for, something he has written.
The other quotes attributed to conservatives bashing Krugman over this are the kind of small-minded, hateful stuff we've come to expect from so many right-wing pundits these days. If Krugman is "irrelevant" what word might accurately describe Glenn Reynolds on the relevancy front?
Anyone reading Krugman's blog post would realize that what he thinks is shameful are the terrible policy decisions--many of them dishonestly sold and portrayed--made following 9/11, the grievous damage those decisions inflicted on so many individuals and our country, and the, yes, shameful, vile, reprehensible exploitation of the events and memories of that day to poison the atmosphere for desperately needed but all-too-rare scrutiny of proposed policies.
He just wasn't careful how he wrote it, unfortunately.