Monday, June 06, 2005

Independence

Wolcott writes that that the reason the Times management hates Krugman is that he's independent and doesn't give a shit about them. I think there's a lot of truth to this. It's also the reason journalists tend to hate bloggers.

But, it isn't independence itself that they hate - it's independence which hasn't been granted by the gatekeepers of their world. If they hated fuck you power and fuck you money for its own sake they'd have turned their guns on Novak and Safire and Limbaugh and Will and plenty of others long ago. What they hate is that some people have sidestepped the career track they've put themselves on. They don't hate independence, they just hate that someone in their world has obtained it in some other fashion than the way they're trying to get it.