If you're not reading Paul Krugman's NYT blog you should. His writing combines great and disparate qualities like no one else: brilliance, clarity, humor and passion. He even warns you when a post is "wonkish." Today is a great example. First, he comments on the crazed, foaming at the mouth, way over the top reaction of the right to Bloomberg's bike share program, quoting Front Page magazine:
Bicycles are one of the obsessions of Mayor Bloomberg and his transportation secretary Janette Sadik-Khan. Khan is the granddaughter of Imam Alimjan Idris, a Nazi collaborator and principle teacher at an SS school for Imams under Hitler’s Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini. The bio of his son, Wall Street executive Orhan Sadik-Khan, frequently mentions the bombing of the family home in Dresden and surviving trying times after World War II. It neglects to mention that the times were only trying because their side was losing. …
In partial revenge, Khan has made many New York streets nearly as impassable as those of her grandfather’s wartime Dresden.
You cannot make this stuff up. That followed on the heels of the now legendary Dorothy Rabinowitz
epic anti-bike rant
"We now look at a city whose best cities [sic] are absolutely begrimed by these blazing blue Citibank bikes."
"The most important danger in this city is not the yellow cabs... it is the cyclists, empowered by the city administration."
"The bike lobby is an all-powerful enterprise."
In his next post, Krugman takes on phony "civility" noting that you cannot be "civil" when the other side is arguing in
bad faith, citing mild-mannered, but blatant repeated liar, Avik Roy.
Paul Krugman is indeed a national treasure -- but a down-to-earth one.