As the last-minute accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was breaking, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman fired off a self-righteous mini-tweetstorm that showed an unusual absence of self-unawareness, even for a GOP-hater not lacking in conceit.
The three tweets form a representative triptych of Krugman’s attack-dog persona, with equal parts attacks on his colleagues in the media and dire warnings for any on his Democratic side who might feign fairness and objectivity, which Krugman sees as a cowardly façade. Those two facets were sandwiched by the tweet showing his shocking lack of self-awareness: Calling a conservative "a smarmy, smirking, entitled and mercenary guy." Look who's talking.
The tweets in full (emphasis added)
One big loser in the Kavanaugh situation is the cult of savvy -- the tendency among some journos to sneer at anyone trying to stand in the way of what's supposed to be an unstoppable train. 1/
Whatever eventually happens, Kavanaugh was clearly a smarmy, smirking, entitled and mercenary guy; the odds that he had some kind of skeleton in his closet were pretty good 2/
Oh, and let's not forget all the savvy Democratic legal careerists who thought they could win points by talking about how great their good friend Brett was. Their cynicism should not be forgotten 3/
Regarding Tweet #2: Those four unflattering adjectives can be applied with far more justice to Krugman himself. “Smarmy” and “smirking” should be obvious to anyone who has ever read a Krugman column, while “entitled and mercenary” are quite rich coming from a man who bragged about getting “money calls” and collected a fat fee in 1999 for advising the scandal-plagued energy company debacle known as Enron.
