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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
The failed energy trader didn't just spend money on politicians. It gave handily to journalists, too. But why is Sullivan most angry about the one liberal who cashed in?
Jan 31, 2002 | It took a few months, but the press has finally managed to carve out an angle about itself in the Enron debacle: a controversy-in-a-teapot focusing on conflicts of interest for the so-called Enron pundits.
The pundits include a group of prominent political and economic commentators who in recent years (i.e., before former CEO Kenneth Lay replaced Osama bin Laden as Public Enemy No. 1) made their way onto Enron's payroll and received big bucks for doing very little work. Now they are being asked: How in good conscience can they comment on Enron's fall after cashing Lay's obscenely generous checks?
The Enron sugar daddies include Weekly Standard editor William Kristol ($100,000), CNBC host and National Review Online columnist Lawrence Kudlow ($50,000), New York Times columnist Paul Krugman ($50,000), Weekly Standard contributing editor and Sunday Times of London columnist Irwin Stelzer (approximately $50,000) and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan ($25,000-$50,000; apparently she cannot recall the exact sum).
We're assured this is a very big deal. "The burgeoning scandal [has] replaced the war as the Beltway's reigning obsession," the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
A review of the charges makes clear that none of the Enron media players, who were all slow to cop to their Houston boondoggles, come out looking very good. But that also goes for their chief accuser, conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan. His selective prosecution raises suspicion about whether he is simply trying to right an ethical wrong or, more likely, hoping to damage one of the left's most effectively critical voices -- Paul Krugman, a former MIT economist who has landed punch after solid punch on the Bush administration over the past year.
Right from the outset, Sullivan, using his daily online column, called for an "investigation" into Krugman's alleged ethical lapse. (By who, the Pundit Police? Is that run out of the Department of Justice?) He suggested Krugman and others "recuse themselves" from the Enron situation, the way Attorney General John Ashcroft did, since as a senator he received Enron contributions. According to Sullivan, the Times columnist should return his Enron money, just as Senator Hillary Clinton had returned the campaign contributions she'd received from Enron. (In Washington, contributions and paychecks are seen as one and the same.)
"Disclosure is a must," wrote Sullivan. "We demand it of politicians. Why should we not demand it of the journalists who police them? If it's corrupting for politicians, why is it any less corrupting for pundits, who can exercise as much power as many Congressmen and often have more influence than individual Senators? "
Yes, both politicians and the press depend on public trust, but the last time we checked pundits did not have the power to pass legislation, prosecute criminals or declare war. Nor were pundits answerable to the voters. Indeed, the level of importance granted by the media to this Enron media tempest is more proof than we need of the warped sense of self-importance such pundits have about themselves and their colleagues.
The absurd levels of self-absorption are reminiscent of the time, early in George Bush's campaign, a Boston television journalist sprang a pop quiz on a befuddled W. While the cameras rolled, the reporter asked him to name several foreign leaders. Bush stumbled badly. More than a few pundits then rushed forward to defend Bush, suggesting even they wouldn't have been able to ace such a tough test. Their courage in admitting to just skimming the international news section every morning was commendable, but unlike Bush, those columnists weren't angling to become the leader of the free world.
So, just what crimes did these pundits commit?
