Last week the Harvard professor said that Keynes came up with bad economy policies because he was gay and childless. Ferguson eventually apologized, but in an open letter in Tuesday's Harvard Crimson, he dug in further on the substance of his claim, that Keynes' sexuality influenced his economic policy.
Harvard professor and prominent Daily Beast columnist Niall Ferguson is now apologizing for saying economist John Maynard Keynes' theories about surplus and deficit spending were somehow shaped by that fact that he was gay and childless. Which is great, except that it may not be that sincere. He's made the argument before.
Lots of people hated Niall Ferguson's "Hit the Road Barack" cover story for the August 27 Newsweek, but we learned on Friday it also sold a bundle, so we're getting ready for more front-page trolling from the weekly.
Paul Krugman is pretty much done picking on Niall Ferguson for his widely-criticized takedown of President Obama and is moving on to Ferguson's publisher Newsweek.
If Niall Ferguson wants to persist in claiming his hotly contested essay is intellectually honest, then the only conclusion is that his editors at Newsweek didn't care enough to contradict him.
Newsweek editor and provocateur Tina Brown must be thrilled that Niall Ferguson's "Hit the Road, Barack" cover is the talk of the morning, but, actually, it's not because the essay hit on some universal truth or was an exquisite piece of journalism—it's because everyone is cutting the piece off at the knees.
The Players: Niall Ferguson, writer, historian, brainy professor at Harvard who isn't afraid of rebutting a bad review with a lawsuit; Pankaj Mishra, writer, essayist, brainy reviewer for the London Review of Books who isn't afraid of unleashing a scathing review.
Today in books: Universal options Erik Larson's non-fiction chiller In the Garden of Beasts as a possible Tom Hanks vehicle, Niall Ferguson threatens to call in the lawyers over a bad review, and the many theories about literary criticism's decline.
It includes Barack Obama, Rupert Murdoch and, for some reason, Brian Kilmeade
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