Newspeak Newsweek

Mike Allen of Politico writes:

A stark image of Paul Krugman, the bearded New York Times op-ed columnist and Princeton economist, appears on the cover of next week’s Newsweek, with the headline “OBAMA IS WRONG: The Loyal Opposition of Paul Krugman.”

Orrin Judd responds, “Well, The Loyal Part Is ‘Change'”; one of his blog commenters documents Newsweek’s recent travails on the political spectrum from left to left:

So the magazine that used its covers to declare “We are all Socialists now”, and then to essentially call for the outright silencing of the nation’s premier radio host, now uses it’s cover to show it’s even-handedness by personalizing an opponent of Obama…. and that would be noted conservative thinker and libertarian minded (yeah) New York Times columnist…. Paul Krugman!

Not to mention their recent deal with Air America. But then, Newsweek became the Washington Post’s equivalent of MSNBC (a hard left opinion alternative owned by a nominally more center-left main outlet) quite a while ago. In 2005, Newsweek was simultaneously inventing stories of American guard at Gitmo stuffing Korans into toilets, even while it’s own international edition was stuffing an American flag into a garbage can for a cover photo.

All of which dovetails remarkably well into Victor Davis Hanson’s thoughts on The Corruption of the Press.

Fortunately, the media built themselves a mausoleum to document their existence, just before calling it a day.]

Update: Don Surber believes that Krugman may use his appearance on the cover to reposition himself as centerist:

Answer: It helps him by making him appear to be hated by the left and the right equally, and therefore he is square in the middle and must be right, because we know that the middle of the road is the safest place to be.

Ask any possum. Squirrel. Deer.

Heh. If that is indeed Krugman’s plan, it does have one slight flaw: he wouldn’t be the first pundit–or publication–to achieve inadvertent self-triangulation.