I’m Thrilled to Be On Substack So That I Can Finally Shit Talk Other New York Times Columnists

By Paul Krugman

Photo by Europa Press News via Getty.

What follows if a guest column from former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who now has his own Substack newsletter. I am honored to publish Krugman in I Might Be Wrong, though I don’t know why he didn’t just publish this column in his own newsletter. The fact that he didn’t seems…strange. Why wouldn’t he? I honestly can’t think of a single reason why this column would appear in my newsletter instead of his. But, anyway: Here is what Paul Krugman wrote.

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After 25 years at The New York Times, I’m excited to start the next chapter of my career on Substack. Substack allows maximum freedom: I can publish what I want, when I want, without having to worry about the concerns of editors or advertisers. I’m excited at the prospect of providing in-depth economic analysis as well as lighter, off-topic musings for my readers.

But more than anything, I’m looking forward to finally giving my Times colleagues the public ass-reaming that they so richly deserve. Time for the world to know that the Times editorial desk makes The Wolf of Wall Street look like The Cosby Show. For years, the Times’ code of conduct kept me from calling out the misbehavior of my fellow columnists, but no longer: You should have made me sign an NDA, killed me, or both, New York Times, because all the tea is about to get spilled up in this bitch!

Nicholas Kristof is on drugs. Which drugs? All the drugs — I have seen Nick abuse every drug from black tar heroin to Flintstones Chewables. On my very first day in the office, I walked in to find him and William Safire trading rips from a bong carved out of an apple. Those “win a trip” contests are just an excuse for him to score drugs — he takes some unsuspecting university student to whichever country has the best crank or molly or whatever he’s into at the moment, craps out a paint-by-numbers column about foreign aid, and brings the student home with four kilos of primo product crammed up their rectum. If you’ve ever read a Kristof column and thought “what was he smoking when he wrote this?” the answer is probably “fentanyl smuggled into the country in an essay contest winner’s ass.”

Tom Friedman — besides being such a fucking dweeb that even I have an irrepressible urge to shove him in a locker — is eyeballs deep in a pyramid scheme. Every pitch meeting, he’s like “You know what we should write about? Herbalife! The science-backed nutrition supplement that helps you nourish a healthy life!” He tries to sell you Herbalife every time you talk to him; I heard he made an ass of himself at a G7 summit trying to sell a case to François Hollande. He’s got pallets of the stuff stacked up in his office, and I think he might be in financial trouble if he doesn’t sell it; he’ll often show up at a staff meeting with a black eye or a broken arm and say “golf injury!”

Ross Douthat isn’t Catholic; his name is Russ Feinstein, and he’s some stats guy from Stanford. His first week in the office, he and a bunch of his friends — one of whom I was told was the inspiration for Jonah Hill’s character in Moneyball — sat around “using a big data approach to identify underserved markets,” in their words. At one point, I saw a white board with names and descriptions written on it, including “Ross Douthat — conservative Catholic”, “Ryder Christopoulos — ex-Marxist trad husband”, and “Rod Fandango — gay alt-right surfer dude”. As you know, Russ ultimately settled on the Ross Douthat persona, but not after workshopping the Rod Fandango character around the office for a week.

David Brooks fancies himself to be a pathetic superhero called “The Adjudicator”. Seriously: He’s always saying things like “these streets would be cleaned up if The Adjudicator was around,” or “there’s no better friend to justice than The Adjudicator!” You can tell when he has his stupid Adjudicator costume on underneath his suit, because it’s this big puffy thing with fake muscles and a cape that he tries to hide beneath his jacket. One day, we were in a staff meeting and heard yelling outside, and there actually was a street tough snatching a lady’s purse! You could tell Brooks was practically sporting a boner as he mumbled “Oh, um, I need to, uh, go plug the meter,” and ran out of the room. He showed up on the street about four minutes later — because of course, he had to change and ride the elevator down — and the lady was lying there crying, and Brooks just kind of patted her on the back and was like “there there”. But then the criminal showed back up and said “give me your wallet!”, and I swear to God we heard Brooks point and say “It’s back there, in my pants,” and then the crook punched him right in the glasses. I don’t even know why Brooks was still wearing his glasses — the one thing everyone knows about Clark Kent is that he takes off his glasses to become Superman. At any rate, Brooks limped back into the meeting like ten minutes later with a bloody nose and his busted up glasses and said “Geez, I was plugging the meter, and, uh…a kite swooped down and hit me in the face.” And we were all like “A kite?” And he was like “Yeah.” And we were like “On 41st street in Manhattan?” And he was like “I know! That’s probably illegal!” And I said “Gee — someone should call The Adjudicator!” And everyone wanted to laugh but couldn’t, and that burn is the thing I’m most proud of from my 25 years at the Times.

Here are some things you probably don’t know about some other Times columnists:

Maureen Dowd: Died in 2018, has been AI ever since.

Jamelle Bouie: Brought a Real Doll to work on Valentine’s Day and announced that “the stigma against flesh-silicone relationships is the last acceptable form of racism.”

David Leonhardt: Loves to do the Ace Ventura “talking from your ass” thing around the office. Did it in an editorial board interview with Nikki Haley.

Bret Stephens: Always watching the Cars movies in his office, TWICE called Executive Editor Joseph Kahn “Daddy”.

Michelle Goldberg: Inveterate farter.

For years, I’ve kept these things to myself. I’ve had to due to the Times’ commitment to “collegiality”, which I think is actually a commitment to hiding the fact that they employ a bunch of weirdos and lowlifes. Thank God I’ve left establishment media for Substack, much like Andrew Sullivan, Nate Silver, Yascha Mounk, and Heather Cox Richardson.

Be sure to check back tomorrow to hear what I have to say about those freaks!

For the lawyers: This was a bit.

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