In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinions in The Times.

Paul Krugman/Party of Denial

The Short Version: I still love Hillary even if she supports that stupid gas-tax holiday.

In his words: “But if the Democrats really want to pin the denialist label on John McCain, health care is the place to focus.”

Score: D+ (Desultory)
Krugman delivers a very unfocused column here, beginning with some whining about what Obama could have said better on his Fox News interview and then moving into some obvious points about how the Republicans are vulnerable on just about everything before finishing with an admission that Clinton’s gas-tax holiday proposal was a disappointment but that she’s still better than Obama, just because Krugman says so.

David Brooks/The Cognitive Age

The Short Version: Technology, not globalization, is what’s driving economic change in the world today.

In his words: “If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner. ”

The Score: C- (Corporate)
What we like about this column is that Brooks conveys the reality that the world these days is ruled by corporations, and not countries. But unlike Brooks (and most of his Republican brethren), we’re not big believers in corporations (which is not to say we’re fans of nationalism, either) who are obviously the driving force behind the technological revolution Brooks describes. Like Brooks we tend to laugh at Democratic politicians who like to rally the troops with cheap talk of roping in globalization, but unlike Brooks, we also laugh at the Republicans who like to pretend that corporations are the answer to everything. The other thing we didn’t like about this column is Brooks’ needless reliance on academic jargon: if words like “cognitive” and “narrative” (in a political context) aren’t bad enough, does he really need to use “paradigm” NINE TIMES in a single column?