Goodbye Paul

R. D. Kushner
September 19, 2005

Thank you Mr. Krugman, but it’s time I moved on. You are perhaps the best rational voice in the main stream media, and you are now suffering the results of your own popularity. Now that your editorials are only available on the paid version of the New York Times web site, I will miss you Paul. It’s been great, really. Please don’t take my refusal to spend $49.95 per year to read your articles personally. My position is a vote against the idea that your opinions should be privileged information.

Of all the New York Times content to be restricted I had hoped that editorials would have come last. As popular as your page may be for advertising purposes, it is only an opinion. And it is because this fact, that it carries a freshness that no “unbiased” news article ever could. To compare a news article to one of your editorials would be like comparing an Ansel Adams photograph of El Capitan to the view of this great majestic heap of rock from along the quiet banks of the Merced River. No comparison, Paul.

Perhaps I have no right to receive your brilliant essays for free. But I have been receiving them that way for many years now and the thought of having to pay for your opinion stirs a feeling I can only describe as resentment. I just won’t take the bait. But it’s not me you should be worrying about, Paul. It’s those readers who need convincing; you’ve been preaching to the choir with me. Your voice was my voice. It was my voice and hundreds of thousands of others; we could feel our minds resonating with your words. You write to be heard, Paul. Now, those who need to hear you most, probably won’t hear you at all.