In a web exclusive with ABC News Sunday, Paul Krugman went after Jon Stewart over the comedian’s derisive coverage of the idea of minting a platinum coin to avoid a credit default.
“It is a funny thing. But you want to be funny from a point of view of understanding what the issues are. There’s a reason we’ve gotten to this place,” said the economist and New York Times columnist. “Obviously neither [Stewart] nor his staff did even five minutes of looking at the financial blogs. Lots of people think it’s a bad idea. Lots of people think it’s a good idea. But it’s not just, ‘Oh, those idiots.’”
In a recent blog post, Krugman, an advocate for the platinum coin idea that the White House ruled out Saturday, called the Comedy Central host “lazy” for what he characterized as an overly simplistic mockery of the idea.
“Part of the point about Stewart … is that he’s funny, but that the show is actually better informed than most of our public discussion,” he told ABC. “The idea is that the show is like an especially good episode of the roundtable on ‘This Week’, but in the form of jokes. But when he just turns it into dumb, ‘I don’t know nothing, but those people look dumb to me,’ he’s ruining his brand.”
