Man Who Was Wrong About Everything Retires From NY Times

Economist Paul Krugman has retired as a columnist for the New York Times, a former newspaper. Krugman published his final column Monday, and headlined it, “I will not be retiring from the New York Times,” in order to continue his unbroken record of being wrong about every single thing. Krugman began his column in January 2000 and won the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics for his discovery that money doesn’t really talk, that’s just a metaphor. He says he’s now going to cash in his investments in Kodak and Pets.com so he can afford to devote all his time to his tinfoil farm, where he grows the hats that help him communicate with the invisible spirits who see the economic future before it happens. In his final offering, Krugman reminisced about his most important columns, including his famous 2008 masterpiece, “Why the Good Times will Never End,” along with some older columns like “The Government Can Borrow as Much as It Wants As Long as the Moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter Aligns with Mars,” and some recent ones, like “Don’t Blink or You’ll Miss the Transitory Inflation,” and “What’s Everyone Complaining About? My Intel Stock is Poised to Go Through the Roof.”

After Krugman announced his retirement from the opinion page — which is sometimes fondly called by nicknames like Knucklehead Row or Fathead City or what a bunch of stupid a-holes — the Big Brains of the page honored Krugman with a retirement party. A wild time was had by all as Charles Blow showed off his intellectual prowess by buttoning his shirt correctly while David Brooks and Thomas Friedman competed to see which of them would be first to figure out how to turn his Super Mario hat so that the brim faced forward. As the bubbly flowed and the anti-depressants were passed around, the gang grew nostalgic talking about their own famous columns, like that insightful Charles Blow favorite, “White People Are Meanies,” and David Brooks’ book on the importance of character, called, “How to Dump Your Wife for a Younger Woman,” not to mention Thomas Friedman’s thoughtful essay for last month’s Sunday Magazine, “Basheer al-Assad, a Leader with Staying Power.” Meanwhile, Ross Douthat threatened to ruin the festivities by continually grabbing the arms of passersby and screaming, “Look at me! I’m a sane, rational man! I am not supposed to be here! Please send help!”

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The task of finding a replacement for Krugman now falls to the Times editorial board, which includes such journalistic powerhouses as the Mango Tango crayon from the jumbo size Crayola Box, a wax replica of the miraculously preserved corpse of Vladimir Lenin and that guy who walks up and down 47th Street screaming at his mother in her home in the sky. The question before them is: how to create a column that can match the level of Paul Krugman’s wit and wisdom without it becoming a series of meaningless characters that only resemble words until you look at them closely. 

One idea is to brighten up the opinion page with a typical Times Relationship column that will give readers helpful advice on where to find the best porn, how to arrange a throuple with your soon-to-be-former friends, and how you can spice up your marriage by refusing to sleep with your spouse. Another idea is a column called “Poor Little Dirtbag,” in which every week a Times writer explains why we should feel compassion for a different terrorist, pervert, murderer or Times editorialist while forgetting all about the suffering of his victim or subscriber. And finally, the board discussed a possible column by Times Editor-in-Chief Blithering Prevarication the Third called, “Why I Hate Donald Trump So So Much,” in which every single day Mr. Third gives yet another reason why he hates Donald Trump so, so much. But that idea was rejected after the editors decided it would be indistinguishable from the current opinion page.

In a statement to Times readers, the editorial board wrote, “We hope all our devoted subscribers will take a moment off from playing Wordle, and say a fond farewell to Mr. Krugman. His departure will leave a dark empty hole where his column used to be, so probably you won’t notice any difference.”

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This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “The Andrew Klavan Show.”

Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. He is the bestselling author of the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fourth installment, “A WOMAN UNDERGROUND,” is now available. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan

The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.