Posted 4:29 PM by Robert

This Is Spinal TAPPED

TAPPED continues its transformation into a silly self parody. First, a preposterous and irrelevant credentialist attack on the economists letter of support for the President's economics proposals, for which Don Luskin brought them down hard.

Now, TAPPED resorts to incoherent name calling to answer Luskin.

TAPPED clings to its belief that much about the President's proposals depends on what your meaning of "economist" is (or is that the meaning of "is"?). TAPPED thinks there is a "tradition" that "economist" means someone with a doctorate in economics, despite many counterexamples. The TAPPED approach - which, among other things, requires them to cobble up hilarious explanations as to why it's fine for non-economists to win the Nobel Prize in economics but not to sign a letter to the President as an economist - was silly and irrelevant from the beginning. Of course, simply being in uproarious and incoherent error doesn't save the TAPPED position from being offensively elitist.

But why does TAPPED continue to expose itself to continuing public humiliation at Luskin's hands? The TAPPED-out geniuses don't seem to know the meaning of "cutting losses" any better than they know the meaning of "economist" or that it doesn't help to crank up the rhetoric to 11.

As an official intellectual pygmy in good standing, I'll just continue my dance around the TAPPED arguments. Maybe that will make them seem more imposing.

Maguire has more.