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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (198164)	8/22/2012 2:41:49 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 541344

Thanks. I read it. And Krugman takes another pop on the census jobs bump. Ferguson deserves every line of criticism. I would hope he finds it difficult at Harvard now.

To: Win Smith who wrote (198164)	8/22/2012 4:17:52 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541344

Yes, he is dead right: Ferguson's critics have simply misunderstood for whom Ferguson was writing that piece. They imagine that he is working as a professor or as a journalist, and that his standards slipped below those of academia or the media. Neither is right. Look at his speaking agent's Web site. The fee: 50 to 75 grand per appearance. That number means that the entire economics of Ferguson's writing career, and many other writing careers, has been permanently altered. Nonfiction writers can and do make vastly more, and more easily, than they could ever make any other way, including by writing bestselling books or being a Harvard professor. Articles and ideas are only as good as the fees you can get for talking about them. They are merely billboards for the messengers. That number means that Ferguson doesn't have to please his publishers; he doesn't have to please his editors; he sure as hell doesn't have to please scholars. He has to please corporations and high-net-worth individuals, the people who can pay 50 to 75K to hear him talk. That incredibly sloppy article was a way of communicating to them: I am one of you. I can give a great rousing talk about Obama's failures at any event you want to have me at. Read more: esquire.com I saw George Will interviewed a few years ago on C-Span with Brian whathisname. It was one of those 3 hour things where authors are interviewed in their home or office, and get pretty comfortable. Will essentially admitted what Marche says above, although he didn't give actual numbers. But his speaker's fees gave him far more revenue than anything else he did, and everything else was, essentially, a "billboard" for his services. What is astonishing to me is--people actually pay that amount of money to hear some guy talk for 30-45 minutes, and then take a few questions for half an hour. What a country.... What a world.... What an oligarchy!