In an act of radical candor or radical thirst for attention, a passel of New York Times columnists have simultaneously declared themselves “wrong” on a variety of issues.
There was a running gag on Happy Days in which auto mechanic Arthur Fonzarelli — “The Fonz” to his friends — was physically unable to form the words “I was wrong,” but on Thursday, the Times turned that gag on its head by devoting the entire opinion page to columnists declaring “I was wrong!”
In all, there were eight columns by the illustrious commentators of The Gray Lady:
- I was wrong about inflation by Paul Krugman
- I was wrong about Al Franken by Michelle Goldberg
- I was wrong about capitalism by David Brooks
- I was wrong about the power of protest by Zeynep Tufekci
- I was wrong about Trump voters by Bret Stephens
- I was wrong about Chinese censorship by Thomas Friedman
- I was wrong about Facebook by Farhad Manjoo
- I was wrong about Mitt Romney by Gail Collins
The effort was headlined “Eight Times Opinion columnists revisit their incorrect predictions and bad advice — and reflect on why they changed their minds,” and included a note congratulating themselves for their courage:
In our age of hyperpartisanship and polarization, when social media echo chambers incentivize digging in and doubling down, it’s not easy to admit you got something wrong. But here at Times Opinion, we still hold on to the idea that good-faith intellectual debate is possible, that we should all be able to rethink our positions on issues, from the most serious to the most trivial. It’s not necessarily easy for Times Opinion columnists to engage in public self-reproach, but we hope that in doing so, they can be models of how valuable it can be to admit when you get things wrong.
Spoilers for some of the more polarizing columnists include:
Bret Stephens has realized he was wrong to be so mean about the judgment of Trump supporters. On the cusp of another January 6 hearing, he writes “The worst line I ever wrote as a pundit — yes, I know, it’s a crowded field — was the first line I ever wrote about the man who would become the 45th president: ‘If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.'”
Michelle Goldberg has come to the conclusion she was wrong to call for Al Franken’s resignation when she did.
“I regret calling for Franken to resign without a Senate investigation,” Goldberg writes, and adds “Due process is important whether or not a person did what he or she is accused of, and the absence of it in this case has left lasting wounds. Carried away by the furious momentum of #MeToo, I let myself forget that transparent, dispassionate systems for hearing conflicting claims are not an impediment to justice but a prerequisite for it.”
Krugman writes that he was mostly right, at least about the causes of inflation, but concedes “something was wrong with my model of inflation — again, a model shared by many others, including those who were right to worry in early 2021. I know it sounds lame to say that Team Inflation was right for the wrong reasons, but it’s also arguably true.”
And Collins resurrected a golden oldie by retracting her obsession with the tale of Mitt Romney and his dog.
Read them all here.
