Niall Ferguson in the news!

[james_davis_nicoll]

Harvard Professor and author Niall Ferguson says John Maynard Keynes' economic philosophy was flawed and he didn't care about future generations because he was gay and didn't have children.

And a little while later Gay-bashing Harvard Prof makes an unqualified apology. He does not seem concerned that his previous analysis erased the category 'bisexual' to him but baby steps, baby steps.

Comments

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

%P

What in HELL does being gay have to do with running a nation's economy on a basis of sympathetic magic?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

But Reagan wasn't gay.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

And Reagan spent years trying to get the country back on a solid currency standard.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Please describe those efforts. Also please to be explaining "sympathetic magic".

Reagan gave the country tons of debt with his voodoo economics, as GHWB called it. The guy who brought inflation down was Fed Chairman Volcker, a Jimmy Carter appointee.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

It's quite simple. Stuff which he doesn't understand but approves of is science, stuff he doesn't understand but dislikes is magic.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Queer people don't have the urge to procreate, and therefore don't care about the future, is the idea he was propagating.

Note that his apology didn't say that the idea alone was hateful and bigoted, btu just that he was wrong to say what he said because Keyne's wife had a miscarriage, so he probably wanted to procreate.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I really do wonder where he was brought up, that he never heard of the Catholic Church; whose officers, regardless of tastes, normally do not reproduce, and which organization has been engaged in long-term growth planning since it split off from the Byzantine Church in the 6th Century.

I've said it before, and I will not be silenced:

It is a sin and a shame the people you meet when you ain't got a flounder.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

What does "running a nation's economy on a basis of sympathetic magic" have to do with Keynes?

Remember, Keynes was not Reagan, nor Bush.

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

I was amused by the use of the word "effete" in that article (used by Ferguson, I take it) as according to Chamber Dictionary, the word originally meant "weakened by having given birth" (from the Latin, Ex fetus), exactly not what he was accussing Keynes of having been.

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

The whole thing is bizarre, not least since Keynes' childlessness isn't a consequence of anything he did--as Ferguson, to his credit, remembers, his wife suffered a miscarriage of a child that the two had wanted. (Andrew Sullivan, meanwhile, notes this, and wonders how that statement could be reconcile with Ferguson having picked him as a godfather for one of his children.)

Stupid statement, but I give Ferguson points for having issued an authentic apology.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

Ferguson is confusing "lacking an urge to procreate" with "not wanting to have sex with women." I'm sure there are lots of people who would be quite happy if a way could be found for them to get their same sex partner pregnant, or for a fetus combining their genetics to be gestated artificially. And of course many gay couples wish to adopt children, and presumably care about the future of those children. Conversely we can all think of people who act as if they don't care if the world ends next week, despite having children.

[redbird]

And some female-bodied people who enjoy sex with men and would be happy to procreate if they didn't have to be the one to carry the fetus.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I'm married to a man, and the genetic mother of two children with another man entirely. Who is fathering those kids with his husband. So, opposite-sex couple, no kids; same-sex couple, two kids, just as everyone wanted.

For an educated man, Ferguson knows very little about the actual world. Bisexuality and surrogacy are hardly new concepts!

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

No, he knows about the world. He just enjoys being an asshole.

[st-darwin.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to reconcile his apology with the fact that he's been making this argument for a couple of decades, including in a book in 1999. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2013/05/niall-fergusons-history-john-maynard-keynes-gayness/64885/

Either he never actually thought about what he was saying before, his apology is false, he was trolling for attention or he was pandering to his audience with particularly stupid homophobic remarks. I suspect the last is the most likely, but none of those explanations make Ferguson look good.

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

Apologizing for sticking his foot in his mouth concerning Keynes wanting to have children but failing to because his wife miscarried is one thing. That's not what he most needed to apologize for. What he failed to apologize for was the much more sweeping and egregious errors of a) assuming that everyone who is gay does not desire to procreate, and b) assuming that everyone who does not opt to procreate, regardless of orientation, is completely disinterested in the legacy left for future generations. It's selfish right-wingers, many of whom are Ayn Rand supporters (the ultimate in selfish philosophies) who have screwed over the economy for years to come. Blaming the childless and/or the overlap of childless people and gay people is just idiotic scapegoatism designed to divert attention from the true culprits.

BTW, you failed to warn against reading the comments, even though where were only a few. Oy.

[sesmo.livejournal.com]

More like apologizing because this hit the news. As someone else has pointed out upthread, this isn't a new argument for Ferguson.