As a Christian, I’m under strict orders to always be charitable.  That command is the single toughest one…just like all the others*.

But today I’m ready.  I’m set.  Imma love everybody!

                                      ME:  Hit me with your best shot, LORD!

                                      LORD:  Paul Krugman.

                                      ME:  GAAAAAAAAH!

I mean, come on! (NOTE—clicking on the link gives traffic to the NYTimes.  If you don’t want to sully your pixels, Krugman’s title can suffice:

Greece’s Economy Is a Lesson for Republicans

A Lesson for Republicans.  Profligate borrowing, systemic corruption, ubiquitous tax evasion, demonizing all opposition…see where you led us, Grand Old Party?

(Close eyes, mutter mantra:  “charitable, be charitable, only charitable…”)

                  Paul Krugman is utterly batcrap insane!!**

(Open eyes)

Nailed it!

Yep.  Nailed it.  It’s the only possible explanation while being both dove-gentle and serpent-wise.  (The alternate, no-less-wise-but-slightly-less-gentle judgement:  Paul Krugman is the avatar of O’Brien.)

The phrase “beyond parody” gets a real workout these days, but be real:  nothing is beyond parody.  Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a parody.  Within it O’Brien, with a perfectly straight face, espouses ideas like “War is Peace”.  O’Brien takes exact opposites, proclaims them identical, and brooks no disagreement.

How do you get “beyond” that?  Exceed complete negation or reversal?  It’s like making a 181-degree turn.  You can’t go beyond parody…but by equaling it you do destroy it.  As Paul Krugman has just destroyed the parody of 1984.

(Oops.  I just claimed the novel is a parody.  You could call me a liar, but it wasn’t intentional; I just hadn’t thought it through.)

So no, we can’t parody the Krugster, but can’t we still have fun with the big fuzzy lovable whacko?  I’m not up on all this newfangled twitting and tweeting and taghashing, but…wouldn’t this make a good taghash?  I tried

#KrugmanExplainsItAll

and

#ThroughTheKrugmanGlass

But no; it’s the #KrugLife for me.

Venezuelan Economy Demands Return of Hayek’s Nobel.

Fall of the USSR Rebuts the New Testament.

Destruction of Twin Towers Stimulates Economy

Wait, we can tighten that last one up a little.  Let’s see…:

War is Peace.

Nailed it.

*(This seems contradictory, but it’s not; being perfectly Christ-like in any one thing takes care of all the others.  Naturally, your host always trys to figure out which would be easiest for him…explaining why he’s bad at all of them.)

**Need more emphasis?  Thesaurus.com kindly obliges.