more Freakonomics

Some of you may remember, when an economist from Freakonomics asked on his blog, “What Do Prostitutes and Rice Have in Common?”

Ann wrote about it here, and a community poster followed up here.

I personally felt that the original post was definitely in poor taste, though I didn’t feel it was overly offensive. There is currently a new post up, “What Do Economists Have in Common With Garbage?”

After he poses the question, Steven Levitt adds this:

“I know it is a horrible, unforgivable thing to objectify any human being (even an economist) by comparing him or her to an inanimate object. And to compare economists to garbage, well that obviously means that I think all economists are garbage, including myself. I’m sure that tears will be in the eyes of all of my colleagues when they hear how I have demeaned them with this insensitive comparison.”

I think this sarcasm, which is nothing but an attack on anyone who questioned the previous post, to be incredibly mean-spirited and much worse than the first post. Rather than engaging in the debate about how his words could have hurt or objectified women, he just brushes it all off with sarcasm. I don’t think we should let him get away with it.