Being gay and childless led economist John Maynard Keynes to push short-term-oriented economic policy, asserted British commentator Niall Ferguson over the weekend. After a Twitter spasm of ire, Ferguson apologized pretty thoroughly.

For one thing, Keynes and his wife reportedly lost a child to miscarriage. For another thing, Keynes’ “in the long run, we’re all dead,” line doesn’t quite have the “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for Tomorrow we Die” sense Ferguson assigned to it (and which I had previously understood it to mean).