https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164707
for a response to your point directly from Graeber himself.
I don't think there's any reason to listen to Delong's criticisms, he's intellectually dishonest and a stalker to boot.
Graeber can't really defend his Apple quote, so he resorts to this kind of personal attack. DeLong being wrong about Sumer does not make Graeber right about Apple.
He had very little tolerance for disagreement. The blog Crooked Timber had a roundtable to discuss Debt. The discussion was mostly positive, but with some criticisms around the edges. Graeber had a vituperative response that took everyone by surprise. You can see the conclusion of the discussion with a perplexed response here: https://crookedtimber.org/2012/04/04/because-imperialism/
Obsessing over that wasn't a good look for DeLong. It isn't for his alts, his stans, or whatever you are.
That Crooked Timbre post is not very good. It reflects much worse on the author than on its purported subject.
Graeber defended the statement, but said it wasn't supposed to be Apple. Then he blamed a graduate student of Richard Wolff for the error. Then he settled on the editing error explanation.
I didn't pick the quote because it's an outlier, but because it's typical of the last chapter of Debt, and it's one that everyone understands. The whole chapter has been seriously criticized by economists in general (despite what he said in the link above about the book not being criticized except by DeLong). The other examples require specialized knowledge, but that one doesn't. DeLong tweeted out other examples, one-by-one, which is weird, but I think it's weird in general to use Twitter for arguments.
How does the post reflect worse on the author? If you read Graeber's reply here (https://crookedtimber.org/2012/04/02/seminar-on-debt-the-fir...) he accuses Henry Farrell of all kinds of unsavory behavior, in response to a mildly critical review (https://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/22/the-world-economy-is-no...). I read that online discussion when it happened, and I think most people were pretty sympathetic to Graeber, despite the Apple quote, until that response.
I am also not a Henry Farrell alt, in case you're wondering.