Another Fake Bill Keller Column!

This time the hackers actually managed to get through in print as well as online what could only be another faux  Keller piece at the Times today.   As you may have heard, pranksters got wide pickup over the weekend (even from a NYT tech writer) for a Keller piece hailing WikiLeaks.  His column today, one hopes, is also a fake.   It's a self-loathing, Baby Boomer-bashing piece that essentially blames them (us) (me) for getting old, thereby burdening entitlement costs, besides also giving the world "disco."  So he might have titled the column, "Stayin' Alive."

His rich-guy-with-large-pension solution inevitably, is: Work more years before retiring (good luck finding a job, grandpa, there's always Wal-Mart greeter slots),  make do with less (that's right, medical and housing costs are well under control), and quit whining.  He should at least have the decency to apologize for backing the Iraq war, which has contributed so much to our budget mess. Also, in his pro and con list of Boomer contributions, I wish he had added, "They gave us Anthony Shadid, but also Judy Miller."

Beyond that, there's the usual bow to the previous "greatest generation" while dissing his own as selfish and self-absorbed.  Rarely mentioned in such contrasts:  the previous generation's not-so-great widespread support  1)  for racism and homophobia  2) against women's rights  3) backing the Vietnam War  4) electing Nixon twice,  and on and on.   Plus:  Social Security is a "benefit" not an "entitlement," with Boomers shelling out huge sums for, oh, four decades or more.  Earth to Bill: We already have a massive budget deficit and Boomers are only now starting to retire.  So who's really to blame? And who made the decisions setting the trajectory of Medicare and Social Security increases?   Not the "selfish" Boomers but politicians of previous generations.

Then there's blaming Boomers for the recent Wall Street outrages.  While it's true many of men at the top were Boomers, the vast majority of the real wheelers-and-dealers below them were far younger.  And those creeps now want to throw grandma off the train.  Talk about feeling "entitled."

Naturally the great Charles P. Pierce is on Keller's case, as well:  "The 'we' sprinkled throughout this bag of pus is probably the most noxious thing about it. Look around, Bill. You and Mitt Romney have far more in common than do you and the overwhelming majority of your 'fellow' boomers. One catastrophic illness, and many of our families die on the vine. This is not hyperbole. This is how it works in the world. And, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Keller signs on with the clowns at Third Way, who assure us that the real problem is that the elderly moochers are the ones keeping us from building new bridges, or flying to the moons of Neptune."