Keller Redux

The former NYT executive editor was slammed or mocked by many on the Web yesterday for his column yesterday that went from ripping fellow Boomers to offering suggestions on how to drive down the cost of entitlements.  Rather than summarize, here's my post, which also quotes Charles P. Pierce.  Just now he posted at his Times blog a response to the critics, which softens (without acknowledging it) some of his original points.  At the close, he sheepishly admits that, after blaming Boomers for disco in his column,  he does have Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor on his workout tape.

He also refers to "one kneejerk-left blog" post headlined ("to quote"),  Elitist Hack Bill Keller Wants to Take Away Your Social Security.   So, who is that kneejerky lefty blogger? A Google search turns up no such exact headline.  Yes, we find "Bill Keller Wants to Take Away Your Social Security and Is Either Too Ignorant or Dishonest to Acknowledge that He Is Not a Typical Baby Boomer."  Note: It's also minus the "Elitist Hack" opening.   (Yet Keller wrote "to quote" when he cited it.)  The author?  Economist Dean Baker (pictured above), who wrote a detailed reply to Keller yesterday, but is not everyone's idea of a "kneejerk leftist." Fascinating if Keller, in a moment of self-reflection, added the "Elitist Hack" himself.

By the way, a search at the NYT site finds numerous pieces written for the paper in recent years by the kneejerk lefty Baker, who is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research,  most recently just this past May, on "The Human Disaster of Unemployment."   He even starred in at least a couple of videos for the Times, including this one on TARP.