Okrent names names

The Times first public editor sings his dying swan song.

2. Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales "called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' " nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess.

Isn't it curious that in citing these three columnists, Okrent provides specific instances of Dowd's and Safire's crimes against humanity, but can only serve up a generalized mention of Krugman's "habit?" Krugman gets this charge all of the time. Krugman is an economist. I am not, but it seems to me that economists take the available data and use it to build a narrative that supports a hypothesis. If he is wong, if he applies poor or poorly used data, then he should be criticized. If not, I don't see where this "substantive assaults" are coming from. "Assaults," yes, "substantive," no.
Any way, Okrent's real crime was inventing Rotisserie Baseball.

UPDATE: I see Jesse takes issue with all unlucky 13.