Daniel Okrent (NYT Public Editor) takes a pop at Paul Krugman

For a man who makes his living offering strong opinions, Paul Krugman seems peculiarly reluctant to grant the same privilege to others. And for a man who leads with his chin twice a week, he acts awfully surprised when someone takes a pop at it. Because only a fool or a supply-sider would eagerly engage in a debate on economics with Prof. Krugman, I’ll try to eschew argument and stick to facts – or, at least, the sort of statements that he himself represents as purely factual:

1. I offered him only three examples of “shaping, slicing and selectively citing” (for some reason, he’s left one out of his rebuttal) because I was at home when he began bombarding me with outraged demands for retraction and apology; I’d completed my tenure as public editor the preceding week, and did not have any files with me. When I had the chance to consult some of my reader mail later in the week, some of his greatest mis-hits immediately came to the fore. I’ll get to a few of those in point No. 5, below.