Pull Up a Chair, Pop Up the Corn

There's a big fight going on at The New York Times between former "Public Editor" (Ombudsman) Daniel Okrent and the notorious Paul Krugman (ht: Donald Luskin).

Apparently, Okrent -- while carefully noting for the record that he shares Krugman's politics -- has found fault with Krugman's presentation of economic statistics, etc. (imagine that!) and Krugman doesn't like it (imagine that, even more!).

Not hard to figure out that I'm with Okrent on this one. But there is one thing Okrent writes that I really don't understand:

I laid off for so long because I also believe that columnists are entitled by their mandate to engage in the unfair use of statistics, the misleading representation of opposing positions, and the conscious withholding of contrary data.

Really? "Entitled"? Of course, no opinion writer can respond to every opposing position fully and fairly in every column -- but it's ok to mislead, just because it's opinion? I don't think so . . . "opinion" is supposed to mean "advocacy" -- but not the kind of advocacy that lies, misleads and wilfully distorts.