Robert Scheer: Let Them Eat Keller

[marmar]

from truthdig:



Let Them Eat Keller

Posted on Oct 20, 2011
By Robert Scheer


Funny, he doesn’t look like Marie Antoinette. But when former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller asks his readers if they are “bored by the soggy sleep-ins and warmed-over anarchism of Occupy Wall Street,” it displays the arrogance of disoriented royal privilege.

Perhaps his contempt for anti-corporate protesters was honed by the example of his father, once the chairman of Chevron. In any case, it is revealing, given the cheerleading support that the Times gave to the radical deregulation of Wall Street that occurred when Keller was the managing editor of the newspaper.

As the Times reported on its news pages in 1998, heralding the merger that created Citigroup as the world’s largest financial conglomerate: “In a single day, with a bold merger, pending legislation in Congress to sweep away Depression-era restrictions on the financial services industry has been given a sudden, and unexpected, new chance of passage.”

The report all too breathlessly continued, “Indeed, within 24 hours of the deal’s announcement, lobbyists for insurers, banks and Wall Street firms were huddling with Congressional banking committee staff members to fine-tune a measure that would update the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial banking from Wall Street and insurance. …” ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/let_them_eat_keller_20111020/

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[FSogol]

2. K & R. n/t

[trumad]

3. ahhh that Liberal NYT.

[libinnyandia]

4. Wrong on the big things

The NYT was wrong on the war and wrong of Wall Street regulation, or at least Keller was. He has apologized for the war. He needs to apologize for his statements about OWS.

[JohnWxy]

5. recommended.