I really do not care one way or the other what the NYT prints about John McCain — both entities are tedious, pretentious, and boring.

But I got out a chuckle out of this nugget on Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, who has been all over planet Earth defending his paper’s coverage of McCain’s non-affair affair with a blonde lobbyist. The Deceiver takes over:

In a September 2006 New York magazine story, journalist Joe Hagan described the circumstances behind Keller’s marriage to his second wife, the French gin-namesake Emma Gilbey (who is also an ex-something of U.S. Senator John Kerry, but I digress…) and his divorce from National Public Radio reporter Ann Cooper.

Here’s the important bit from the 2006 New York piece:

… Keller wrote one last piece on South Africa, an article for the Times Magazine about Nelson Mandela’s wife, Winnie, in which he cited a book called The Lady: The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela. The following week, the magazine published a letter by the book’s author [Emma Gilbey] …

After reading the letter, Keller called Gilbey, a British journalist living in New York, and asked her to coffee at the Times cafeteria. Gilbey, at the time, had a reputation as something of a power-dater; her exes included Senator John Kerry and Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. An affair ensued, which shocked Keller’s friends. “I felt bad for everyone involved,” says Stephen Engelberg, a former Times reporter. “This was not characteristic behavior at all. I wouldn’t pretend to be Bill’s psychologist, but he didn’t get a red sports car, so …”

… Two years after they met, Gilbey was pregnant, Keller was divorced from Cooper, and he had a new job as [Times] managing editor.

What a loser. What a cowardly, gutless loser. Better still, the next journalist who “interviews” Keller and fails to ask him about his affair is also a cowardly, gutless loser.

Incidently, the left knows all about Keller as they pointed out his past back in 2006 when the Clintons were the subject of his interest. The Kerry angle also drew attention in 2004.