Is this the weasel way of saying “you smell bad and you scare me?”

Paul Krugman, who has been cheering the occupying army within a short walk of his own office, somehow hasn’t managed to show up and support them in person.  A couple of days ago (and I don’t know how I could have missed this!) he explained why.  I’ve offered translations in square brackets, to help you understand the subtext.  For ease of reading, I’ve also broken the original single paragraph up into four separate paragraphs composed of one sentence each:

I’ve been granted the enormous privilege of expounding my own views twice a week in the world’s greatest newspaper.  [Unlike you losers, I have a cushy, well-paid job.]

I try to make the best use of that privilege [I therefore would never dream of p*ssing off my employer], doing all I can to get the truth across and also advocating for what I believe to be the right policies [because where else am I going to get this kind of bully pulpit from which to disseminate my special brand of Left-wing economic propaganda?].

There are, however, some restrictions that come with the privilege [mostly, not soiling my lily-white apparatchik hands]; one of them is not crossing the line between advocate and activist [by which I mean not crossing the line in person.  In fact, I routinely act as an activist on television and in print].

And there are good reasons for drawing that line [namely, that showing up in person would mean that I would have to leave my well-paid ivory tower, and mingle with very smelly, antisemitic, greedy, and not too bright people who are hungry for violent confrontation].

It’s all a matter of reading between the lines, folks.