"Keller", VERB:

— to attempt to excuse ones unethical behavior by reference to an ethical standard that one does not actually observe, especially if the attempt is transparently disingenuous.

Example 1:

"Tom, who never gave a nickel to charity in his whole life, stupidly tried to keller his taking of money from the till, claiming that he wanted to give it to a needy neighbor!"

Example 2:

"Bill had the gall to keller his lying about when the story broke by claiming he did not want to influence the Presidential election, hoping that his audience consisted largely of the hopelessly deluded anyway."
— synonyms: to lie, to cheat, to steal

"Keller", NOUN:

— the end results of attempting to keller a situation (see keller, verb), especially if the results are catastrophic for the person doing the kellering, for their associates, or for their business interests.

Example 3:

— "I hear that Larry not only got drunk and groped the V.P.'s wife at the office party, but when she screamed, Larry told everyone she came on to him first!... is his career a total keller, or what?!"

Example 4:

— "Watching their business plan cratering, the Board members reluctantly decided that Bill had led them into a keller for the last time." — synonyms: screw—up, trainwreck, cluster—****

Dave in Seattle

ps. Look on the bright side: hopefully this means the Times columnists will spare us for a while from the phrase "We question the timing...".