Like kids and matches or Tom Wolfe and a spaghetti dinner, Bill Keller and a newspaper column should be kept apart at all costs.

As the hardworking staff has previously noted, New York Times staffers should have staged an intervention after he threw a hissy fit at Arianna Huffington; or when he argued that authorities should not, despite a critic’s recommendation, “[frog-march] a shackled Bill Keller into court” over the paper’s WikiLeaks  revelations; or when he submitted this toe-curler about the nudnik nature of social media.

New comes his latest column, which, Mediaite reports, has got the Come to Jesus crowd all lathered up:

 Most of the outrage centers on Keller’s clunky comparison of religion with a belief in space aliens, and the sense that he’s picking on Republicans. What does the Bible say about all of this, are candidates’ religious views fair game, and is Keller’s column just another excuse to highlight Mitt Romney’s Mormonism?

Better question: Is Keller’s column just a vanity project that he wouldn’t accept from any other writer? And how bad will it get when he becomes a fulltime writer?

C’mon, Jill – make it stop.