Bill Kristol To Become NY Times Columnist?

Wow. What's up with this?:

Bill Kristol To Become New York Times Columnist, by Danny Shea, Huffington Post: The Huffington Post has learned that, in a move bound to create controversy, the New York Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will become a weekly columnist in 2008. Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative who recently departed Time magazine in what was reported as a "mutual" decision, has close ties to the White House and is a well-known proponent of the war in Iraq. Kristol also is a regular contributor to Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume.

Comments

[anne]

Good grief; what amazing stupidity. There are writers beyond reading, and I will never read such a worm no matter the venue. This means a completely wasted column.

[anne]

What is it about continually hideously wrong compassionless conservative war-mongers that they are forever to be rewarded for being hideously and intimidatingly wrong?

[ken melvin]

A truly despicable man.

[James Killus]

Because David Brooks is such a radical leftist that they need someone to balance him out.

[archer]

Canceling my subscription ASAP.

[steve]

It's a good idea for editorial pages to have representative opinions from left and right. Until now the NY Times conservative columnists have been essentially libertarian or kinda-likable, occasionally-rational writers like Brooks. These people are not representative of conservatism in America. Kristol is. He's a coward and a war-mongering worm, but he is a perfect voice for conservatism.

[Lee A. Arnold]

The "controversy" ought to be centered upon whether the New York Times intends to remain an intellectually serious newspaper.

[anne]

I am terribly saddened and simply do not understand what could so distort the editor's sense of decency since Bill Kristol is the voice of indecency. I will protest, but obviously to no avail and will never read the worm.

[donna]

And the NYT jumps the shark completely.

[James Killus]

Yes, by all means, let's have editorial pages that give regular collums to David Duke and Louis Farrakhan. And where is Osama bin Laden's column? Ah, here it is. Robert Mugabe's piece on land redistribution was on top of it.

But we must make sure that there are no authentically leftist writings in the NYT. That way everyone will understand that Paul Krugman is as far left as is humanly possible, and folks who might argue for things like nationalization of industries or confiscating the estates of the "malefactors of great wealth," those people must be seen as Martians, inhuman aliens who should be ignored if possible, and slaughtered if they make too much trouble.

And lest anyone think I've just been extreme in my characterization, how much would you be willing to bet that I can find writings from Bill Kristol that uses the same sort of rhetoric, only with the names and policies changed? The really chilling thing is that Kristol has buddies who are much, much worse.

[Don Quijote]

There goes that liberal media...

[save_the_rustbelt]

Bill Kristol, Lt. Colonel in the First Chickenhawk Battalion.

Is this for real?

[calmo]

That editorial board:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/editorial-board.html

[TigerPaw]

The media in the US is looking more and more like the old Pravda every day. Pathetic and sad thing is no one is holding a gun to their heads and they're doing it to themselves voluntarily.

[btg]

i hope that the NYT will provide equal time to the far far left, and hire a marxist writer to balance out kristol.

i read that fidel castro is doing a lot of writing these days from his sickbed, maybe he should be given a few column inches each week too.

[Lee Davis]

I loved this quote from one of the contributors

"The "controversy" ought to be centered upon whether the New York Times intends to remain an intellectually serious newspaper."

I hate to say so since it appears most of this site is already pretty far left, but that ship sailed a long time ago.

[anne]

"I hate to say so since it appears most of this site is already pretty far left...."

There is an interesting qulality to crazed radical conservatives in which they call all that is reasonable and fair left left left so as to intimidate all who try to be reasonable and fair. I hate to say so but since it appears so I say so, but I really do hate to say so though saying so.

[supersaurus]

I wonder how much friedman kicked in?

[anne]

There is by the way only a single source and no confirmation, so possibly (what happiness) the report is not true.

[anne]

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/12/alls_well.php

December 29, 2007

All's Well
By Matthew Yglesias

When I heard that Bill Kristol was leaving Time I got seriously worried about the state of the world. After all, everyone knows that conservative pundits don't get held accountable for saying tons and tons of wrong stuff -- that's not how it works. Instead, you march through the institutions of conservatism by being loyal to the Cause, and then eventually mainstream organizations decide they need to contain representatives of the Cause and there you are on your perch. So it is in the newsweeklies, so it is on the op-ed pages, and so it is on the Sunday shows. So how could Kristol be fired?

Thus I think we have to consider it good news that he's apparently been hired by The New York Times.

[Still rumor, but....]

[Cynthia]

Bill Kristol has made the Beast's list of America's 50 most loathsome people of 2007...

CHARGES: Bears the burlesque Cheshire grin of a sophist born with a large silver spoon jammed sideways in his mouth. A second generation neocon raised in the tradition of Straussian perception management and myth creation [;~)], Kristol is basically lying about everything -- always -- and he knows it. Whether at the helm of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, appearing on Murdoch's Fox News Channel, or co-founding the disastrous Project for a New American Century, Bill is arguably the most egregious media hawk of a generation. Seems to have suffered no ill impact to his career or prestige despite having been completely wrong about everything to do with Iraq and Iran, and actually laughs about it with obnoxious frequency.

EXHIBIT A: "First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it's a good idea. I'm happy that the President's willing to do something bad for the kids."

SENTENCE: (Since Bill's sentence might be overly offensive to visitors of Mark's site, I'll refrain from posting it here. But for the curious, here it is):

http://buffalobeast.com/122/50mostloathsome2007.html

(And I thought I was the only one who finds Mr. Kristol's grin to be rather painful on the eyes!)

[anne]

There is an amazing publishing-broadcasting reach by the larger media corporations, so we learn that Rupert Murdoch owns the Bill Kristol produced "Weekly Standard." Kristol, till recently, also a columnist for "Time Magazine" and, I am sure, a frequent television commentator.

[anne]

Bill Kristol has been among the foremost ferocious war-mongers and bully-intimidators of all who would dissent since George Bush became President. Even the thought at this stage of such a terrible columnist being hired by the New York Times simple astonishes me. Is there never a wrong now for such radical conservatives?

[hari]

Anne -

You've to watch your language (also)!

NYT may be informed that Demos are NOT really ready for the white House yet!

So why not get Kristal - to crystallize the neocon verison of reality for its socalled liberal readers...?

[anne]

Clever criticism, but between Jonah Goldberg at the Los Angeles Times and the like, and Molly Ivins gone, I find column reading all to discouraging these days. There are Krugman and Herbert and a couple of weekly folks, and then and then and then....

Though I imagine the story will hold, I have noticed there is no confirmation from the New York Times on the links to which readers are referred nor any independent confirmation of the initial story.

[anne]

Remember, the New York Times has David Brooks and Thomas Friedman holding for war always and forever conservatism.

[Heh]

Maybe they got complaints that the Op-Ed seemed to be dominated by a left-wing Jewish opinion, so they are bringing Kristol in to balance it out with the right-wing Jewish perspective to help out Krauthammer. Very thoughtful of Rosenthal to promote such a diversity of opinion so Americans can hear both sides.

[kthomas]

STR is right - the man is an accomplished Chicken Hawk.

[anne]

Again, just for the fun of checking I have checked and can find no confirming story almost 24 hours after the initial break which puzzles me since this would not be all that secretive a matter or would it?

[James Killus]

I hate to say so since it appears most of this site is already pretty far left...

That's a pretty good example of how the discourse in the land has been tilted.

"Most" on this site are already "pretty far left?" Yeah, right. "Far left" is now holding the position that Social Security is not bankrupt, and that, possibly, financial malfeasance should be addressed by regulation, oversight, and enforcement. "Far left" means considering the possibility that marginal tax rates may be too low for the financial health of the government and the country, and that there should be some method for preventing the creation of permanent vast family fortunes.

But how many times have people here advocated things like nationalizing oil companies? How many folks here think that a socialist revolution is just what we need in this country? I sometimes joke about waterboarding predatory CEOs and government officials, precisely because there is such a complete dearth of truly radical views.

A world in which Bill Kristol is a Times columnist is a world in which the "centrist" debate in the country is over whether or not torture works well enough to be a commonly used practice of interogation, a world in which illegal wiretaps demanded by government officials and performed by telecommunications companies are retroactively excused, while 30 and 40 year residents of the U.S. are accused of being criminals because their paperwork isn't in order, and besides, they carry leprosy.

The commenters here are "leftist" only in the sense that they are not eager for the conversion of the United States into a military police state. William Kristol is not just eager for it; he openly advocates such a thing. I'd like to see him up against the wall.

[anne]

Well, I am a fool to have hoped the New York Times simply would never hire such a shameful propagandist. So it will be, and I had forgotten the shameful Roger Cohen to go along with Brooks and Friedman, and Tierney in pseudo-science and Stein in pseudo-economics.

A period of betrayal in American history of all our idealism, and obviously many are beyond understanding.

Darn, darn, darn.

[anne]

"I hate to say so since it appears most of this site is already pretty far left..."

Precisely how conservatives have learned to operate, in every comment a sneer and insult and club with which to smash and bash all who would be honest and reasoned and fair. I hate to say so, then why say so, but hating to say so I say we know who you are and how to deal with you....

[chris]

The New York Times lost its way some time ago and has never recovered. It has ceased to be a beacon of liberalism or even intelligence. I suspect it will do anything in an attempt to boost circulation, even if it means supping with the devil. And Kristol is about as close to the devil today as one can get.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Folks,

Get a grip. Bill Kristol will follow the NYT party line on almost every issue other than some aspects of foreign policy. Trade? Immigration? The RMB? Outsourcing? Social policy? No difference to speak of.

The NYT is the premier organ of liberal elite globalization in the US. A conservative elite globalist such as Kristol is tolerable. A real opponent is not.

Which is exactly why he was chosen. Appointing someone with a genuinely different opinion, such as Heather MacDonald, Victor Davis Hanson, or LD would have been unthinkable.

[Ken]

Gimme an "H"
Gimme an "A"
Gimme a "C"
Gimme a "K"

whats that spell?!

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