William Kristol out at the NYT?

Dude, Kristol couldn't even defend the Republican party with a straight face in that interview with Stewart. It was ... kind of sad.

 

Anyone with Kristol's opinion batting average should be toiling in the Three-I League.

 

Kristol has been wrong about everything. Wrong about Bush, wrong about Iraq, wrong about Palin. If you think it's about ideology, you haven't actually been paying attention.

It might be a little bit of a stretch, but I'd like to see Ross Douthat get a shot there (I see he's leading the poll in that link). He's young (29) but very smart, and a pretty good guy. (I know him a little socially.) He's a conservative, but he's very objective and isn't a water-carrier.

 

Ross Douthat is rapidly becoming every liberal's favorite conservative. (Presumably, David Brooks is furious at being usurped.)

I'm not a huge fan of Kristol myself -- not least because he's partially responsible for inflicting the insufferable Fred Barnes upon the nation -- but I think all the clucking about him here is a little silly.

Isn't it possible that a low approval rating among liberal SportsJournalists.commers is a sign Kristol is doing his job? I suspect a Maureen Dowd thread on RedState.org would draw similar responses, all equally blinded by ideology. (NOTE: No, Kristol is no Maureen Dowd. But the point remains: It's not his job to draw plaudits from my ol' buddy F_B.)

Anyway, I'm not really sure the NYT needs a token right-winger anymore...it just amounts to mealy-mouthed window dressing, no? Why not play to the left-leaning strength of the editorial page, knowing that anyone interested in the conservative viewpoint has hundreds of more sympathetic outlets to turn to?

 

There's a big difference between "I dislike him because I disagree with him" and "I dislike him because he's consistently proven wrong by actual events, facts and other forms of reality and yet he still has a job as a pundit." The Times giving him a column would be like Obama hiring Bob Shrum to run his campaign.

 

I'll be honest: I don't read Kristol or any of the other insufferable windbags on the Times editorial page. So I'll just ask: In what capacity is an opinion columnist "wrong," "consistently" or otherwise?

We know, for example, that Kristol supported the invasion of Iraq from the start and hasn't backed down from that support. I have no doubt that most people on SportsJournalists.com think that was "wrong," as most people in the country think these days.

But I'm not sure that having an unpopular opinion is exactly the same as being "wrong." Nor am I sure that it's healthy for journalists or a journalistic organization to become comfortable banning people from publication for holding the "wrong" opinions.

 

I don't read columnists when I know what they're going to say before I read it. Ergo, no Kristol. I disagree with Brooks, but at least he attempts to present ideas, and they're not necessarily predictable. I read Krugman if it's economics, otherwise I skip him too on the above grounds.
Friedman is an excellent reporter who's a lousy columnist. We've all seen that happen in sports, too.
Dowd belongs in a mental facility. I CAN'T read her. It makes me want to call Bill Keller and ask he stage an intervention.

 

Unlike excellent columnists such as George Will, Kristol is an advocate, not a columnist or commentator or journalist.

He has no discernible principles he can't bend for convenience from issue to issue. It's all about the momentary win in influence, so in that meandering Washingtonspeak probably learned from his time in government, he can contradict himself from one Monday to the next (as in his startling October) and not even seem to care. He never makes you think anew because he's a stunningly hackneyed thinker.

Even all this might be forgiven if he were any kind of authentic writer, as is Maureen Dowd (who also often winds up adrift but who can spin out the gem such as today). Yet as a writer, Kristol is a such a wooden, undiluted atrocity that it's advisable to buy the actual Monday newspaper as opposed to reading on a laptop, so as to play "Circle The Cliches," which does jazz up a dreary bowl of cereal.

 

You're toeing the line toward melodrama, Wingman. It's not his ideology that that's the problem. It's the fact that he is trotted out in print and on the air, at some of the nation's most prominent media outlets, as some sort of expert. And his track record is pretty clear: He doesn't know shit. Read his own words:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2007/01/bill-kristol-pundit-superstar.html

 

I think "toeing the line toward melodrama" may have to become my new facebook status.

But I'll have to ask for some linkage on any time Bill Kristol's been called an "expert." (As opposed to an "insider," or a "partisan hack," or somesuch.)

I think he's "trotted out" as a guy who, for better or for worse, is an influential figure on the right wing of American politics. I don't think anyone thinks of him as some sort of policy wonk or what have you.

 

They were flaying him today on Fox for having sponsored Palin. The purge continues.

 

I think that means I get royalty checks ...

Anyway, maybe this is a semantics debate, but I'd say that when you're given a regular column in Time or the NYT, or when you're the editor of an influential magazine, it's implied that you have some sort of knowledge, insight or qualification -- something to distinguish you from, say, Joe Wurzelbacher. And furthermore, your reputation--as a pundit, expert, insider or whatever you want to call it--should be tarnished if your read of the situation and your prognostications are proven incorrect time after time. Virtually everything Kristol and his neoconservative brethren said would happen in Iraq didn't happen. No one's saying he can't keep inventing his own reality in his little wingnut magazine, but surely, mainstream media outlets can find a conservative pundit or two with a better track record.