Bill Kristol Not Even Trying Anymore At New York Times

If you've read this morning's op-ed from Bill Kristol in the New York Times, feel not alone. You are correct: it does, in fact, make no sense at all. Indeed, the piece is a perfect circle of nonsense. And yet, I understand it perfectly. Bill Kristol's contract to write these columns is about up, he probably won't be back, and he's doing his best to play out the string with as little effort as possible. This week is a special triumph for that mission: it's a column in which the columnist basically filibusters himself.

The basic ingredients are two big news stories that lack any meaningful connection, a smattering of insight that a bunch of people already had, and the conjunction, "but." Here's how it goes:

• Bill Kristol watched Fox News Sunday, a show he is on.
• He recaps a section of the most recent edition of the show he is on.
• He restates something asinine he said on said show (Dick Cheney telling Pat Leahy to "go fuck himself" is "a beautiful statement of justice.")
• He wanders around for a while.
• "Have I praised the "Surge" in the past five minutes? No? Okay! SURGE!" (Twiddles nipples.)
• BUT!
• Rod Blagojevich! He's been in the news, right?
• Adds some funny lines from the wiretaps.
• As noted by others, Blago's wife is a foul-mouthed Cubs hater.
• Fills more column space by including several lines of Rudyard Kipling.
• As noted by others, Blago stopped short of a self-aware line in that poem.
• As noted by others, HAIRBRUSH JOKE.
• As noted previously, Blago was on wiretaps.
• THOUGHTFUL MOMENT: "Hmm. I wonder if Dick Cheney has ever read Kipling?"
• EUREKA: "Woo! I tied this all together! Off to copyedit."

Anyway, the New York Times has abused their readership by printing Kristol's effort-free nonsense for a year, and they've benefited from it because every time he's penned something, people everywhere react with outrage or mocking or fact-checking or criticism, and that's precisely why he was hired in the first place -- not for quality insight, but for the clicks that come from hosting a weekly intellectual highway accident. So, out of fairness, I'm including a link to this mess, but I urge you: do not click it. You'll only be giving the Times what it wants. Trust me: Bill Kristol wants you to read this about as badly as he wanted to write it.

Comments

[sixx]

Bill Kristol Not Even Trying Anymore At New York Times

How could one tell?

[craigb11]

I read you loud and clear! There was a time when the cry was "Vote with your dollars" and now along with that is "Vote with your clicks".

Besides Bill Kristol, I also don't click the Friedman's sermons with a common neo-con agenda cleverly disguised with world is flat green masks. I also find Dowd's 1 in 10 punch in the dark rather trying.

I do like Herbert and wish I could read more Krugman.

But to throw Kristol a bone by clicking to view the war wound he wares for a brain is a vote I wish not make.

[cosmic]

if you can write a whole page on it, then I can go read it. The pile of diarrhea that is Bill Krystol's intellect is melting through the cracks, and the NY Times was smart to get exclusive rights to the show. Too bad he didn't work pro-bono.

[lthuedk 1]

Generic totalitarians unite. http://www.light-to-dark.com/lenin_trotsky_strauss_and_kristol.html

[leeannethethird]

Jason

Thank you! -for reporting that Kristol is finished at the New York Times.

[rasputin999]

Bill Kristil should consult his balls!

[anastasiabeaverhousen]

Kristol is always trying. VERY trying.

[kareemachan]

If my kid had written this for her creative writing class, her teacher would have made her write it over. He must not care to have written this dreck.

[walleymr]

Has he ever really tried? It's probably really lonely in that closet.

[Kahawa]

I tried hard to read Kristol's columns in the Times, but gave up after a few months. I honestly don't understand how he got as far as he has gotten in his chosen profession. He can neither think straight nor write a compelling paragraph, and his politics are ill-informed wishful-thinking.
All I read in the NYT these days are Frank Rich, Gail Collins, Maureen Dowd (not always so rewarding), occasional Friedman, Kristof, Brooks and other one-note columnists, and God's gift to bemused aging educated liberals, Dick Cavett. Kristol brought nothing to the Times OpEd, and they would be well-advised to get a real columnist to take his place. If they must have another conservative, then pick one who can think, one whose vice-presidential preferences are not dictated by his hormonal makeup.
Please.

[standforpeace]

Too funny! I read the piece and thought WTF as I have so often this past year when reading Kristol. If you're going to put a conservative on staff at the paper supported by liberal readers all over the country, at least get someone who can coherently present a conservative point of view by making cogent arguments. Kristol is a living example of a Right that has run out winning ideas and is trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that the majority of Americans are now soundly rejecting their empty rhetoric.

[1differentdrummer]

After he leaves I may start buying the Times again.

[Stud99]

Well the Times will be in the dustbin of history soon, so they'll all stop trying at some point.

[Canukistani]

I disagree. I think Kristol always maintains the same consistent level of intelligence in all his work. He starts with sludge and he finishes with sludge and in the middle it's all sludge. When you're on the bottom and you're always wrong, your standards just can't get any lower.

[TurkerB]

The really big question is WHY did the NY Times hire this political hack and how much money did they pay this clown to write his dribble in their paper?

As newspapers are struggling to stay in business, the NY Times could say oodles of money by firing the idiots who hired (and kept) B. Kristol to 'write' for their paper in the first place.

[yankee452]

Wow

That was the exact same feeling i had when I read is article on Sunday.

He just doesn't care anymore, and he knows the sooner he can retreat in to a self-imposed ideological exile, the better.

I'm sure he's spending more of his time trying to figure out how to dupe the GOP once again into another grand scheme to replace the Project For A New American Century.

PNAC afterall was born while Democrats were at the helm in Washington.

It will be interesting to see the extent to which the likes of the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Founfation etc will be banished from the inner workings of government intitutions.

....that is of course if they survive the almost certain restructuring of both representative and intellectual conservativism in this country