Kristol's Last Times Column: An Era Of Phoning It In Ends
It's the end of an era, folks. Specifically, the end of the era where the New York Times offers column space to error-prone neo-conservative Sarah Palin booster Bill Kristol.
Kristol phoned in columns about his magical life: where he'd ponder books sold in airport duty-free shops and spin wild contrafactual fantasies. He was against Obama's inexperience until Sarah Palin forced him to be FOR inexperience. He likes the Wars, and so, attempted to Put A Ring On It, like a Single Lady. He seemed to be wrong about EVERYTHING, all the time, where the election was concerned. He was the last man to believe McCain had a chance at the presidency. At one point, he said on teevee that if the Red Sox could come back in the playoffs, McCain could win the election. But McCain COULDN'T win the election, not ever. All Kristol managed to do was doom the Red Sox.
And he did doom the Red Sox. By God, he doomed them, but good.
Kristol's first column featured an error. I think his next one did, too. Anyway, many of them did, because no one cared enough about what Kristol was writing to check and ensure some measure of quality. 23/6 offered its readers a feature by which you could write your own terrible Bill Kristol column, like the one I write today:
Tuesday's speech on religion by Pat Robertson was an interesting look at the dichotomy between hispanics and white people. No doubt the primary race between Herbert Hoover and Amy Winehouse will entrench each side of the electorate. Just last week Obama and his team were urging Ontario delegates to redo their primary. I used to think that Obama's cynicism would trump the cynicism found in cynics across this great land. Now I wonder.
Eventually Kristol sort of abandoned the whole idea of making an effort, because why not? What was the New York Times looking for in this relationship, anyway?
DUH:
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.
At any rate, Bill Kristol's last column is up today. It's about Obama and Reagan and the end of the conservative era and pride and regrets and Harvey Mansfield and Pearl Harbor. Next week, Bill Kristol will be gone, leaving Times readers more time to read Bono's columns about Palm Pilots and counting to fourteen and writing songs with lots of guitar arpeggios.
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January 26, 2009 08:41 AM