Muddle-Headed, Fear-Mongering, BushCo Shills Still Have a Right to Shout "Fire" in a Crowded Theater

Next week, I am really going to miss The New York Times. For years now, I have spent at least part of every morning reading the Times, and I love its variety. In addition, I have had a long and enjoyable writer's relationship with the Times. I've written for the magazine, the Travel Section, the Book Review, and the Op-Ed page (once I wrote in favor of divorce, and they received a gratifying hail of shocked, shocked SHOCKED! letters in response). On the day I heard the first rumor about my Pulitzer Prize, I was working with one of the Book Review editors. In a state of disbelief, I asked her if she had heard anything. She said "No, but here at the New York Times, we have a saying that eighty percent of rumors are true." I liked that. It agreed with my experience as a gossip. Just a couple of months ago, I wrote a sidebar for the magazine. The piece was fun, the editor was fun, and they embedded me in an article about Daniel Day-Lewis. Who could ask for more?

Given my attachment to the Times over the years, I have to say that I even forgave them for Judith Miller, difficult as that was. But after the advent of Bill Kristol on the editorial page next week, that's it for the Times and me.

I cannot imagine why the Times has hired Kristol. Kristol is not merely some rightwing loose cannon like David Brooks or even William Safire, and his hiring by the Times is not a free-speech issue. Kristol has plenty of opportunities to speak, and if he didn't he could blog, like the rest of us. Kristol is a war-monger and a hate-monger, and his lies have been exposed over and over in the last four years. If you think that the Iraq War is a crime, as I do, it is bad enough that he was one of the primary cheerleaders for it, even after every single one of the reasons that the Cheney/Bush/right wing gave for the attack was exposed. But he is worse than that. Until the NIE report, he was actively advocating bombing Iran, preferably with nuclear weapons, even though the civilians in Iran who would be bombed have nothing at all to do with whatever the Iranian government is doing, or as it turns out, not doing to develop nuclear weapons. In Iraq alone, Kristol has the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands. He is unrepentant and eager for more.

William Kristol is a man whose time has come and gone. There was a moment, in, say 2002, when some of his arguments sounded prudent, if not reasonable. Now, he only sounds crazy. NOTHING has turned out as Kristol said it would, and the process of finding this out has cost the American people a great deal, and not only money and lives. Why the New York Times would hire such a person boggles the mind to think of. The announcement even made no sense, pointing out, as it did, that "Mr. Kristol, 55, has been a fierce critic of the Times. In 2006, he said that the government should consider prosecuting the Times for disclosing a secret government program to track international banking transactions. In a 2003 column on the turmoil within the Times that led to the downfall of the top two editors, he wrote that it was not 'a first-rate newspaper of record,' adding, 'the Times is irredeemable.'" Why would the Times hire such a person? Stockholm Syndrome? Some kind if inside-the-beltway joke? An attempt to lure that bloc of American newspaper readers who listen to Rush Limbaugh? Earth to Times! Maybe they can't read!

Day after day, I read the letters to the editor column. After almost every column by David Brooks, I am struck by how few readers agree with a single thing he says, how many cogently disagree with him. Judging by the letters column, readers of the Times are liberal to moderate, and, most importantly, they have a well-developed sense of decency and responsibility. Has the Times now decided just to stick it to us, willy nilly, by giving Kristol a platform and a paycheck? Who's next, A--- C---, who suggested that the Times building be bombed? Even the Times editors themselves, in an editorial printed yesterday, lament that the U.S. has become unrecognisably lawless and inhumane. Earth to Times! William Kristol is as much to blame for this as anyone on the planet!

So, as of next Monday, the Times feed disappears from my home page, and when I get that 1-111-111-1111 number on my caller I.D., the one that reveals how the Times really thinks of itself, I won't pick up. When they send me the money they owe me for my piece, I will divide it between a charity that benefits Iraq veterans and one that benefits displaced Iraqis. You would have thought that remorse for the Judith Miller debacle would have taught them something, but clearly not. Sadly not.

Comments

[SearchingForPericles]

Just a legal pet peeve here:

For the 1000th time: the rule is you don't have the right to FALSELY shout "fire" in a crowded theater. You see, this creates a panic for no good reason.

If one shouts "fire" in a crowded theater and there is one, then there isn't a problem.

[LAWTON]

The Times was one one of the catalysts that led us into the Iraqi Invasion! Did we not pick up on their true leanings then? I canceled my Times subscription the day Bush Cheney invaded!

[Sean68]

You on the far Left SHOULD cancel your subscriptions to the NYT. Give your money to publications that better reflect your views--e.g., Counterpunch, Mother Jones, Workers World Daily etc.

[realpolitic]

Bush will always have to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre. Why else would anyone listen to this unthinking nonentity? He is truly a historical anachronism. He is a child in a man's body who, at heart, is very afraid of the world and his place in it. It makes sense that he and Laura do not socialize. What could he ever say of interest to anyone? He finds most challenging cutting shrubs on his ranch. I wish him a long lifetime of shrub-cutting where he can not do any more harm than he has. He is a child of wealth who has always failed upward and has reached a point where his father's friends can no longer bail him out.

[PerryLogan]

The Right is going down, and the New York Times is helping to cushion their fall.

[richardrad]

Oh Jane, you cannot be serious! Do you really want to confine yourself to reading only the opinions that you agree with? How insufferably dull. For far too long The Times has given short shrift to conservative opinions. d I say that as a moderate to liberal reader. Let the sunshine in. I want to read all kinds of intelligent opinion in The Times. Why don't you? Whatever else he is, you must admit Bill Kristol is intelligent. And although it may be depressing, a sizeable number of people agree with many of his views.

[Marlowe22]

I agree with Jane Smiley. I'm horrified that the Times has given Bill Kristol a platform. It isn't needed and it isn't wanted! There are already enough voices from the radical right out there -- Rush, all those crazies on Fox News, and Kristol has his own platform. Gads, what next?

[rob112552]

I don't care for Bill Kristol but I like the idea of him working for the NYT. In the same light, I'd like to see Fox carry Democracy Now. But I guess I wish for too much.

[Garvagh]

Great piece! William Kristol relentlessly encourages Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and the identification as "enemies of the US" any country indicating to Israel that the permanent suppression of the Palestinians is not an option. Kristol is a danger to the Middle East and to the national interests of the US.

[research]

I don't understood why anyone considers the NYT's a liberal paper!

the NYTs has been conservative since I can remember.

Worse, this war shows the paper to favor a fascist relationship with the government.

[biwee]

NeoCons run, and own, the USA....and have since Dyan ordered the deliberate attack on the USS Liberty, knowing that Israel could kill Americans with impunity.

[Greensleeves]

What with the NYT lurching from one journalistic debacle to another perhaps Suzlberger the publisher(an impoverished prince/leader) is looking for a drinking buddy to stumble from pillar to post. In that case he's lined up a fine addition to the bombastic barroom blowhards.I'll continue to selectively read the NYT-I don't pay for it.

[Hu1b]

Now hold-on, Jane;

Remember that we MUST monitor the NYT, if only to find-out what the enemy is thinking.

I'm gonna go now and e-mail NYT and congrat them for supporting and promoting global inhumanity by their hiring policy.

[RogerHWerner]

I confess, it would be difficult for me to stop reading the editorials/op ed section of the NYT. Hell, even Brooks and Friedman have a reasonable idea occasionally (I miss Safire because although I rarely agreed with what he said he was a fun to read word magician). However, Smiley makes many good points for making a protest by cancelling subscriptions. When I first heard of the Kristol/Times arrangement I largely ignored it with believing the Times can hire anyone they want and it won't impact Krugman, Rich, Kristof and Herbert. Now I'm not so sure. Kristol isn't just any editorialist/polemicist: The man is a ringleader for many of the things everything that are wrong in America. If the Times is worried about presenting various opinions spanning the political spectrum, there are many conservative columnists who would probably jump at the chance to write for the Times. Kristol is simply the wrong choice.

[ChiMan1]

Jane went looking for a life, but, oh well couldn't find one. we will bray for you, all us Dem/Progressive asses that is.