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

[Janco54]

Couldn't agree with you more Jane. This is an absolutely perplexing move by the Times.
Kristol is the worst journalism has to offer. He's nothing but hate, propaganda, war, war and more war. He's been wrong on EVERYTHING over the last 7 years and continues to try to justify his positions. It's laughable. Take a look at how Colbert sliced him up. Listen to his now infamous line "if it's bad for children and old people I tend to think it's a good idea." He wasn't kidding.
The Times has made a huge error - again.

[keiran]

I discontinued my years long subscription around two or three weeks ago. My last straw was the front page story about how great it is going in Iraq, complete with a photo of a wedding. I miss how good it used to be. I don't miss becoming infuriated over morning coffee every day.

[Ohiomj]

I, too, think The Times' hiring of William Kristol is part of a bad dream. But I am awake and am more frightened than ever that Kristol gets a formerly-first-rate medium through which to shout his wrong-every-time thoughts. Why is it that the Bush administration has the unique ability to choose precisely the wrong person for every job? Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Condi, Feith, Alberto, Ashcroft, "you're-doing-a-heck-of-a job" Brownie, and so forth. Each name brings up a person who unhesitatingly made a wrong decision. If The Times is trying to feign bringing balance to its pages, then it knows not what its does. There are enough venues for Kristol to get his crimes-against-humanity thoughts on how the world should be run exposed that The Times need not give him the center stage and a spotlight on his failed ideas. If I subscribed to The Times as I did for over 30 years, I would immediately cancel my subscription.

[Bob Egan]

So many wrong doings, so few apologies!!

The "Religious Right" never seems to admit wrong, or, heaven forbid, confess!!

Maybe THEIR god is easily fooled!

As a child I used to put the most 'pious' look on my face when praying! It never seemed to work!

Maybe it did Work. It must have been my 'conscience' that bothered me!

[klondiker]

What I want to know is why Kristol even wants to work at the Times in the first place??

If it is such a horrible, treasonous newspaper, why does he want to work for it??

It is exactly like John Bolton - hated the UN with all his guts, but was still clamouring to get a job there.

It is so typical of the right-wing. They will criticize everything, but coming running like lapdogs if it means more fame/riches for them.

[bg785]

lol. you know i am kind of surprised. i was able to talk to Mr. Sulzberger, the publisher of the times in his offices about a year back. i questioned him about judith miller and their awful reporting of the iraq war and the decision to wait until after the 04 elections to reveal warrantless wiretapping. sulzberger vehemently tried to persuade me that things had changed. they wouldn't make the same mistakes again yet they are hiring someone who was part of the mountain of propoganda and lies that fed judith miller. this is downright despicable. they have absolutely no leg to stand on.

and from a business sense it makes no SENSE! newspaper circulations are diminishing across the country. yet the times apparently wants less readers? lets be honest, most times readers are liberal much more liberal than the actual paper. why are they doing this? the few reasons anyone reads the times in the progressive community is for krugman and his increasing progressive rhetoric was really more of a stroke of luck by the times. maureen dowd writes like a lunatic. that leaves frank rich and herbert to pick up the slack.

you know i hate the wsj and washington times but at least they are not afraid to say what they think. why is it ok for the wsj and wt to admit that they have a conservative slant but supposedly liberal papers like the times seem to be embarrassed so much by being labelled "liberal" that they actually become the leading mouthpieces for lying, war-mongering neo-cons like bill kristol. if the times is stooping this low, i weep for our future. seriously

[Hugo de Balsac]

Bill Kristol would be a fine independent entreprenuer if he wanted to be. perhaps he should go into another line of work. since he likes to kill people silently, slowly and with a deliciously ironic feigned sentiment, maybe he should open a donut shop called Kristol Kreme, and then people would line up around the block to have what he's dying to sell them.

[Saggitarius]

The New York times changed when Elisabeth Bumiller took over the opinion section.
David Brooks must belong to one of the conservative Think Tanks in D.C. and Pittsburgh because his columns and talking points are the same as those in my newspaper.
It seems that the wor "liberal" is everywhere and I think a lot of people don't even know what it means.

[lgillooly]

The Times has lost all credibility.They will be another arm of the RNC like Fox. Thank God we can find the truth on the Internet,but they will go after that soon.

[dana94591]

I am appalled! How can the Times do this?? What happened to Kristol at the Wall Street Journal? What happened at the New Republic? These are places where he could have stayed. Why would the NYT give him this legitimacy? I stopped reading the NYT several months ago. I, unlike you, didn't forgive them for the Judith Miller and Jason ... episodes. But I agree with you, William Kristol is the straw that breaks the back!!! NYT is going down!!!

[Janus]

MORMONDUDE, clearly one of the ample supply of Dupes on the HuffPost boards, has regaled us earlier with typical bilge from those precincts, requiring a response.
*****************************
The silly, grinning little draftdodging neocon twit that you are defending never saw a war that he wasn't willing to let the others fight while he remained safely ensconced in his plush surroundings condemning as traitors those who disagreed with the warmongering plans of his ilk.

The current Washington Monthly includes an article on Norman Podheritz who is gung-ho to bomb Iran and who is tightly in the political bed with Rambo Giuliani. Podheritz's son-in-law is Eliot Abrams, of the Iran-Contra scandal, now serving in the NSC through appointment by the Puppet squatting in the Oafel Office. Podhertiz occupies the same neocon camp with his wife Midge Dector and with Irvin Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb, Billy's mom and pop.

As you can see, it's quite a group whom you admire with their background of enthusiastically endorsing wars and influencing Bush and Company to (allegedly) spread democracy around the World resulting in the casualties that come with military action. Your audacious remark about Kristol's bloody hands is staggering in light of your adoration of the gang of bungling, crackpot neocons that has ruined the reputation of this Country for its economic and political and international integrity and condemned the Bush Administration as the worst ever in our history.

[tumblewind]

jimhum: Do you have a clue what a lib is????? Somehow I doubt very seriously you do. Most shallow feeders like yourself don't have a clue. It's a term you throw around like confetti on New Years Eve. It lands on anyone who doesn't agree with the rabid view point of conservatives these days. Who in all reality are about as far from one of the first conservatives Barry Goldwater as one can get. So conservatives is a misnomer. I am not certain what they are but they aren't conservative! Most are strident mean-spirited people who have about as much class as a slug under a rock has. I am a conservative who was forced into the liberal camp by the nasties like you. Because I had some idea what was right and what was completely wrong. And would not compromise my ideals. Which is what the modern conservative lacks! Not only a conscious but any large amount of morality! So if you don't know what is wrong with William Kristol I am not going to try and tell you! Because it would be a waste of time and energy!

[mpgarr]

A good way to hurt the Times for hiring Kristol is to send letters to those who advertise and let them know that since whenever possible you will not patronize their businesses as long as they continue to advertise in the Times---that the reason you are cutting back in your patronage--the Times has hired Mr. Kristol as a columunist---in the coming lean times---any loss of business will have to hurt them and besides---you most likely don't need 99.99 percent of the shit those people sell anyhow--it will help your bottom line too---you don't want to be like one of those Brits that are in such financial straits as mentioned in an article posted elsewhere on this site----

[tdbach]

Should The Times give Bin Laden a weekly column? No? Why not? You mean it's not just about giving a platform to recognized voices of opinion? There are limits to whose voices are given a platform in the "Newspaper of Record"? So what's the standard? Where's the bar below which one is disqualified? A level of credibility? A conspicuous agenda that threatens Americans and American values (as the publisher understands them)? Would it be unreasonable for the Times to adjudge Kristol as falling below that line? I think not. Would it be pandering to pretend that he even come close to meeting the standard? Yep.

[Sciguy]

I don't understand why the New York Times would hire Bill Kristol, but even more baffling to me is why a "true believer" would take a job with a newspaper he detests so much. Is he so poor that he'll take any money, anywhere, from anyone, to feed the kids and pay the rent? Is there enough money in the deal to pay him to look past his own hatreds? What else is wrong with this picture?