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

[tililek]

The NY Times has a right to hire anyone they feel will enable their readers to have a wide divergence of views.

Readers have the right to pick and choose who and what they read.

If enough readers point out remarks of a writer they feel is weird or dishonest then the paper is likely to find other writers who are less weird and dishonest.

But to register their disappointment by canceling a subscription without seeing what is published is foolish. Giving Kristol the right to make their decisions for them is unlike an American who point out that one of the beliefs of democracy is that everyone can have their say, but having had their say doesn't mean agreement.

So disagree with Kristol and indicate where he is wrong is more likely to lead to a short stay at the Times. Why should I punish myself by denying the rest of the paper?

[yathink]

Kristol is anything but a conservative. He is a radical neocon who wants to nuke the world--a very ugly, bitter, little man who loves to make everyone who will listen to him as frightened as he is. What exactly would get him to wet himself on faux news? Maybe if someone called him a lying fascist to his face. Ron Paul comes to mind, and I'm not even a Paul supporter.

[LewisWalsh]

Jane:

Recently the Philadelphia Inquirer hired former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum as a regular columnist. I was flabbergasted, but then, I was flabbergasted when this person was actually elected as a senator from Pennsylvania. This person, as well as Mr. Kristol, are so far removed from the mainstream of human philosophical thought that it is actually frightening that such people have been accepted as persona grata at such August institutions as the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

I suppose that it could be as my old professor used to sing: “Everything that happens whether happy, sad or comic, when you get right down to the solid facts, it’s basically economic.”

These publishers are so far behind the times that they do not yet realize that these right wing radical’s time has past. And, they are too far behind the times to reap any economic gain since no one is buying the Santorum’s and Kristol’s elitist nonsense anymore.

[Bobzmcishl]

Kristol is a pompous ass as is Brooks who was on ABC last Sunday. What next - Karl Rove? Where is this liberal media I keep hearing about but never see?

[Interested01]

Well said! Except for the part about Kristol's ideas sounding prudent in 2002. If you bought the neoconservative agenda at all, you had to buy the invasion of Iraq. But why did so many otherwise intelligent people disregard the experts who said invading Iraq would be folly, experts with decades of experience in the Middle East? Why do so many Americans disregard the basic concept that when invaded, people tend to resist? Why do our politicians continually disregard those age old admonitions about the genie and the bottle, the can of worms, the horse and the barn door?

Most of the unintended consequences of our "use of force" were predictable, were in fact explicitly predicted, well in advance. This includes the irresponsible use of force in Afghanistan, where our post-invasion vow to help rebuild the country was a transparent hoax. It's only a matter of time before this "prudent response" is revealed for the ill-conceived adventure it has always been.

The New York Times needs a columnist who can show how real wars against real terrorists might be won. The decentralized micro-operations of Al-Qaeda and its copycats will never be defeated through "pre-emptive" invasion, partly because the operations are decentralized and partly because invasion spawns terror on all sides. Which writer has the knowledge and the vision and the guts to show America how to stop "fighting the last war," as leaders always mistakenly do? Which writer will advocate policies likely to curb terrorism instead of fomenting it? Not William Kristol.

[factanonverba]

Mr. Kristol's elevation to NYT columnist has appalled me and causes me to ponder why. Perhaps it is a stretch but is it not plausible that the NYT has selected Mr. Kristol not to praise him but to bury him? After all no one wears a nickname better than William the Bloody. And what can one say about a man who has been wrong on just about everything and must be the sole advocate for a Cheney Presidency?

[BoulderSue]

How did Kristol ever gain any credibility in the first place?! He certainly hasn't earned any lately. Same with Rove at Newsweek. What the Hell is going on anyway?! Unfortunately I have a paid up subscription to Newsweek, but the Times I get on-line. All the same I won't cut off my nose to spite my face. There are still good people at both publications, but the people doing the hiring have obviously been drinking the Kool Aid. Great post, Jane. I'm one of your fans and will just try to tune out Kristol and Rove the same as I do O'Reilly and Limbaugh, and hope our vaunted free market truly works(or should I say that I hope the last seven years haven't totally destroyed the American psyche!).

[nellie]

Well, I have to say that I do not forgive the Times for Judith Miller. She was on the news pages, not the editorial pages. Her work was taken as fact, not opinion.

"Journalists" like Judith Miller are, IMHO, far more dangerous than the Bill Kristols of the world. Bill Kristol can pontificate all he likes about whatever, but what he says is only opinion. And unless there are equally diluded or misguided people to follow his lead, he is easily dismissed.

Stories encased in the veneer of "fact" are not so easy to put aside. I think the NYT deserves the desertion—but it should have happened years ago.

[ScooterLiddy]

I canceled my subscription to the Sunday Times as of last Sunday. Just like I canceled my subscription to Newsweek after they paid the traitor Rove for a column.

[stp]

"There was a moment, in, say 2002, when some of his arguments sounded prudent, if not reasonable."

I'm sorry, I must have missed that moment. Can you be more specific as to when it happened? I don't recall him EVER saying something that sounded either prudent or reasonable. Are you sure? Check again..

[mommadona]

Thank you for personally doing that.

[ParacleteofKavorka]

Maybe their plan is to have him work for a month or two and then fire his ass in big way to discredit him. That would be really clever.

[morsegist]

Great piece, Jane! And just when the firewall came down. I'll still read Krugman, but never Kristol. What an agent he must have. The new crop of college football players headed to the pros should look him up! This guy could sell ashes to the devil! Oh, wait... He did, didn't he!

[abbagirl]

I agree with you, of course. But so far the hiring of Kristol has been a brilliant business decision, based on the blizzard of attention it has received from every sort of news organization and blog, right or left wing. I cannot begin to guess at the true reasons the powers at the NYT have for hiring this self-congratulatory chattering little nebbish, but I won't revisit the NYT until he has been dropped. And thanks, as usual, for your insights.

[anfractuous]

It's getting hard to say who's defiling who.