Reading Bill Kristol's Mind

Call me YHWH.

You longtime New York Times readers thought you owned this paper, didn't you? All those years of reading Tony Lewis and Tom Wicker and Anna Quindlen and Frank Rich fooled you into thinking that this op-ed page was some kind of Ivy League newsletter for you and your pals.

When Abe Rosenthal -- whose son hired me -- hired Nixon White House speechwriter Bill Safire, at first it freaked you out. How could the paper that fought Nixon all the way to the Supreme Court to print the Pentagon Papers offer the most prestigious opinion real estate on the planet to the pit bull responsible for the worst of the Nixon/Agnew anti-intellectual demagoguery?

But Safire seduced you. You forgave his ferocious Clinton-bashing, because he always said (even long after Likkud drove you crazy) that Israel could do no wrong. You tolerated his campaign to prove the Saddam-9/11 connection with the Atta-Prague connection, because his language-maven drag reminded you of sweet Miss Fussbudget from 10th grade. You could live with Safire's saying Bin Laden wanted Kerry to win, because Safire also freaked out about Bush's wiretapping. You didn't spit your morning coffee when he called Hillary a "congenital liar," or when he speculated recklessly about Vince Foster's "apparent suicide," because he always had a fun pun to tickle you, plus the occasional libertarian nugget to flatter your open-mindedness for reading him.

Well, let me tell you something. You're not getting squat from me -- no witty spoonsful of sugar to make the neocon medicine go down, no weak-kneed contrarianism to compromise my rightist righteousness.

Don't look to me to be some David Brooks doppelganger, either. He may technically have inherited Safire's parking spot on this page, but let me tell you something: David Brooks is a pussy. When the political wind shifted, he ran out on Bush just like that scumbag Paul O'Neill, or that scumbag Richard Clarke, or that scumbag Matthew Dowd, or that scumbag David Kuo, or that scumbag John Di Iulio, or that scumbag Eric Shinseki, or that scumbag Larry Wilkerson, or that scumbag Tyler Drumheller. Need I go on?

No, you're not going to get any that Obamba fawning coming from Brooks out of me. I don't turn my back on my tribe. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, the Kagan family, Podhoretz pere, mere et fils, the whole PNAC clan: don't look to me for some panty-waisted agonizing reappraisal whenever the polls turn against us. You can also forget about that hobby of his -- that psychobabbling Brooks with his self-hating pop sociology. Brooks may get a kick out of mocking his own elitist class, but if you're looking for some kind of mitigating ironic self-awareness in my twenty inches of type, you're barking up the wrong fifth column.

I still can't believe that Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is letting me keep on working for Rupert Murdoch while taking a paycheck from the Times. (I wonder what part of being-shitcanned-by-Time he doesn't understand.) I also can't believe that Andrew Rosenthal thinks what he's getting in me is just some "opposing views" voice to bookend Paul Krugman. Krugman and I don't just "disagree." He's wrong. Wrong, people, as in evil. I will destroy him. I didn't get to be "a serious, respected conservative intellectual," as Andy called me, by toadying to Times readers. I did it by gaining the respect of seriousness-arbiters like Hew Hewitt, Fred Barnes, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Jonah Goldberg and Michael Savage. Our movement's goal isn't to enliven the marketplace of ideas with our views. Our crusade is to purify public discourse, to brand as a traitor and drive from that square anyone who dares disagree with us. Bill Kristol as the Adlai Stevenson of the right... HA! That's rich.

You pathetic pluralists think that facts and reason will always win out. Well, go ahead and keep thinking that. Lenin said, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." If Lenin were around today, he'd say, "The liberals will pay us for the words with which we will poison them."

Have a nice day, suckers. See ya every Monday.

Comments

[Velocitor]

There's no trick to reading Krystol's mind - he's a predictable and unimaginative Neoconservative drone. If I could read minds, I'd be more interested in what the New York Times was thinking. What is the last thing he ever wrote which was stimulating or insightful? Authoritarians love him because he makes submitting to authority and surrendering one's freedom sound like a reasoned intellectual exercise.

[campaignman]

I have met Bill Kristol.

He spoke at an event I managed during the first year of the Iraq war.

He told me then that he wanted the USA to invade Syria and Iran after Iraq.

This was after things were already going bad for us in Iraq.

He is out of his mind.

As a subscriber to the NYT, I am very upset but am not convinced that the readers of the Times are not smart enough to look at what Kristol writes as an insight into what our enemies think. Such insight can be helpful in defeating our enemies.

Subscribers and readers should take every opportunity to write in and challenge every word he puts on the page. Defeating his viewpoint on paper will humiliate him every week.

[Joseph A. Palermo - Huffpost Blogger]

Well said Marty!

[Cathexis]

You have looked into the mind of Bill Kristol, sir.

Now go wash your eyeballs.

Use soap.

[realpolitic]

When one reads the tea leaves of Bill Kristol's mind one sees war, war, and more war. Of course, this fantasy plays well with him as long as it is other nameless, faceless Americans who do the dying. I wonder if he knows one family personally who has lost a son or daughter in this war.

[septemberfalcon]

Kristol's reference to government programs that help the poor and people with disabilities as a "nanny state" reveals a complete lack of commpassion for or understanding of the struggles of the "lower" classes in this nation. I was very angry when I read this phrase and refused to puruse the article any further.

[Trittydi]

Reading Bill "The Bloody" Kristol's mind would put me on suicide watch I think. The man is a war criminal.
*

[SlinkyTWF]

I tried reading Bill Kristol's mind once, but all I saw was a travel brochure urging me to, "See Rock City."

[Dap]

Dear Professor Kaplan,

Just wanted to drop in and wish You and Yours a Happy New Year. Oh, excellence once again comes to mind when reading your post. Agape.

[batguano]

FOCKIN BRILLIANT my man! Now THAT'S what I'm talkin about! Thanks Marty!

[Janelynne]

It is impossible to understand what anyone sees in Kristol. Not especially clever or attractive, he has impressed himself on some other old men that he is the godfather, the original "made" guy. They sit in the backroom chomping on their cigars weaving tales of shooting raised quail, and yeah, taking over the world. The Project for the American Century, or whatever, is the secret clubhouse with presumably the secret handshake. These old cadgers are busy remaking the world. They simply don't give a rat's ass about the United States but are multi-national, cross national, stash the cash where the sun don't shine kind of guys. How does this gang of wannabe star chamber dudes warrant anything but Federal investigation? Kristol, schmistol.

[CanSoc]

I remember watching Mr Kristol throwing a tantrum on Crossfire (he wasn't on set), pulling out his earpiece and stalking off, and fortunately not returning as some who pull that do. He was and is a nasty ideologue that NYT readers should ignore rather than give him the attention he and Sulzberger want. The only time I give him these days is to watch him sweat on the Daily Show and Colbert Report. If you want reasoned, insightful neocon writing, read his dad's articles..­.from thirty years ago.

[CanSoc]

I remember when Mr. Kristol threw a tantrum on Crossfire, pulling out his earpiece and stomping off (he wasn't in the studio). He was and is a nasty ideologue who NYT readers should simply ignore rather than give him the attention he and Sulzberger clearly want. The only time I give him these days is to watch him sweat on The Daily Show or Colbert Report. If you want insightful neocon writing, read the articles by his dad...from thirty years ago.

[Anastasia]

Kristol's column was so unreadable, one wonders whether the Times' strategy is to present the biggest conservative bore they can find, as a way of highlighting their liberal columnists.

No other explanation makes sense.

[Carraway]

Interesting that is the second "tribe" reference of the day. (HH in NYer using it on Kristol too). Is this usage now permissable?