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

[frank67]

NYT + WASHPO = FEDERAL GOV'T SPOKESMEN.

[Tankan]

Marty Almighty, reading Bill's mind would be as challenging as reading a blank sheet of paper!

[Greensleeves]

Today's load was an easily dismissed piece of dementia.He should debate Hitchens.Drink for drink.

[msmaggie]

Know what's fun? Read this aloud in your best Monty Burns voice. EXCELLENT!!!

[SamBrown]

Great column Mr. Kaplan.
You reminded me to NOT click on the Times today and be tempted to read the smirkster's inaugural column.

[DenverCurmudgeon]

The second paragraph of Kristol's first column exposed many NY Times readers to a chilling summation of a neocon's view of the Bush years:

“Who, inquiring minds want to know, is going to spare us a first Obama term? After all, for all his ability and charm, Barack Obama is still a liberal Democrat. Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration. We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.”

Keep 'm coming Bill.

[LittleGreenGreaseBalls]

Boycott the Times and let them know it.

TO WRITE THE PUBLISHER OR PRESIDENT Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Chairman & Publisher:
nytimes.comytimes.com.

Scott H. Heekin-Canedy, President, General Manager
nytimes.comytimes.com.

[Kakistocrat]

Reading Kristol's mind? Your article is way too long to give Kristol's thought processes justice.

Duh! would have been sufficient.

[Overd0g]

There are no "liberals" anymore. There are just leftists, rightists, and the vast majority who don't give a flying Philadelphia f*ck.

[jbgnyc]

Here's the answer. DON'T read Kristol's column. Just like I skip past Fox when I'm scrolling on the cable dial, I opened my NYT's today and glanced right past Bill the Liar. I did it for the last few years Safire wrote as well. Once, I had felt duty bound to read Safire because that was just being fair, right. Then I heard Safire in person at a press event and he was so out and out partisan and nasty and snide and it finally hit me like a swift kick: I can live without such one-sided drivel. And I have.

[tomsthumb]

Those darn left-wingers, bashing Clinton and Kerry, what will they think of next? I can't wait to see who they bash next, Dean, Biden, Obama. It's obvious the media are all liberals. Why else would they support Bush so fervently?

[lastams]

I would like to thank Huffington for one post that is not an election ad for Barak Obama.
For a minute there I nearly forgot that anything else was going on in the world.

[eddierox]

Did I miss Olbermans' rant on the *Kristolgeist* ?

[geoblack]

I actually read Kristol yesterday. Has anyone else noticed that the guy doesn't even write very well?

Stupid is one thing, but actual lack of talent is entirely another.

[neiltheblaze]

Ah Marty! You knocked it out of the park again.

Bless ya, laddie!