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

[bitabingbitabangbitaboom]

Marty Kaplan has HUGE BALLS.

Craigslist for a Pulizer Prize.

Bill Kristol a Cockaroach

[ZingoBonMot]

Satire done right! BRAVO!

[getalife80]

ReallY? The New York Times is still a paper? I thought it was a fishwrapper. I am sure they have some talented writers who will be looking for jobs soon. Editorials? Most of the news is not even news, it is left wing propoganda that could have written by any Bolshevik that can't get a real job.

[BASummers]

LOVE IT.

[go4thegold]

You assumed that Kristol has a mind to change... He's part idiot, part ignoramous... Not enviable. D.

[trrenaud]

A lot of Times readers are indignant that such an obvious propagandist has been hired to Op-Ed. I ask, for what exactly are they looking in the section opposite the Editorials which is designed to be a forum for *opinions*? This section has a long history of publishing both quacks and occasionally some insightful voices; forget Safire -- go back to the 1930s and 40s and see the sort of xenophobic, nativist drivel that filled that section.

There are plenty of venues for neocon brainwashing in the media today, and even supposed bastions of liberal and reasonable thinking are not immune to the profit potential of hiring a shoot-em-up, tough-talking ideologue of the ilk of O'Reilly, Coulter, et al.

However, there are just as many outlets for liberal brainwashing. And that's a good thing. If 20th century history has taught us anything, it's that reason is no defense against enemy propaganda -- only a propaganda barrage of one's own will stem the brownshirt tides. Thank you, Jon Stewart. Thank you, Colbert. Thank you, Huff Post. Embrace propaganda, folks, even if it be an uncomfortable embrace.

[coyne]

it's amazing to me that people still support the nyt. i canceled after the miller thing and haven't read a page since.

[Dingoangst]

Man, I hate when columnists take on someone else's persona. Just don't do it.

[lastams]

Oh hell, the NYT is just trying to tap into that Murdoch market, you know the FOX bubbleheads that want to hear what they believe, facts be dammed.
Recently I heard some theocon bubblehead make the comment that they "didn't trust science", which is sort of like saying that one doesn't trust math, or numbers.
If the New York Times is going to attempt to lure the dogma driven flagwavers to spend their hard urned quarters, then they need to recognize that ALL their "news" will have to be of the same ilk.
These people live in a seperate reality.
You simply cannot mix their dillusions with facts.

[desertdweller]

Let's face it, print newspapers are going the way of the eight-track tape. Subscriptions are dwindling and publishers are desperate to sell copy. They have tried every gimmick in the book, and now they are scraping the bottom of the barrel to gain a few readers. If neocon opinion is what readers are looking for, they can read the Post. Otherwise, why would they read Post-lite, especially with all that liberal-elitist filler?

[montemalone]

Have no fear, for it will not be long until Kristol exposes his own "wide stance" and thereby reduces his influence to those in the stall beside him.

[Overd0g]

At least Lenin was admitting he was a murderer with that quote.

[LVLefty]

Hey, Bill. You got ANOTHER thing wrong! Abe Rosenthal didn't hire Safire. What a lot of people don't understand about The Times and The Washington Post is the separation of church and state--the news guys don't control the editorial pages. Punch Sulzberger hired Safire over the screams of his editorial page editor and cousin, the very liberal John Oakes.

Out here in Las Vegas, we don't have this separation, so the editor makes sure the news columns reflect his right-wing views. Those criticizing The Times really ought to be thankful that Kristol is only on the Op-Ed page.

[DSPinPW]

I don't want to read what Kristol has to say, but then again I seldom read what Brooks says and I pretty much ignored Safire as well.

It publishing his ignorant garbage helps the NYT sell more papers, great. Maybe those morons will read Frank Rich and learn something!

It is a shame that there are so many forums available to his ilk, but let's face it; that's what sells. That's how we got GWB in the white house in the first place. We just might be in the minority.

[Carbon Footprint]

I would have sold Lenin this: The hate-ray that Hillary flashed with those angry eyes in New Hampshire melted down her campaign. Charile Gibson had to yell "Klatu Mirada Nicktoe" just to turn her off. Bush nearly had to call out the national guard. It was "The Day Her Candidacy Stood Still".