Thinking About Bill

As I listened to Sarah Palin's recent phone call with "Nicolas Sarkozy," I couldn't help thinking about Bill Kristol.

I think about Bill Kristol far too much. I almost never used to. Before he began writing his Monday column in the New York Times, I rarely saw him on television. Whenever I did, I was mostly mesmerized by his uncanny resemblance to Bob Woodward (whom he no longer resembles) and his incredibly self-satisfied, smug, smirky demeanor. It was my theory that his need to please the Republican White House -- a need that seemed to trump his alleged intellect and even the factual evidence on hand -- must stem from some unresolved issues with his father, the famous Irving Kristol, one of the first neo-conservatives. But I didn't dwell on it, because I saw so little of him. And in any case, I truly couldn't stand him. I just couldn't stand him.

I don't enjoy being in this position. I much prefer to be perversely fond of people others find problematic. I am crazy about Pat Buchanan, for example, and I have fantasies of following him around for a day in order to find out what it's like to never ever be off the air. I am utterly entranced by Keith Olbermann, and I watch his show in much the same way others go to hockey games. Don't get me started on Chris Matthews: I am practically in love with the guy. But it seemed impossible to find a way to like Bill: he was just too irritating.

And then, unaccountably, amazingly, astonishingly, he was hired by the New York Times to write a once-a-week column. You cannot imagine the thrill of horror that passed through New York on hearing the news. The Times already had a conservative columnist (of whom I was already perversely fond), and one conservative columnist was quite enough, thank you. Then Kristol's column began. I read it religiously every Monday. And slowly but surely, I became infatuated with him. How could I not? The man could not write his way out of a paper bag. His column was simply awful. Reading it was like watching someone dance on the head of a pin: his need to prove to his base that he hadn't gone over to the other side was so strong, his need to please his constituency was so moving, that I began to wish he would quit his job as editor of the Weekly Standard and become a Times columnist full-time. It was certainly not going to inconvenience him: the column couldn't have been taking him more than about twenty minutes to write. And it was great having him there, visible, so people like me could see what people like him were like. He was wrong about everything. It was such a comfort.

In recent months, I have thought about Bill more and more. Every time someone turned over a rock, he crawled out from under it. In Jane Mayer's recent New Yorker piece on Sarah Palin, for instance, he turned out to be the man who'd discovered Palin, during a cruise of Alaska, and brought the news of her potential stardom back to the New World. And of course he was one of the reasons why we'd gone to war in Iraq. Iraq. Sarah Palin. The man was uncanny. Last week I watched him on Jon Stewart, insisting that McCain might yet pull an upset. "It's not a psychodrama," he said. "It's only an election."

People like me sometimes wonder what it would be like to be involved in mistakes that end up killing people; we wonder about sleepless nights and remorse and guilt. Bill Kristol exists to remind us that these are pathetic liberal fantasies, and that some people are never sorry. Only last week I saw Kristol on television continuing to defend Sarah Palin: she was a bright woman, he was saying, who'd simply been mismanaged by the McCain campaign.

Which brings me back to Sarah Palin's radio phone call with the Canadian comedian who pranked her into thinking he was Nicolas Sarkozy. As I listened to it, increasingly horrified, I couldn't help thinking about Bill Kristol and hoping that somehow, he would have to spend eternity locked in a room listening to a continuous tape of it.

There are rumors that the New York Times is not going to renew his contract. I just pray they're not true.

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Comments

[kaukerc]

I love this post; very, very funny. However, I hope they can his ass--- I can't stand the man.

[streetkid5]

More than ever, the views of coherent conservatives, including Charles Krauthammer, George F. Will, Michelle Malkin, and, yes, Bill Kristol, need to be allowed continued free public reign. We progressives are not omniscient and, as the President-elect acknowledged tonight, it is their country too and he intends to at least listen to their voices.
Erosion of the right to dissent is the Mother of all slippery slopes.

[JustMyWords]

The views of coherent conservatives is never going to be in danger of extinction. The problem is re-educating people about what constitutes a coherent conservative. George Will? Yes. Michelle Malkin? Not even close.

[Pipester]

Without a doubt, the best blog I have ever read.

[vietveter]

He reminds me of

EDDIE MOOSH
a character in the movie

A Bronx Tale

The guy that NEVER got

anything right.

[bronceye]

We need bill kristal to be writing his ideas on a daily basis. The neoconmen's agenda has been defeated as of today. We need a public airing of his hollow, inane neoconman ideas on a daily basis to remind us just how delusional and dangerous these people are. We have vanquished the neocons, allow bill to self immulate their movement and their ashes can be lost on the trash heap of history. To forget them, as we did after Eisenhower's admonitions, could allow them to resurface and con the stupid among us again.

[dahpunkster]

I tried to read Bill Kristol's column twice and found it really boring and hard to follow both times.
I also googled a photo of him. He has a very unpleasant aura about him and his eyes are kinda shifty.
You can tell alot by a persons eyes,what kinda person they are.

[Zao]

I can't stand Kristol either. Reading his first few columns was nauseating. They were so bad. Nearly all of his columns were bad including the last. A few were okay but most were far below the writing of other pundits, many of whom are consistently good.

They should dump him and get someone winger who can write. And that PICTURE!

[antirepublocrat]

Nora's right. The damage to the NY Times credibility has already been done. Allowing Judith Miller to go on and on about Saddam's WMD destroyed most of their credibility. The mere hiring of Bill Kristol finished the job. I wouldn't use that rag to -- well, if I write it HuffPost probably won't post it. Firing Kristol is way too little way too late. But hey, I heard him polluting NPR a couple years ago, too.

Noam Chomsky is right about the NY Times. It's a mothpiece for the establishment foreign and military policy.

[RRonin]

They should can Kristol and replace him with Christopher Buckley.

[THINKB4USPEAK]

Can anyone else remember when "conservative" just meant you were cautious, rather than extreme right-wing? Or that you saved your pennies? Does anyone remember when words MEANT something absolute, and were not subject to spin? Perhaps we need a new dictionary we can all agree on, so we can avoid these misunderstandings from the Tower of Babel. I want to speak straight down to Earth, in a language everyone can easily understand.

[jacq8411]

Does anyone remember when Liberal meant "ask not what your country can do for you; but what you can do for your country" and all that Obama is and will be HE IS THE ONE ALRIGHT. Heeeee heee hee.

[TomTheAlmostUgly]

You missed the point of JFK's line, troll. When Kennedy said that, HE WAS ALSO TALKING TO PEOPLE IN GOVERNMENT, AS WELL AS CITIZENS OF THE USA, and he meant "do for your country" to mean SERVING THE PEOPLE OF THE USA, NOT JUST BLINDLY SERVING THE GOVERNMENT OF THE USA.

Liberalism is all about helping the helpless; quote-unquote "conservatism" is all about making the rich and powerful become richer and more powerful, at the expense of the peons.

[ChescoMom]

My husband does. He still dreams of returning to the "party of ideas," but for now he'll stay on "the dark side" :-)

[falgiano]

Bill Kristol isn't half the thinker that William Safire was/is. Safire was a fun read, even when I disagreed with him. You got a sense the guy was actually a real human being. Kristol is just a mouthpiece for a rigid ideology that's being voted out of power as we speak.

NY Times - you can find a MUCH better conservative commentator than Kristol. and no, Karl Rove doesn't count.

[THINKB4USPEAK]

Thanks for the flashback. I LOVED reading Safire's pieces,even the ones that were apparently far right. I think he was the Colbert of the time.And I agree with his defense of the English language as an excellent tool for communication, if not bastardized by political double-speak. He delivered a much-deserved smackdown to right and left alike, that made you laugh, even as you realized he was writing about YOU.

[THINKB4USPEAK]

falgiano, (And I have no idea what that means), I wouldn't mind to discuss William Safire with you. I was most exposed to him during the Nixon years, where I found him to be very subversive to the "conservative" cause.

[falgiano]

falgiano's just my last name. nothing tricky!

[ChescoMom]

Oof!--Karl Rove-- shudder

[motamanx]

I'd be proud of the old New York Times if they summarily dropped Kristol, the devisive pundit who has been wrong about everything for so long.

[mtflyer]

Oh I foirgot to mention that Faux News has hired the clod who was behind all the hype that allegedly linked Saddam and Al-Quaeda as dumped on a gullible public by Bush & Cheney. Definitely a step in the wrong direction if they ever hope to have credibility among Americans who have the capacity to smell bs and actually think.

[NotProvenGuilty]

Add my voice to those who say here that Ms. Ephron's piece highlights why the Times should definitely NOT renew his contract. His column has been laughable, a waste of valuable space. I know Ms. Ephron is prone to tongue in cheekness, but this is serious... a respectable publication like the NYT doesn't need to give voice to unprofessional analysts, those who show no logic or sober analysis of facts. Dump Kristol!!! Brooks is enough (though also challenged).

[preatorius]

I agree, I think Chris Mathhews is huggable and hot!!!!
HA!

[midasw]

Three cheers for Brooklyn citizen. Kristol stands there proclaiming "My country, wrong or wrong!" Friedman has scuttled down the hawsers of so many sinking ships whose ensigns he once loudly saluted that he must have terrible bunions by now.

[Wintergreen4President]

And I was hoping that the NY Times would finally live up to its motto, "All The News That's Fit To Print." That sort of lets him out, doesn't it, Nora?

[Wichitan]

Maybe he'll go back and work on the PNAC! We can include that to his growing list of failures!