Saturday, December 29, 2007

Kristol Heeling

Via Roy, I see that the HuffPo "has learned that … the New York Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will become a weekly columnist in 2008."

My immediate reaction, like some other people in the leftosphere, is to wonder why someone who has been so wrong about so many things for so long -- and without ever acknowledging any of this -- keeps getting plush gigs. Why do we need to hear his thoroughly discredited point of view any longer? What's next, hiring a phrenologist to write for the Science section?

On second thought, however, it's probably not a bad thing for people who only have time to read one paper to see what the extremists on the other side think. Being on this higher visibility site, Kristol will be susceptible to far more scrunity. This may help drive a well-deserved stake through the heart of the neocon philosophy.

My third thought is that given his perfectly bad track record over the past decade, Kristol serves as a useful predictor: just multiply whatever he says by -1, and that'll tell you something useful.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Because the 'left/right', 'conservative/liberal' split in this country is actually a form of minstrel show, a ploy used by insiders to use exaggeration and stereotype to lure unwary passers-by, thereby inflating advertising 'eyeball' figures.

It's finance, not politics, and certainly not morality, in any normal sense of what that word means. Much less here than meets the eye. Move along.

bjkeefe said...

Don:

There's something to what you say, and I tip my hat to anyone who can sound more cynical than me, but I think you're oversimplifying just a tad.

I'll grant the MSM, especially TV, loves to portray the nation as perfectly bifurcated. But this show is based on a reality that isn't too far removed, especially once you discard the pathologically apathetic.

I'll also grant that the New York Times Company is in the business of selling advertising, and makes some editorial decisions with that goal in mind. Nonetheless, there are people who work there -- and lots of readers -- who ignore all that, and who truly believe in the concept of a great newspaper.

There's one final wrinkle: as I should have made clearer in my original post, it's not so much that I mind another conservative voice being added to the op-ed page. It's this particular voice. I'd much rather read someone who isn't such an obvious partisan hack, someone I might frequently disagree with, but someone who I could respect.

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