It's widely agreed that Bill Kristol's tenure as a New York Times op-ed columnist has been a fiasco -- not for Kristol, whose flat-footed, me-too hackery is old news, but for the Gray Lady, who showed the extraordinary bad judgment to pick him.
Most of Kristol's stuff is instantly forgettable, but yesterday brought what I think may be the single stupidest paragraph to be published anywhere this year:
Similarly, if you're against big government, you'll oppose a huge public works stimulus package. If you think some government action is inevitable, you might instead point out that the most unambiguous public good is national defense. You might then suggest spending a good chunk of the stimulus on national security -- directing dollars to much-needed and underfunded defense procurement rather than to fanciful green technologies, making sure funds are available for the needed expansion of the Army and Marines before rushing to create make-work civilian jobs. Obama wants to spend much of the stimulus on transportation infrastructure and schools. Fine, but lots of schools and airports seem to me to have been refurbished more recently and more generously than military bases I've visited.
[Seriously. I challenge you to find a dumber paragraph. We should have a contest or something.]
For one thing (via):
But I bring this up not just to bash Kristol but to make a point. The left generally and environmentalism specifically has no analogous figure -- nobody inside in the Beltway establishment whose job is to make the most outrageously extreme claims possible, in the most respected outlets. Kristol probably knows that most of what he says gets laughed at, but just by saying it (where he's saying it) he nudges the window a little, makes it a little more legitimate for the next guy.
With environmentalism you have almost the opposite situation. Virtually everything you see in the mainstream media is some Very Serious journalist or pundit talking about how the demands of extreme environmentalists must be tempered by Sober Realism. What readers of mainstream media almost never hear is the demands of the allegedly extreme environmentalists. They are like irrational phantoms hovering on the edge of the national dialogue.
The right's accomplishments, in terms of building an alternative media and intellectual establishment, looks a little less impressive in light of recent events. But the fact that the universe has lined up in such a way that a guy like Kristol can be writing in a place like the NYT is something to behold. Would that greens could figure out how to work that kind of magic.
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
Cash for Clunkers brought us ... more clunkers!
Comments
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gregobad Posted 3:42 am
09 Dec 2008
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JMG Posted 4:17 am
09 Dec 2008
As I noted when I submitted nearly this exact paragraph in an item, when the NY Times folds like the Tribune Company, having hired Kristol will go a long way towards seeing the case declared a suicide. It's one thing to pay a moral shitheel and Nixon apologist like William Safire to be on your op-ed page for many years, but at least he was witty and erudite, rather than just pompous and egotistical.
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:24 am
09 Dec 2008
It was with great trepidation that I read Kristol, and in the rest of the piece he's actually saying that big government is coming back. But you have to realize that he's a neocon, and to neocons and much of the Republican right, the military is the only truly legitimate use of government (OK, sloshing billions in subsidies to big corporations is important to them too).
And the ironic part of it is that the US military-industrial complex is the single largest central planning operation in the world, now that the Soviet Union has collapsed. And that's what he's pushing! The truth is, Kristol and his buddies have always wanted big defense.
By the way, back in the early 1990s when national health care was a possibility, Kristol wrote that Republicans should oppose it partly because if it passed, the working class would move to the Democrats because they would be grateful.
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caniscandida Posted 5:17 am
09 Dec 2008
But the engaging of William Kristol, as if to prove to the Fox viewers and Limbaugh ditto-heads how "fair and balanced" the NYT is, was plainly wrong-headed.
Clark Hoyt, the current Public Editor, recently alluded to a sense among many that the Times has a "liberal bias." That may be so; but if that sense is founded on more than just the editorials and (most of) the op-eds, i.e. the news articles as well, then it is quite unfair.
But it just confirms what I have said before: adherence to the Republican Party (since the presidency of Gerald Ford) is a sign of moral deficiency, of one kind or another. Take for example two big stories, leading the latter half of this past Sunday's (12/7) NYTimes, the "National" section: one on the discovery of a big dog-fighting circuit in east Texas, another on the bankruptcy of a big bakery in Ohio, leaving many laid-off people with no health care. There is nothing at all left-leaning about the way the articles are written, as it seems to me. But inasmuch as the very selection of those stories as worthy of coverage will strike many Limbaughesque readers as intolerably liberal, that plainly is morally deficient.
JMG,
do you remember that segment of Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex," in which the Armenian shepherd goes to the office of the sophisticated shrink, played by Gene Wilder, and declares, "I am in love with a sheep!"? Prezioso!
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:34 am
09 Dec 2008
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:35 am
09 Dec 2008
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caniscandida Posted 6:21 am
09 Dec 2008
Of course, Chicago is the place to be, right now, with regard to newspapers, what with the Tribune's two big stories: the bankruptcy of the parent company yesterday, and all this remarkable Blagojevich business, with Tribune connexions, today.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:42 am
09 Dec 2008
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caniscandida Posted 8:22 am
09 Dec 2008
Subject: Illinois Guv Shocker
December 9, 2008
Illinois Guv Offers Senate Seat to Arresting Officer
Daring Escape Attempt Caught on Tape
In what is being called one of the most daring escape attempts in the history of law enforcement, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich today offered the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama to the FBI agent who took him into Federal custody this morning.
According to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the astonishing escape attempt occurred moments after Mr. Blagojevich was handcuffed by the agent, who was wearing a wire and captured the entire expletive-laden offer on tape.
"'You can be the [bleeping] junior Senator from [bleeping] Illinois if you let me out of these [bleeping] handcuffs,'" Mr. Fitzgerald read from a transcript. "'And if that mother-[bleeper] Barack Obama tries to [bleep] with me, I'll [bleep] him up.'"
According to Mr. Fitzgerald, "When I say bleep,' he didn't really say bleep' on the tape," adding, "I'm going to keep making that joke until one of you [bleepers] laughs at it."
Gov. Blagojevich has been charged with a laundry list of Federal crimes, including stealing his haircut from the dad on "The Brady Bunch."
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Hurray online journalism!
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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