Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Pimp My Rag


In which the NYT explains why detailing the Gray Lady with lies, cowardice and innocent blood is really an outstanding idea.

from the Editor and Publisher:

Kristol Clear: It's Official --'NYT' Explains Hiring New 'Op-Ed' Wag

By E&P Staff

Published: December 29, 2007 6:20 PM ET

NEW YORK A day after the Huffington Post first reported it, The New York Times has announced that it has indeed hired conservative pundit, and Fox News analyst, Bill Kristol, as a new regular op-ed columnist.

Liberal bloggers had been up in arms over the move. Kristol said, in an interview with Politico.com, it gave him some pleasure to see their "heads explode." Kristol was perhaps the most influential pundit of all in promoting the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has strongly defended the move ever since.

Times' editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal defended the move. Rosenthal told Politico.com shortly after the official announcement Saturday that he fails to understand “this weird fear of opposing views....We have views on our op-ed page that are as hawkish or more so than Bill....

“The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual — and somehow that’s a bad thing,” Rosenthal added. “How intolerant is that?”

Unlike The Times’ other regulars, Kristol will write only once a week, with his first column set for Jan. 7, and he has just a one-year contract. The paper noted in its own announcement: "In a 2003 column on the turmoil within The Times that led to the downfall of the top two editors, he wrote that it was not 'a first-rate newspaper of record,' adding, 'The Times is irredeemable.'”

Kristol, on Fox News in 2006, suggested that the paper should face charges after its big banking records scoop: "I think it is an open question whether the Times itself should be prosecuted for this totally gratuitous revealing of an ongoing secret classified program that is part of the war on terror.”

In 2003, on NPR's "Fresh Air" show, he said, "There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni....Iraq's always been very secular."

In the July 14, 2006 issue of The Weekly Standard, which he edits, Kristol called for a "military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."


I suppose one could reasonably posit that buried somewhere deeeeep beneath the Right’s slag heap of Neocons and crypto-fascists, Dominionists and wannabe Klansmen, corporatists and gun freaks, there might be something someone could call Conservatism that could eventually blossom into a worthwhile political ideology; worthy at least of being treated with some respect and dealt with as a loyal opposition.

(Of course, should all of that filth ever actually be purged from the movement there wouldn’t be enough warm bodies left to put together a decent game of whist, but that is a different discussion for a different day.)


But on "This Week" last Sunday, when asked who the “Republican Establishment” even is these days, David Brooks and George Will absolutely gave the game away, replying “Well these days it's four guys in a room” and “The Republican Establishment died in 1964” respectively.

Bingo.

Anything even remotely resembling a genuine conservative movement is completely AWOL to begin with, which begs the question of where in the fuck Rosenthal gets the nuggets to assert that Kristol is one of this nonexistent movement’s members-in-good-standing?

I mean, from what Front Office is the entitlement sent that bestows this bestial, slaughter-drunk imbecile with the moniker “respected” in the first place?

And the answer is...from institutions like the New York Times itself of course.

As the NYT manufactured the illusion of David Brook’s gravitas and Tom Friedman’s sagacity out of a bolt of the same whole cloth Judith Miller used to stitch together her Emperor’s New Flight Suit, so are they now using exactly the same technique to squeegee the blood off of Kristol’s hands and give him a chair at the top of the mountain.

But of course Kristol isn’t a voice of Conservatism; Kristol is a voice for everything that is wrong with Conservatism. Because until the Right has been thoroughly lanced and drained of pus like Kristol, they are not a movement at all; they are nothing but a confederacy of depraved interest groups, each only slightly more interested in destroying America as a pluralistic, free, hopeful and tolerant society than they are in devouring each other.

They are a spectrum of diseases that are killing this country, and Kristol is no more than the giggly, sociopath front-man for one of their more fascistic mutations.

So, sure, there are circles where Kristol is respected.

So what?

There are also circles where the Klan is revered, and where Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph are considered martyrs and holy warriors.

The only difference between Kristol and the rest is that none of these other butchers believed in waging their wingnut jihads by proxy. They got their hands bloody carrying out their own atrocities, and didn’t dispatch others to do their slaying for them from a PNAC conference room or a Fox News desk.

Kristol and his Neocon cult, on the other hand, antiseptically outsourced their atrocities from one side of the camera, and then cheered them on from the other.

Which is apparently the New York Times Manual of Style’s new working definition of “respectable”.

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

drifty:

Between BoBo and the Bloody, you are going to have your hands full. I love the graphic. You're the master. Of course, BoBo doesn't hold a candle to Kristol on the evil scale. The NYT has taken it to a whole new level of wrong this time.

Anonymous said...

drifty:

Between BoBo and the Bloody, you are going to have your hands full. I love the graphic, by the way. You're the master. Of course, BoBo doesn't hold a candle to Kristol on the evil scale. The NYT has taken it to a whole new level of wrong this time.

Anonymous said...

Hey driftglass: you won top prize over on monkeyfister (au peer awards) -- congrats....

Anonymous said...

...but (new behavior): Your main page now sends my (mozilla-bin) cpu usage (under RedHat) up to between 67 and 98%. You might want to check it out....

res ipsa loquitur said...

So Kristol calls for prosecution of the NYT for revealing the warrantless wiretapping program (a year after it learned of the program) and promptly receives a job offer from the NYT, which begs the following questions:

When is Pinch Sulzberger going to seek the services of a qualified mental health professional?

When does Ann Coulter start writing for the NYT op-ed page?

res ipsa loquitur said...

So Kristol calls for prosecution of the NYT for revealing the warrantless wiretapping program (a year after it learned of the program) and promptly receives a job offer from the NYT, which begs the following questions:

When is Pinch Sulzberger going to seek the services of a qualified mental health professional?

When does Ann Coulter start writing for the NYT op-ed page?

Anonymous said...

DG- that was full B-52 bomb-bay load of smackdown you just dropped on everyone to the Right of John Edwards, which sadly includes 3/4th of the Dems who hold elected office on DC.

Anonymous said...

NY Times is now a piece of fucking trash, not fit even for insulting a pet cockatoo by lining its cage and asking it to shit on it.

driftglass said...

bill g.,
Thank goodness there are so many of us on the barricades, eh :-)

daver,
Thanks; saw it.
I'm very honored
As to the resource gobbling, I have no explanation. Blogger doesn't have a lot of places for malware to hide.


res ipsa loquitur said...
For goofs I did a rough draft of the same apologia with Kristol struck out and Fred Phelps/Pat Robertson/Michael Weiner Savage dropped in.
Reads just the same.

US Blues
Don't I know it, brother. Don't I know it...

PhysioProf
The sad thing is, it need not be this way.

Anonymous said...

"For goofs I did a rough draft of the same apologia with Kristol struck out and Fred Phelps/Pat Robertson/Michael Weiner Savage dropped in."

Yeah. Who the fuck is next? I had been reading the Times for over thirty years. Just about a month ago, I swore it off completely. I'm not giving them my fucking eyeballs, no way, no how. Not until they get rid of Brooks, Friedman, Gordon, Dowd, etc., and now Kristol. What a bunch of depraved shitheels.

Anonymous said...

FTNYT!

'When does Ann Coulter start writing for the NYT op-ed page?"

since there's not much to differentiate the crystal method from the koaltar, I think soon, very soon. And why not? Maybe placing them in the spotlite will be a bit like sunlight and fresh air. Ya know, squelch the rot (but keep the Tidy Bowl and Plunger handy, spoon fed kookykonservoklownz are sticky lil turds).
Remember: The bigger the mic, the bigger the 'feedback'


Or maybe I'm too optimistic? yeah, prolly so..

Anonymous said...

my

BRAIN

hurts!!


(NO

my

OTHER

brain!!

WereBear said...

I try to look at it as a sign of desperation, and desperate people do crazy things.

Newspapers now have a half-life measured in years, not decades. Look around at the little ones; plugged into their Ipods, peeled off the computer for bedtime, manipulating vast armies with their game machines.

You think, when they grow up, that they are going to buy newspapers? I don't think so, either.

The old media are firing people who are trying to drag them into the 21st Century. The NY Times hires Kristol. And soon they will drown in their own sea of irrelevance, by which time we won't miss them at all.

Anonymous said...

I've always thought of Kristol as a clown. Now the image is complete. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

"I've always thought of Kristol as a clown."

He's a scaaaary clown.

Anonymous said...

Kristol FLOATS! They all FLOAT!

Anonymous said...

Drifty, you might appreciate this clip of brooks (from last Friday's News Hour) uttering the words "corporate greed" as his body language appears to be him smearing his face with some substance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNSRS4efm1A

Anonymous said...

"vibrant political discourse..."

I'm never going to forget that phrase Drifty. Every time I (urrchh) read one of KristolMeth's editorial droppings I'm gonna remember that phrase...

Interrobang said...

As if that weren't enough, I caught Bob Herbert, usually the Times' moderately sensible moderate liberal type, in an obvious error of the sort that has been pushed for so long by the right wing, it has probably soaked into his consciousness, despite its being about as genuine as Ronald Reagan's smile. According to Herbert in his column the other day on the events of 1968, in 1968, "the US had never lost a war."

I'd say that's arguable in the case of Korea, where it looks as though our side brokered a truce fast to avoid getting its hoop kicked (and the war never has actually ended, being as there are still troops there and a DMZ)...

On the other hand, it's indisputably false since the US lost its first war in 1814, after having its capital sacked and burned (which is why your White House is white), whereupon it had to cede huge tracts of (disputed) territory to the other side, not least of which is the very locality in which Your Humble Narrator has parked her arrogant ass...

You lost the war, and that's why I'm not voting in the primaries right now.

Distributorcap said...

NYT has lost me forever
you can check out my letter

Anonymous said...

Well shit, if I start huffing Joker Gas every hour on the hour and start publicly wishing for innocent people to die, can I get taken seriously by people who'll pay me monumental moolah too?

Dammit.

Anonymous said...

Checked out your letter to the NYT d'cap. Loved it!

asha said...

What a great "me at home working in the yard" photo of Bloody Bill.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

According to Interrobang's profile, she lives in Ontario. I know the USA invaded Ontario in 1813, but it never owned it in the first place in order to cede it. To what regions is Interrobang referring?

And is she saying she's got HUGE--tracts of land? ;)

StevenWarRan said...

You write purdy.

Anonymous said...

hmmmm, I was thinking Killer Clowns From Outer Space

Kristol, Podhoretz, all a bunch of neocon psychopaths. Where's a guillotine when you need one?