Breaking: ABC Dumps Bill Kristol As It Deals With Sagging `This Week'

From the Seattle Times:

ABC Dumps Bill Kristol As It Deals With Sagging `This Week'

WASHINGTON - ABC executives, worried about sinking ratings ... are starting to overhaul the once-mighty "This Week."

The first victim is Bill Kristol, a conservative presence for three years on the shoot-the-breeze Sunday round table. The Weekly Standard editor taped his last show Wednesday after being told that his contract would not be renewed.

The axing of Kristol comes three months after the departure of the show's executive producer, Dorrance Smith, who, like Kristol, worked in the Bush White House. Several sources confirmed that contrary to the public announcement at the time, Smith was forced out by ABC News President David Westin, who has had an increasingly strong hand in the program.

Smith said Kristol "added a much-needed different perspective from a conservative viewpoint, which I don't think they have any interest in trying to fill. They're tone-deaf when it comes to political evenhandedness. . . . Rather than being journalistically honest, they're much more comfortable with people who share viewpoints closer to their own," he said of ABC management...

There is so much in this column to amuse and delight someone as low and perverse as me.

First, while this column is from the Washington Post via the Seattle Times, it is not from this week.  Or this month.

Or this year.

Or even this century.

It is from December of 1999.

And I bring it to your attention today not only to underscore just how long Bill Kristol has been a reeking public embarrassment, but to point out that is doesn't matter how many times Bill Kristol shits the bed, because some member of his Beltway insider club will always. always, always find a way to put him back into the rotation:

So excited to have @ananavarro & Bill Kristol join our outstanding @ABC political team. Both brilliant, original thinkers #ThisWeek

— Jonathan Greenberger (@greenbergerj) February 2, 2014

Which is why expecting Bill Kristol to ever be brought to book for his bloody failures, lies and fuck ups is certainly satisfying but ultimately pointless.  And according to fellow Beltway insider club member Jennifer Rubin, it is also just plain rude!

This is perfect example of why ungracious, inflexible Bernie would be disastrous candidate. Just on a human level he is unlikeable

— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) May 26, 2019

Because the Prime Directive of the Beltway media is to protect fellow members of the Beltway media from accountability, which is why they will always leap to the defense of ghouls like Kristol.  Even though holding him to this very standard was exactly how Bill Kristol said he should be judged back in 2003:

Sen. @BernieSanders asked @BillKristol, the Iraq War’s biggest cheerleader, to apologize.

Kristol refused.

But here’s what Kristol was saying when the war began in 2003. https://t.co/RYEk0gJ7ct pic.twitter.com/HTOuN8yzTJ

— The Intercept (@theintercept) May 28, 2019

But that cannot be allowed to happen.  Because if it did -- if Bill Kristol ever got permanently kerbooted off the Wingnut Welfare dole for being the smirking, always-wrong monster that he is -- god God, who knows who could be next?!?

People might start sniffing around the public records of other highly paid Beltway pundits.

Hell, someone other than a few Libtard bloggers might actually start reading what beloved Beltway mainstays like David Brooks or David Frum or Michael Gerson or Bret Stephens or Joe Scarborough have actually said and written.  They might start comparing sweeping, ex cathedra declarations from these goofs (and dozens more just like them) with how events have actually unfolded and start to notice that they do not have the slightest fucking clue what they're talking about.  That they peddle nothing more than self-aggrandizing, self-exonerating snake oil.  That we will never have adult conversations about the critical problems facing us as long as these frauds and scuttlefish are clogging up our public square with their poison.

The second reason this delights me is because it was written by none other that Howard "Mistah" Kurtz, who is himself a case-study in how the worst people in journalism are the most enduring.  This was back when he worked for the WaPo -- before he set fire to his career and ended up as another digestive parasite in the belly of Fox News, working to turn reality into wingnut talking points.

WH spokesman Hogan Gidley told me a "majority of journalists" cover Trump "with a slant," using "editorialized words" like he "stormed out" of a meeting #Mediabuzz https://t.co/GSHnTDOCp5

— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) May 26, 2019

And lastly, I am amused to note that, as far back as 1999 the Right was already working the refs like mob lawyers, railing in the court of public opinion about even-handedness and journalistic honesty --

Smith said Kristol "added a much-needed different perspective from a conservative viewpoint, which I don't think they have any interest in trying to fill. They're tone-deaf when it comes to political evenhandedness. . . . Rather than being journalistically honest, they're much more comfortable with people who share viewpoints closer to their own," 

-- in defense of freaks like Bill Kristol.

Behold, a Tip Jar!