I Know You've All Been Wondering, "Hey, Whatever Happened to..."

...Bill Kristol's dopey son-in-law, Matthew Continetti?"  

Because, Christ on a Chyron, that guy used to be everywhere.

But now that The Weekly Slander Standard is long-dead and his daddy-in-law has been forced to seek shelter at MSNBC's Bush Regime Dead-Ender Reputation Laundromat, whither Continetti, who took  the opposite course: chasing the pro-Trump dollar way down the rabbit hole, but not quite far enough that Fox News or ONAN OANN would give him a seat?

All of which, we have irresponsibly speculated on this blog, must have made for some vivid Thanksgiving table conversation at the Kristol household:

Now on his uppers and dependent on the largess of credulous Liberals (who he still clearly loathes), in his 67th year, Bloody Bill Kristol, friend to presidents and architect of wars, find himself reduced to doing piecework like some drudge in a 19th century garment factory, cranking out one "OMG, the GOP is dead-dead-dead and deserves it!" piece every few days just to keep himself in wine and electricity.

Meanwhile, Kristol's idiot son-in-law. Matthew Continetti finds himself in even worse shape, broke and living in his father-in-law's basement, where he and his increasingly estranged wife bed down each night among moldering copies of The War Over Iraq: Beyond Baghdad and The Project for a New American Century while a giant portrait of the founder of the Kristol Nepotism Dynasty, Irving Kristol, glowers down at him.  

The old man's will decreed that there be at least one such portrait in every room so he could keep a stern eye on his legacy even from beyond this vale of tears, and everywhere Continetti goes, Kristol the Elder's eyes seem to follow him accusingly.  He can almost hear him whispering "Failure!  Failure!" even into his fitful dreams.

Because "failure" is the right and proper word.  

Before Trump and COVID, Continetti's throwaway Conservative rag, The Washington Free Beacon, and his presence in the mainstream media were held aloft by his proximity to his father-in-law's media clout.  But once Bill Kristol was tossed out of his own magazine and forced to crash on Charlie Sykes' couch and dance for Liberal dimes, the value of that clout was drastically reduced.  

Suddenly fewer and fewer people felt obliged to listen to a professional-Palin-apologist wax tragic over the cruel treatment Conservatives suffer at the hands of those devil Liberals (who were now keeping daddy-in-law off the dole) or, really, what the founder of The Washington Free Beacon thought about much of anything at all...

So for a talentless hack who was used to regular turns on Meet the Press but who now finds himself  stranded in the limbo between not being quite Trump-ass-kissy enough to be welcomed onto Maria Bartiromo's wingnut playhouse and not being anti-Trump enough to be invited to laugh at Brian Williams' stale jokes on MSNBC, what's left?  Has Continetti finally gone out and gotten honest work doing something other than flacking for assholes and carping about how awful Democrats are?

Of course not.  

Continetti's main activity these days seems to be penning "Democrats in Disarray" drivel like this (no link to the article because fuck 'em) --

The Veep From ‘Veep’

Kamala Harris can’t fix her office, much less the border

President Joe Biden has a problem, and her name is Kamala Harris. The vice president has become a comic figure in today’s Washington — a politician given to missteps and unforced errors who inspires neither loyalty nor trust within her inner circle. She might have been Biden’s safest pick for running mate. But now she’s a liability for both the president and the Democratic Party...

-- for the godawful National Review and then immediately cross-posting the same article at the godforsaken Washington Free Beacon.

Remember, this is by the same mope whose entrée into the national media was a via 240 pages of wingnut welfare schlock entitled "The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star" -- published by Penguin's in-house Conservative imprint, Sentinel HC, championing the "charm, ambition, natural political talent, and passion for conservative values" of the Scintilla from Wasilla.  

So you can stop worrying about Matthew Continetti.  Between his family connections, his resident fellowship at the odious American Enterprise Institute and his regular gig cranking out instantly forgettable Conservatives spackle for America's most respected journal of white supremacy, he'll be fine.   Because the wingnut welfare trough is plenty big enough to afford to keep a deep bench of even the dullest, third-tier Conservative hacks on tap indefinitely.

Burn The Lifeboats