January 07, 2008
Kristol's NYT Column Debuts, World Doesn't End
Weekly Standard editor William Kristol's first column for the New York Times appeared this morning. As far as we can tell, no reader's head has spontaneously combusted.
The Times' Dec. 30 announcement that Kristol would be joining the Grey Lady's cabal of regular columnists rocked the liberal blogosphere. "Just shoot me," moaned The Nation's Katha Pollitt. "Kristol is a war-monger and a hate-monger," shouted author Jane Smiley, after announcing she was going to boycott the Times.
For whatever reason, liberals seem to get more shouty about conservative media than vice-versa. See: John Dickerson's account of Granite Staters' rough treatment of Bill O'Reilly. (We should note that Bill gave as good as he got.) And it's not like we ever see booing crowds flipping the bird whenever Maureen Dowd comes to town.
In an interview with the Politico, NYT editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal said, "The idea that New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual -- and somehow that's a bad thing. How intolerant is that?"
"This weird fear of opposing views" -- Rosenthal's words -- has only intensified, it seems, since the battle royale of White House '04. NYT already employed a couple of conservative/conservative-leaning columnists (David Brooks, John Tierney), but in Kristol the paper now can claim to have something it lacked before: a columnist who encapsulates the sentiment of the Bush Third.
Let's explain. For all the negative, disbelieving and dismissive press he receives these days, about a third of the country still stands behind President Bush. One in three Americans isn't great, but it's not nothing, either.
Kristol has long been a vocal backer of the war in Iraq, even in 2006 when it seemed crazy for anyone to do so. But the military success of the surge strategy, which he ardently rallied for in early 2007, appears to have been vindicated.
Plus, Kristol isn't exactly the conservative of liberal Democrats' very worst nightmares. (Those would be Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.) He's in line with the president on immigration, for instance, and refers to anti-immigration hard-liners as "yahoos" whom he warned could turn the GOP into "an anti-immigration, Know Nothing party."
Kristol may well be a misguided neocon who was dead wrong about the war. It's not our job to judge. But Democrats gunning to take back the White House could do worse than to regularly hear from a figure who's so deeply plugged into the GOP establishment.
Jack Shafer made the case for Kristol last week. Liberal bloggers read his first NYT column and are, no surprise, unimpressed.
Posted at 2:01 PM
Posted to:
Bush Administration, Campaigns, Media, President Bush
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