Charles Kaiser on new New York Times columnist William Kristol

Hi,
what is the address of your brothers blog. MB

After giving us on Dec. 31, a much needed editorial, "Look for America," to tell us what's wrong about present day America under the Bush regime, the Times hires one of the perpetrators of all that it labled as indecent and unlawful with present-day America. Then it suggest this - the hiring of Kristol - balances its editorial offerings. Kristol is a propagandist for all that's wrong with America today.

This is worse than the Miller or Blair episodes.

I've never posted a comment on any site before, but as a lifelong Times devotee, this is heartbreaking. The paper has many flaws, but I never thought they would do something as cowardly and craven as this.

The temper tantrum town by Times staffers and New York Times adherents over the hiring of William Kristol is laughable. The mind set at the Times is that they know what is best for the nation, that they set the agenda for not only politics but cultural and social trends in the country, and that their role is to be the published opposition to public and elected officials -- even though the Times crowd has very few credentials in the real world to serve any of those functions. In fact, the Times long ago, lost its credibility as an impartial purveyor of the news, and in Kristol, the Times crowd is getting their just deserts.

What's the big deal? I mean, it'll be the same old ho-hum expectable rant:

He'll tell us he wants to nuke, nuke, nuke the world for freedom.

He'll tell us to zap Iran.

He'll tell us to waterboard for freedom.

He'll tell us to lock up people without trial for freedom.

And since a good conservative can't favor raising taxes he'll tell us to pay for it all by eliminating medicare and social security.

No surprises in any of this. The Times will survive him, minus a few readers.

But Ido feel sorry for the comedian Billy Crystal, who's going to get confused with him and lose his box office appeal.

Yours crankily,
The New York Crank

Arthur Sulzberger thought my summary of his response did not do it justice.
For the record, here is all of what he said:

"The 'Op' in 'OP-ED' stands for more then just that the one page is
opposite from the other. It speaks, too, to our desire for diverse viewpoints. For
history's sake, please go back and review what was said about Bill Safire
when he came on board. We still have Krugman and Rich; Herbert and Collins;Dowd and ... well, you get the point. And even more, we still have our own, vibrant editorial voice. And now we have a new weekly columnist who expresses a very different point of view in a full throated way. Given that we're a paper that believes in vibrant political discourse, that's a good thing.
Will you agree with him? No. And that's the point. If all we do is offer a
single point of view, we are failing in our mission to provide intellectual
diversity. Let me add one last word. We bring Bill Kristol on board after a
long and thoughtful search through the ranks of strong conservative voices. Paired with Brooks, I think we now offer a greater range and depth than we have since the once vilified and now sainted William Safire graced our pages.
So Happy New Year, my friend. Here's to vigorous, open debate and
discussion. It is, after all, what democracy is about."

Paired with Brooks, I think we now offer a greater range and depth than we have since...

Dumb and "Serious People" dumber.

This confirms my worst suspicions. Kristol is a party apparatchik being rewarded for his loyal hackery.

I canceled my subscription to the Times in response to Kristol's hiring. You are absolutely right that Rosenthal does not understand the outrage. In fact, I got an email reply from the Times indicating that people who objected to hearing other, legitimate, views needed to be schooled in democracy. This after Kristol publicly crowed about his delight that his hiring was causing "liberal's heads to explode." There's journalistic integrity for you.

In my response to the condescending response from the Times, I pointed out that they were not getting the big picture. This is an economic decision for me and I could care less what their editorial preferences are. I have limited money to spend on periodicals. I don't subscribe to the National Review, Commentary or skinhead publications because it would be a waste of my money to financially support views I know I will find repugnant. Bill Kristol is in the same boat. If they wanted to publish ad hoc pieces from him on their OpEd pages, that is one thing, but they HIRED him to spew his nonsense on a regular basis. This is not editorial "integrity" as far as I'm concerned. It is editorial dysfunction--a creepy need to placate and fawn over an abusive person. The entire transcript of my communication with the Times on this topic is available on my blog: http://mickeymusing.vox.com/

In related news, the guy from Sling Blade has been offered a spot on the Harvard debate team. Mmm hmm.

Arthur Gelb corrects the record:
Abe Rosenthal, Irving Kristol, Bill Buckley, Teddy White,Oz Elliott, and Gelb were members of the "Rosenthal for President" lunch club (whose alternate name was ("Buckley for President.") Bernie Kalb was not a member.
FCP regrets the error.