Hire Ann Pinch. She ain't house broken but oh the fun we will have
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Posted on 12/30/2007 7:58:45 AM PST by jdm
The New York Times decided to bring another conservative commentator aboard their flailing op-ed pages, still recovering from their years-long cloister of TimesSelect. They chose Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, whose run at Time Magazine recently came to an end. Did liberals celebrate the balancing of opinion at the Gray Lady? Not exactly, as The Politico points out:
The New York Times’ hiring of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol to write for its op-ed page caused a frenzy in the liberal blogosphere Friday night, with threats of canceling subscriptions and claims that the Gray Lady had been hijacked by neo-cons.
But Times editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal sees things differently.
Rosenthal told Politico shortly after the official announcement Saturday that he fails to understand “this weird fear of opposing views.”
“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?”
Well, pretty intolerant. Kristol told Michael Calderone that he enjoyed following the outrage at the Huffington Post and "watching blogosphere heads explode". The same people who celebrated Kristol's departure from Time suddenly got a case of shrieking hysteria when they found out that the Times would publish a Kristol column once per week, half of the time as their normal two-column-per-week stable of pundits.
Josh Marshall's reaction was among the more sane, but still laughably hyperbolic, in a post titled "Kristol To Ravish Gray Lady":
But the weirdest thing about the choice is that Sulzberger and Co. have failed to grasp the taxonomy of the neoconservative literary cartel. David Brooks is the house-broken William Kristol, the cadre tasked with operating just behind enemy lines, or at least in the no-man's-land where only a kinder gentler version of the faith can be propounded. And they already have him.
So why you'd want both Kristol and Brooks on staff is a question that simply has no logical answer unless they got some sort of two for one deal or other kind of group discount.
Oh, my stars and garters! The Times will have two conservative columnists -- or in terms of quantity, one and a half! How can the Left hope to compete -- with Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Frank Rich, and Nicholas Kristof?
I have to admit that I find the controversy refreshing. It's good to see the progressives admit that a half of Bill Kristol outweighs the five liberal commentators at the Gray Lady. It also shows, as Rosenthal notes, the rhetorical intolerance that many progressives display on a fairly regular basis. When they cancel subscriptions to the one national newspaper most amenable to their politics simply because it allows one competing opinion to appear, that says something about their insecurity.
The irony is that the New York Times is one of the few places in America where David Brooks and Bill Kristol could even be considered “conservative” by any stretch.
Times also should get Pat Buchanan.
Huf Po is an insane asylum.
Zsa Zsa Huffington doesn’t pay her bloggers. They’re probably more outraged that a right winger got a paying gig when they can’t.
I think that’s actually a pretty pithy quote from Marshall.
He’s actually pointing out that that kind of half-way, sort of, neocon, apologetic for-any-real-conservatism from TWS is the particular stripe that the Times likes—those who are already half co-opted and show signs of being thus totally manageable. Sure, Kristol has a tad more belief and backbone than Brooks, but not that much more.
Ah, libs are like beginning pilots. When the plane runs out of airspeed and stalls, their reaction is pull back further on the stick. After all, back means “up”...all the time. I, for one, am awaiting the ensuing spin and crash of the NYT. They long ago lost their credibility.
One of Rupert Murdoch’s boys has a foot in the door at the NYT. Let the takeover begin!
Just goes to show that liberals aren’t very liberal. (Of course, I’m using “liberal” in its true sense; not the modern, leftist corruption of the word.)
liberal tolerance and diversity...not
Oh, those wacky liberals. Gotta love them. They really are tolerant and open minded, aren’t they?
A step in the right direction, but still a long way from editorial balance. Solution: publish columns by Mark Steyn, Thomas Sowell, and Victor Davis Hanson as well. ...for starters.
Hardly. This is merely symbolic. 98% of the NYT editorials mascarade as news articles.
Hire Ann Pinch. She ain't house broken but oh the fun we will have
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Ann and Maureen brings to mind the Mother of all Catfights at the Times lunchroom.
Then again, it’ll probably go a lot like that tiger incident in SF.
Should read, "The New York Times decided to bring another faux conservative commentator... "
After all, his aims are the same as that of the NYT: increase the power of the state. How is his appointment contradictory?
So, one columnist equals five calumnists.
cal·um·ny [káll?mnee] (plural cal·um·nies) noun (formal) defamation: the making of false statements about somebody with malicious intent.
Yes, Alex, I'd like FAMOUS BEARDS for $100...
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