I've read his stuff, and I think he's a party
hack, all right. That having been said, a lot
of em are, working some kind of angle to try
and B.S. people to get em to vote for this or
that, usually there's a money angle, and I
don't care who he works for, he's just another
literary mercenary, a hired pen, if you will,
of course if you condemn Kristol for all that,
you have to throw a lot more of em in the same
bag, and then also have to consider the level
of journalistic integrity practiced by the
media that they work for. Even dear ol'
Hollywood's been recruited in to the ranks of
agit-prop, everyone's got some sort of little
message they're trying to put into their work,
so Kristol's not really all that unusual. Still
not palatable, but not unusual...

NYTs would have to had some pressure to degrade their brand by publishing Kristol a known failed propagandist in the eyes of their readers.

If the NYT were a media property there would be a notice about Kristol being a paid political advertisement. Paid in the sense that some big advertisers may be threatening to withhold some of their spending in various Times properties because they are so "liberal"?

It is assumed his BS articles will be picked up and published in the Times other newspaper properties.

I always thought it would be an informative exercise to do an advertising analysis of the Knight Ridder’s 32 daily newspapers to see if some of the big advertisers that should have bought space in their markets did not during some big advertising campaigns.

When and if there is ever a real look at the media's actions during this period there should be a lot of properties available to created a grand diversity of ownership with all the pulled licenses by the FCC for Cause.

Or is Cause not available today for the FCC to use when the "tires" hit the corporate ways anymore?

-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking

BK expresses anything but a thoughtful and reasoned opinion on issues, and that, in a nutshell, places anything he may editorialize at odds with the NYT. OK, so the Times doesn't always get it right. Nobody does. But why bring someone on board that almost assuredly will pontificate in opposition to known facts.

This ends up a real double whammy for the NYT. Of all the venues in this country where it might be ill advised to publish BS, NYC tops the list of places where you might not want to do that. People can tolerate some fiddling with the truth but a full frontal assault of it will not be well received. And in spite of his own opinion of himself, BK just isn't smart enough to disguise the mountain of BS he is so fond of shoveling.

Consolation maybe not but when the LATimes fired Scheer, I and many others 'fired' the LATimes. The editor's reason for the firing? Scheer's column 'upset' him.

A few weeks later Jonah Goldberg appeared in Scheer's spot - which probably caused another great exodus of more Times' readers.

Yes, Kristol is a party hack.

The one idea he seems dedicated to is the idea of a Leo Straussian ruling elite, of which he is of course a member. Credentials for being a member according to that ideology appear to include, above all else, a sneering contempt for the day-to-day sorts of concerns, needs, and values of ordinary people, who of course do not and cannot know what is best for themselves and need Bill Kristol and other Straussians to run the world according to deeper understandings which only the Straussians are capable of attaining and acting on. Even the educated public gets from adherents of this worldview nothing better than noble lie propaganda.

One could make something of a case that he is also dedicated to a sort of "One True Way" utopian (which in reality would result in an authoritarian or totalitarian dystopia) universalism which reflects a combination of ignorance about, and indifference to, the way many people in the world live and want to live.

The ethically challenged Kristol cannot be bothered with bourgeois morality--things like disclosing he helped write a speech by Bush prior to praising it on television, or having enough intellectual integrity to educate himself about a health care proposal before instructing his dedicated core of lemings to oppose it (as he did with the Clinton Administration's health care proposal).

On one hand there have to be people around who can make a true "conservative" case (mustn't there be?). Kristol is no conservative--he's a flaming megalomaniacal radical, unapologetically and foolishly dedicated to an antagonistic, unworkable, and self-destructive US presence in the world.

OTOH, this should make it easier than ever to ridicule the tired old "left-wing media" canard, which in my experience right-wingers themselves seem to have lost heart in asserting any more.

The Times lowers the bar with this one. Had they shown greater respect and concern for the quality of public debate they could and should have done far better.

Sadly, it's all about creating buzz. Buzz sells newspapers. The Times' readership, advertising revenue and consequently its stock price are all down. From the comments here it is obvious that the buzz has been created and will continue. For one, I am guiltilly looking forward to the gloriously incisive and withering responses to his tripe in the separately edited letters section. But for selling out its integrity for buzz, the ghost of the grey lady I have grown up with, must be crying.

“I despise ideologues masquerading as objective journalists.” - Bill O'Reilly, March 30, 2007

Or is the Times, by sigining on Kristol, acting to block stepped-up competition from Rupert Murdoch's WSJ? Regardless, it's sad that a forum as potentially constructive as the Times' op-ed page is given over to the likes of Kristol, or Maureen Dowd for that matter. Think about how much good might be achieved via ideas discussed on that page.

Maybe the NYT is trying to appease gangs like this:

"This morning, Washington Wire received a mass email from an independent Paul supporter calling on his considerable online organization to write to Fox employees and protest the decision. The email listed the addresses of about 60 Fox employees, from press contacts to hosts Bill O’Reilly, Shepard Smith, Neil Cavuto and Brit Hume."

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/12/31/paul-supporters-target-fox-news/

Pravda on the Hudson

I guess ya' gotta be able to "read between the lines."
Remember the Church report and how many government agents worked in the US media establishments back then?
Doesn't take much imagination to think about how Dick Cheneyized they have become since then.

Wednesday, from the op-ed page some of you claim you are going to start boycotting:
"Stonewalled by the C.I.A." By THOMAS H. KEAN and LEE H. HAMILTON. Just keep in mind, it's going to be tough sometimes to stand fast on your vow not to click.

Ya know, when I see the popularity of this thread (everybody's their own editor now?) I wonder if Kristol was hired primarily because of the idea that there would be lots of incoming links from liberal bloggers emoting in outrage about his every word. It took the Times a while to figure that kind of stuff out, they were slow on the uptake, but now I think there are some editors there finally playing with it. If he bombs as to getting feedback, he'll be gone real quick. There's two columns there that have been like a revolving door. Did ya ever notice that hardly anybody ever links to the decent, quiet liberal Bob Herbert, and that he is missing from the most emailed lists? David Brooks, on the other hand, is quite popular in that so many in the blogosphere love to make fun of him, and so many others like to email his columns to friends because of their topics.