A Marriage of Convenience
If the concerned readers of the New York Times are to be believed, a right-wing nut-job fascist, or else the likely author of the Ron Paul newsletters, has infiltrated the editorial offices of the paper of record. This Sunday, the Times “public editor,” Clark Hoyt, released some of the hate mail he’s been receiving about the paper’s new editorialist. These include letters suggesting that the “traiterous [sic] piece of filth be hung by his ankles from a lamp post and beaten by the mob.” Although this last message was unhinged, it seems to have been but a particularly vivid expression of widespread outrage.
The new editorialist in question is William Kristol, who over the past week has joined David Brooks as the second “conservative voice” on the op-ed page.
Kristol is clearly very much taken with his new position on the “right wing” of the New York Times and has made the effort to be punchy and shock his new readership with opinions like, “Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration.”
In today’s installment, Mr. Conservative called out the Democrats for refusing to “admit real success [in Iraq] because that success has been achieved under the leadership of … George W. Bush. The horror!”
Kristol’s praise for Bush aside, this morning’s column seems to mark the advent of a rather convivial relationship.
Kristol will offer familiar refrains: that that liberals are ignoring evidence that the Surge is working, that violence is down across the board in Iraq, and that in Anbar province the Sunnis have turned against al-Qaeda and linked up with U.S. forces. Reading the column over the morning bagel and cappuccino, the thoughtful subscriber will offer the familiar retorts: that the drop in violence is meaningless if it’s not accompanied by political progress in Baghdad and that arming religious factions does not bode well for the future of Iraq as a unified country.
Blah blah blah—both sides will have their say, and the lines separating the Hannitys from the Colmes will be reaffirmed.
I guess this kind of sparring match might amount to intellectual diversity of a kind, but it’s an intellectual diversity that Times readers will be very comfortable with. They’ll disagree with Kristol on tactical questions of U.S. foreign policy but little else.
As Marcus Epstin details in his recent piece for VDARE, on the issues of immigration, abortion, and the welfare state, Kristol and liberals are on very much the same page. Furthermore, Kristol is a different animal than the neoconservatives surrounding David Horowitz, such Robert Spencer, who generally take firmer stances against illegal immigration and depict the war on terror as a confrontation between America and jihad. Kristol, on the other hand, is much more comfortable talking about “nation-building,” “democraticization,” “the expansion of freedom in all the world” and all the rest of it—a language well understood by his new readership, even if they might have a few disagreements about the best way to bring these noble things about.
Kristol’s hiring does amount to a kind of FOX-ification of the paper of record, but then not in the way that its concerned readers imagine. Who’s a conservative? Someone who supports gay marriage, has spoken well of LBJ’s “Great Society,” thinks mass illegal immigration is just fine, and wants to use America’s armed forces to spread democracy in Babylon? (all of which, by the way, are views embraced by the Times‘s “conservative” columnists.) Yes you are!—if you support the war in Iraq.
It’s a rather convenient fable—told both by liberals wanting to plop all the blame for our foreign-policy disasters down on the other side and neocons seeking “equal time” writing gigs in the papers of record.
Comments
Great post!
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I dont think Kristol is a conservative in any fashion.
As for the surge, if it worked so well why is the current occupiers of Los Pinos planning on being in the country for a decade or longer?
What happened to “When they stand up will we stand down.”?
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What can one add?
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2008/01/the-best-he-can.html
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Your marriage of convenience, their lives…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlpdK1Ts7zk
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Thanks Allen, lets save this for the grand jury hearings on Kristol, and the NY times:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKQqItZu4Is&feature=related
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Iraq is the fruit of their “marriage of convenience”.
That is, their “fruit” is a stillborn abortion.
SICK.
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Kristol’s ‘communist conservatism’ -or better put, ‘trotskyite conservatism’- is the product of an unfettered lust for power , on the one hand, and the need to hide his unsellable zionist agenda on the other.
For an astute observer of XX politics, talk of “spreading democracy around the world” is nothing other than bolshevik “promoting world revolution”.
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they are basically the weekly standard circa 1990’s now. shows how insular NYC is
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Could we see this as an expansion of political correctness: The New York Times no longer discriminates against incompetence. It will very probably not be long till a new group will be protected under civil rights and hate crimes laws: in addition to race, gender and sexual orientation, discriminating against people who are irrefutably incompetent and out of touch with external reality will be a criminal offense.
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Inasmuch as the N.Y. Times is, like much of the modern media, merely a “lifestyle” digest, it is of little import that they hire Kristol to flesh out the “conservative viewpoint” side already occupied by the affable sophist Brooks.
One is generally as moved by the journalism of the Times and the rest of American Media as one might be of the barking of dogs or baying of mules.
Literacy in this wonderful age has been democratized to subsistence levels and so dancing and hooting witch doctors like Kristol will work as well as anything else.
If the citizenry really wanted independent journalism, the Times would provide it or it would be out of business. If the citizenry really cared about “self-government”, they would not stand for the Moronic Bunko Operation we have today. Politically Correct is really politically insensate.
After all, the goal is to pump oil, sell arms and christianize the injuns aint it? We Hold These Truths to be Self Evident, All Waste is Created Equal. Picking who might be a better commentator on the Waste Stream we’ve elected to become is something only slightly more comic than a furry teacup.
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@ Sabin:
“After all, the goal is to pump oil, sell arms and christianize the injuns aint it? We Hold These Truths to be Self Evident, All Waste is Created Equal. Picking who might be a better commentator on the Waste Stream we’ve elected to become is something only slightly more comic than a furry teacup.”
Respectfully, although one can agree that the intent of the neocons is summedwell by you, the analogy between the “injuns” and 1.5 billion people in the muslim world may not hold true.
These guys generate blowback, something the smallpox ridden natives trekking across the winter snows never could. As the incident in the straits of Hormuz showed us, the flow of oil can become history in miutes, and we may be looking at the business end of Russian missiles coming out of Persia. We may end up in a nuclear winter with no oil, something “the injuns” were spared by god.
By tolerating the contiuation of the neocon philosophy we are only sowing the seeds of the next blowback. It may take 10 or 30 years but it will come.
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Allen,
I suppose affable indifference is the creed of the defeated.
If it were up to me, I’d have most these Neo-Con Cranks loaded in a Galaxy C5A and air-dropped over the Hindu Kush, notifying the residents of their impending guests in time enough for a fine welcome party. But it aint up to me, likely a good thing.
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The “paper of record” has been in slow disintegration for more than a decade. It has gone willingly along with the charade that would call neoconservatism “conservative”. Of course they well know that neoconservatism derivates from left wing socialism, Trotskite version no less.
They have foisted not one, but now, three versions of imposters on their dwindling supply of readers; The firm of Safire, Brooks and Kristol.
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