I felt sick as I read this maudlin, sugar-coated column that’s really all about encouraging slander, racism and swift-boating. Literally sick. I was thrilled, on the other hand, as I read the comments. Seems like everyone with a mind thought the exact same thing. This guy should be fired. He’s not good enough to write for Reader’s Digest. He is a pimp for McCain and an embarrassingly bad writer as well.
One of the best articles on why the swiftboating of Obama that Kristol is itching for won’t work can be found here. Sorry everyone, the writer tells us; Obama is our next president. When the economy is melting down and people are losing their jobs and their hopes and their houses, the last thing on their minds is a candidate’s entirely uncontroversial relationship with an aging 1960s radical who committed some violent acts when the candidate was 8 years old. A snip:
Absent a domestic terror attack the economy will remain the number one issue in the race, and there is little Senator McCain can do to make up his gap with Senator Obama on it. Oh, Senator McCain will try to make issues of Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko and Rev. Wright, and that might hurt Senator Obama around the margins — but it will not prevent him from winning. The economy is simply bigger than the rogues gallery that John McCain is conjuring up.
Why is this? Why won’t the swiftboat tactics work this year?
Its easy to lose sight of it in the day to day coverage, but the collapse of Wall Street in the last weeks was a seminal event in the history of our nation and our politics. To put the crisis in perspective, Americans have lost a combined 1 trillion dollars in net worth in just the last four weeks alone. Just as President Bush’s failures in Iraq undermined his party’s historic advantage on national security issues, the financial calamity has shown the ruinous implications of the Republican mania for deregulation and slavish devotion to totally unfettered markets.
Meanwhile, the meltdown continues. When was there ever a better time to live in China and be paid in RMB?
1
By FOARP
Dude – the word for someone who sells themselves is a ‘whore’, calling someone a ‘pimp’ is actually quite complimentary . . .
October 7, 2008 @ 12:18 am | Comment
2
By justinslot
Though isn’t the RMB dropping too? It looks like the yen is the only safe currency left.
October 7, 2008 @ 1:29 am | Comment
3
By Brendan
Agreed with FOARP. I’m not sure what Kristol’s RNC whoremasters are paying him in, but clearly it lets him pay for whatever substance it is that renders him so blissfully unconnected to reality, intellectual honesty, or baseline standards of shame. The real question is why the New York Times gave this guy – who is reliably, unfailingly wrong about every pronouncement that comes out of his mouth (his stupid, smarmy mouth) – a column.
I’ve called David Brooks ‘Gollum’ in the past for his tendency to loudly proclaim loyalty to whoever’s carrying ‘the Precious’ at any given moment, but at least Brooks isn’t stupid. (At least not according to, you know, sixth-grade aptitude tests.) He at least had the minimal amount of cop-on necessary to see that Sarah Palin needs to drop out of the race and go back to whatever boreal shithole she calls home – though now apparently he’s back in the tank.
Kristol, on the other hand, is so insane and shortsighted that he’ll happily publish advice on ratfucking the other candidate in a newspaper as if it’s a private channel of communication between him and John McCain. And damn the economy, and damn the wars, and damn the unemployment rates, and damn the catastrophic implosion of everything that made the Soccer Mom lifestyle he claims to respect so much possible in the first place. It’s all about winning, and Kristol wants his team to win more than he wants things in the US to unfuck themselves.
October 7, 2008 @ 2:42 am | Comment
4
By Meg
Apparently NYT wishes to appear neutral by having “both sides of stories told”, therefore having Kristol and Brooks as their columnists.
But Kristol’s writing and journalism skill is not even good enough for the tabloids.
Hopefully this piece of garbage will finally have NYT seriously consider firing him.
October 7, 2008 @ 6:43 am | Comment
5
By Lindel
Kristol’s one concern is to ensure that the holy crusade in Iraq continue and that the US continue to pre-emptively attack any real or imagined threat to Israel. He will say anything to ensure McCain wins to continue the Bush Doctrine including pretending like he respects Palin. He fears Obama because it is clear the Obama will not mindlessly follow the Bush Doctrine and has the intelligence to ask questions about why the taxpayer is spending so much money in Iraq for no clear national interest. Also it is clear that Obama and Biden are not fully behind the McCain Bomb Bomb Iran policy.
As the current pod of Republicans in washington realize that come november 4th they may receive pink slips you should expect the incompetent boobs to get really nasty to hang on to their government jobs.
October 7, 2008 @ 6:46 am | Comment
6
By Richard
Lindel, they have already gotten “really nasty.” But you’re right, it’s only going to get much worse.
I just scanned the 500+ comments that are now there, and am happy to say there is not a single one defending the indefensible Kristol. At least Brooks couches his BS is words that make him sound “mature” and “contemplative” and “analytical.” With Kristol it’s out-and-out embarrassing propaganda, unfettered and unashamed. It is literally an insult to his readers. That last line, “Hockey Mom knows best,” sealed it. As if her being a hockey mom who winks and talks tough qualifies her to run the world. Nauseating. And the way he embedded his memes about Wright and dragged him back into the conversation after McCain’s pledge not to….well, the NYT really needs to consider whether this is what they want their columnist soapbox to be. I’ll say it again: he really should be fired.
October 7, 2008 @ 7:58 am | Comment
7
By stuart
Let’s hope that the comments are a barometer for public opinion come election day and Obama gets a mandate he can work with.
October 7, 2008 @ 9:17 am | Comment
8
By Hong Xiuquan
I wouldn’t take too much comfort in the RMB. If the U.S. economy truly crashes and burns, the whole world is likely in for the proverbial sh*t sandwich for a long time to come.
October 7, 2008 @ 1:17 pm | Comment
9
By Rhys
Check out what Oliver Stone said about McCain in an interview with the Times
“I think McCain’s a very special story because he was never a soldier,” Stone says coldly. “He’s said he never saw the results of his own bombing. I saw the damage we did, I saw the corpses, the decay, I smelt the flesh, I saw people who’d been napalmed, people who’d been killed by shrapnel, mutilated. I saw horrible things. McCain was a prisoner and he has a siege mentality. He doesn’t see a balanced portrait of cause and effect – there’s something missing in the man, mentally.”
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/london_film_festival/article4861770.ece
Incidentally his movie about GWB is coming out just before the election.
October 7, 2008 @ 1:47 pm | Comment
10
By Matt Schiavenza
I think the hiring of Kristol resulted from a rather transparent effort from the Times to appeal to ideological balance. David Brooks simply isn’t good enough for the base; a Jewish intellectual who appears on PBS doesn’t exactly play well in Hockey Mom land. Brooks also has the nasty habit of agreeing with liberals on occasion, or else failing to subscribe fully to the la-la land universe present at the weekly conservative rags.
Kristol, for all his faults, is at least predictable and reliable. Iraq is great, the economy is fine, McCain’s gonna win, Sarah’s the new Reagan; this whole Obama thing will fade away once people realize he’s an American-hating Muslim terrorist Communist Chamberlain devil incarnate. For a Republican despairing over the way the election is headed, Kristol allows one to crawl back into the little cocoon for awhile.
I agree with the substance of Wolfson’s argument, but being a Democrat under the age of 30 has left me a wee-bit pessimistic. There’s still a month left, and recall that a month ago McCain was ahead. Certainly, if nothing else happens and the economy continues to dominate headlines, Obama will cruise. But something could always happen to disrupt this pattern.
October 7, 2008 @ 11:16 pm | Comment
11
By Richard
It’s the economy, stupid. (That’s not addressed to you, Matt. But it is all that matters, and unless the economy suddenly and magically shines, McCain is going nowhere but down.) Take a look around. The bailout bill is like trying to save the Titanic with a thimble.
October 7, 2008 @ 11:43 pm | Comment