Dowd and Kristol - the opinion face of the NY Tmies

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters dissects the recent hiring of Bill Kristol as a political opinion writer by the New York Times, and compares his work to the founts of nasty fiction produced by Maureen Dowd.

Bill Kristol and Maureen Dowd deserve each other; they belong on the same team. As media critic Dan Kennedy noted last week, "Kristol has never shown much, if any, regard for the ethical conventions of journalism." And Joan Walsh at Salon added, "Kristol is anti-truth." One could say the same about Dowd.

The Times leadership has convinced itself that the duo will anchor some sort of opinion all-star squad, but I think more and more loyal readers and independent observers will come to the opposite conclusion: that Kristol and Dowd represent the troubling demise of the paper's commitment to serious, and entertaining, opinion journalism.

That the Times wants to view the crucial 2008 presidential campaign through the prism of Kristol and Dowd tells you all you need to know about the paper's priorities.[Snip]

There's simply no way that New York Times editors read Kristol's phoned-in agitprop in Time last year and turned to each other, and to publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who OKs hirings on the opinion pages, and said, "We've got to get this guy!" And that's why the newspaper's decision to hire Kristol feels much more like a political appointment than it does a journalistic hire. Nobody has ever argued that the Times operates as a pure meritocracy, but elevating Kristol to the most prestigious perch in punditry and then pretending he earned the spot on the strength of his clips is, of course, preposterous.

And indeed, even more befuddling than tapping Kristol was the sad spectacle of Times leaders staging an embarrassing kabuki dance where they insisted they hired Kristol because he's a "serious, respected conservative intellectual," as editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal told Politico. [Snip]

how badly did Times big-wigs want to hire neo-con strategist Kristol? So badly they threw out their employee handbook in order to extend a sweetheart deal to Kristol.

Not only does the high-profile hiring of Kristol flout a recently announced hiring freeze inside the New York Times newsroom, but a Times spokeswoman confirmed to me that Kristol will become the first political columnist hired by the newspaper in the modern era who will be allowed to keep a full-time publishing job outside the Times. And in this case, as editor of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, Kristol will continue to draw a paycheck from a direct Times competitor, since Murdoch, as the new owner of the Wall Street Journal, has made it quite plain that he plans on using the business daily to directly compete against The New York Times, which Murdoch claims is elitist and liberal.

Oh yeah, Kristol will be given further exemption from the Times' employee guidelines and allowed to remain on the board of policy think tanks. Could the Times have found a more tangled set of conflicts if they tried?

So it's clear that the New York Times wants Bill Kristol badly. Why?

It's not his writing, which is klunky, boring, filled with factual errors and not even really good as right-wing propaganda. When Time magazine hired him early in 2007 as a 'star' opinion writer, they wound up only publishing four article that he wrote in the second half of the year.

It's time to plan the funeral for the New York Times. Their management has gone brain-dead, and the paper can't be far behind.

NY Times hire of Kristol exposes the NeoCon cancer at the gray lady

The recent history of publishing Bush administration and pro-war NeoCon propaganda as news by Judith Miller has been explained when Charles Kaiser explained the NeoCon nepotism that got Bill Kristol his undeserved perch on the New York times editorial page. There is a Conservative cancer at the heart of the New York Times that is destroying its reputation for journalistic integrity. The hire of Bill Kristol (while letting him continue to write for the Rupert Murdoch Weekly Standard) clarifies what has happened to the New York Times.

From Charles Kaiser at RADAR:

Last week, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. managed to enrage practically everyone who still holds the Times to that higher standard by anointing Bill Kristol as the paper's newest op-ed columnist.

Many Times readers consider Kristol a third-rate neocon apparatchik, a stark symbol of the steep decline of the Washington culture—and arguably the most consistently mean-spirited and wrong-headed pundit of our time. [Snip]

Outrage was followed by bafflement after editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal described Kristol as "a captivating writer and keen observer of the political landscape."

Rosenthal added, "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. How intolerant is that?" Well, it is true that Kristol is a conservative.

Kristols and Rosenthals go back a long way together. Bill's father, Irving, and Andy's father, Abe—both charter neocons—were good friends, and Irving Kristol was a proud member of the "Rosenthal for President" lunch club, which also included Bill Buckley, Dick Clurman, Bernard Kalb (known as Bruno Frescobaldi) and Arthur Gelb. And when Andy Rosenthal covered the Bush I White House with Maureen Dowd, Bill Kristol—then vice president Dan Quayle's chief of staff—was a source for both Times reporters.

Kaiser quotes from an email sent by John Schwartz

Rosenthal either (1) has no understanding of what the criticism re Kristol actually is, or (2) does understand but feels it's his job to lie about it. Moreover, Rosenthal genuinely not understanding the criticism is arguably worse than him lying, since it would demonstrate he's completely detached from reality.

Obviously anyone angry about this knows that in Rosenthal's circles, Kristol is "respected" and considered "serious" and "intellectual." That's why they're angry.

Bill's appointment to the editorial page of the New York Times simply clarifies the rot that has grown in the New York Times as conservative ideology has replaced journalistic integrity and ability in the management at the Newspaper. Kristol has not been correct in any of his significant opinions as a pundit, but his track record is unimportant to Rosenthal and the NeoCons. Rosentahal and the NeoCons hold up Bill Kristol as an exemplar of what a 'conservative' should be. Bill's father was Irving Kristol and he has - no, he represents - the 'correct ideology' and puts a great deal of energy into convincing others hoe correct that ideology is. It simply does not matter that he is consistently wrong. What is important it that he is 'One of us.' That't what a true conservative 'should be' - ideologically correct and from a trusted conservative family, thus 'one of us.'

That's how the conservatives are killing the New York Times as a journalistic organization and converting it into a propaganda arm of the conservative movement. They see 'journalistic integrity' as a bar to converting America to the 'right ideology.' They will, of course, run the converted conservative America because they come from 'the right families.'

[ h/t to Glenn Greenwald. ]

Jonathon Chait explains Bill Krystol, editor, liar and thug

You can't watch TV out of Washington, D.C. and ignore Bill Kristol who is the coeditor with Fred Barnes of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard NeoCon Magazine. Kristol writes editorials, which according to Jonathon Chait "...have come to consist of stubborn denials of any bad news, diatribes about internal enemies, and harangues against the cowardice of Republican dissenters."

Kristol is a NeoCon attack dog, hired and paid for by Rupert Murdoch (owner of FOX News and News Corp.) Kristol is clearly a very bright man, and speaks well, but his intent is entirely to push a limited political agenda consisting of militarism abroad and support for right-wing Republican Neo-Conservative Authoritarianism here in the United States. He tries to cloak this political agenda in pleasant sounding ideas and goals, but as the fortunes of the Bush administration and the Republican Party have declined in recent years his covering of positive thoughts has become quite frayed.

He does believe that what he wants to happen is important and is unwilling to admit that the failure of the Bush administration to achieve what he wants is based on the inherent flaws of conservatism. It can't be that the American superpower that defeated (proven by the fact that it outlasted) the inherently flawed Communist USSR does not have the power to enforce its demands on the people of the backwards Iraqi nation.

So Kristol has to find another source for the failure of conservatism. This is the source of his frequent complaint about "traitorous liberals." Ann Coulter and much of the Bush administration is beginning to echo this left-over idea from the Post World War I German complaints that they lost WW I because the Socialists "Stabbed them in the Back."

As I said, Bill Kristol is very bright. He frequently makes his irrational ideas sound well thought out although less so as the Bush administration collapses into itself in both Iraq and domestically. Always remember that to say Bill Kristol is a NeoConservative means that he is a student of Leo Strauss. As Chait says Kristol "...once explained his belief in the philosopher Leo Strauss to journalist Nina Easton thusly: 'One of the main teachings is that all politics are limited and none of them is really based on the truth.' "

This explains the other thing Chait wrote about Kristol. He does not distinguish between his opinion and factual reality. To me that has always been the mark of someone who is insane, but for Bill Kristol it has become a career.

Chait concludes by saying:

There was a time when neoconservatives sought to hold the moral and intellectual high ground. There was some- thing inspiring in their vision of America as a different kind of superpower--a liberal hegemon deploying its might on behalf of subjugated peoples, rather than mere self-interest. As the Iraq war has curdled, the idealism and liberalism have drained out of the neoconservative vision. What remains is a noxious residue of bullying militarism. Kristol's arguments are merely the same pro-war arguments that have been used historically by right-wing parties throughout the world: Complexity is weakness, dissent is treason, willpower determines all.

Kristol's good standing in the Washington establishment depends on the wink-and-nod awareness that he's too smart to believe his own agitprop. Perhaps so. But, in the end, a fake thug is not much better than the real thing.

It is true. Kristol does have good standing in the Washington establishment. This is a deep indictment of the Washington establishment.

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Scott Horton at Harper's Magazine adds to Chait's discussion of Kristol by describing the utter irrationality of Kristol's attack on Scott Beauchamp for what he wrote about American soldiers in Iraq. In this he was supported by unsourced but official statements from the U.S. military PR operation:

I have no idea whether Beauchamp’s story was accurate. But at this point I have seen enough of the Neocon corner’s war fables to immediately discount anything that emerges from it. One example: back last spring, when I was living in Baghdad, on Haifa Street, I sat in the evening reading a report by one of the core Neocon pack. He was reporting from Baghdad, and recounted a day he had spent out on a patrol with U.S. troops on Haifa Street. He described a peaceful, pleasant, upscale community. Children were out playing on the street. Men and women were out going about their daily business. Well, in fact I had been forced to spend the day “in the submarine,” as they say, missing appointments I had in town. Why? This bucolic, marvelous Haifa Street that he described had erupted in gun battles the entire day. In the view of my security guards, with which I readily concurred, it was too unsafe. And yes, I could hear the gunfire and watch some of the exchanges from my position. No American patrol had passed by and there were certainly no children playing in the street. This was the point when I realized that many of these accounts were pure fabrications.

As the disaster in Iraq deepens and the 2008 election gets closer, we can expect more lies from Kristol and his fellow neocons, stacked on top of efforts to destroy those who disagree with the lies and cover-ups.