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A Foggy Kristol Ball

By Susan J. Douglas

Kristol is a mean-spirited and dangerous propagandist, but he's also really a dope and a stooge.

The Op-Ed pages of the New York Times, still the most influential and prestigious newspaper in the country, do not feature a regular column by a feminist, a Latino, an African-American woman, an Asian American, a young person, a Muslim, a lesbian or gay man. Or anyone from the working or laboring classes, for that matter.

Nonetheless, Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. and Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal did feel it necessary to add another rich, right-wing white male to these pages. And not just any neocon, but William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, Fox News bloviator and high-profile Bush propagandist.

Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt noted that the appointment was made to balance the “left-leaning” op-ed page.

Left-leaning? A left-leaning op-ed page would be staffed by Mark Crispin Miller, Laura Flanders, Michael Moore, Salim Muwakkil, Katha Pollitt or Matt Rothschild (to name just a few)—not David Brooks, Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman. So here is another example of how the right has succeeded in shifting our national common sense about the political spectrum.

Liberals like Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich (who actually do their homework and present what are known as “facts”) must be balanced by those who are much farther to the right than these guys are to the left.

But at least that keeps those really dangerous voices from In These Times, The Progressive, The Nation and the rest of the independent press successfully quarantined—voices, I hasten to remind us all, that were consistently correct about the consequences of an invasion of Iraq.

The negative reaction to the Kristol appointment was swift and overwhelming. Hoyt reported that of the nearly 700 messages he got, only one praised the choice.

And Rosenthal’s mailbag exploded with vitriol. One reader called Kristol “a piece of filth” who should be “hung by the ankles from a lamp post and beaten by the mob.”

The appointment of Kristol was especially outrageous because he was such a flak for the war in Iraq, peddling the lies and fantasies that got the country into this mess.

Kristol had also proposed, on Fox News in 2006, that the Times be prosecuted for running a story about a secret government program that pried into Americans’ banking records looking for terrorists, and he called the paper “irredeemable,” making one wonder why Sulzberger and Rosenthal hired someone who likes to spank them.

Remember, this is a one-year “try out.” And while the Times feels it needs another conservative on its pages, does it really want a laughingstock?

In 2003, Kristol told Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air” that it was nothing more than “pop sociology” that the Shiite and Sunnis in Iraq didn’t “get along.”

And just before the war, Kristol predicted that “democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world’s sole superpower.”

Then there are the recent whoppers. In his first Times column, he predicted Sen. Hillary Clinton would lose the New Hampshire primary, and incorrectly attributed a comment made by conservative Michael Medved—regarding former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s likability—to conservative Michelle Malkin. He apologized the following week.

So let’s follow the lead of “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart who, in the wake of the Times appointment, played a soundbite in which Kristol predicted that former Sen. Fred Thompson would be a “formidable” presidential candidate and then asked “Oh, Bill Kristol, are you ever right?”

Between August 1998 and June 1999, Kristol made 85 predictions, of which 49 were correct, according to a “Pundit Scorecard” in the now-defunct media criticism magazine, Brill’s Content. OK, some may think that’s not bad. But to add to the fun, Brill’s brought in a 4-year-old chimp that was asked pundit-like questions, to which he shook or nodded his head, and the chimp beat out Kristol in accuracy.

“If you really want to know what’s going on, read Kristol and believe the opposite,” suggests Tom D’Antoni on The Huffington Post. James Fallows of The Atlantic pointed out Kristol’s “breathtaking banality” as a columnist. An unnamed reporter at the Times told The New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman “the first column was crap.”

Kristol is a mean-spirited and dangerous propagandist, but he’s also really a dope and a stooge, and this is what the Times should be reminded of on a very regular basis.

Susan J. Douglas is a professor of communications at the University of Michigan and author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined Women.

More information about Susan J. Douglas

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  • Reader Comments

    The Kristol columns have been astoundingly vapid. He’s either pulling his punches or he really is that bad a writer. This week he declared Obama the Democratic winner. Given his track record on everything else he has ever said, I’d start printing “Re-elect Hillary in ‘12” bumperstickers now.

    Posted by momodo on Feb 12, 2008 at 9:14 AM

    The New York Times, a publication as reflective of our intelligentsia’s elitism as it is accommodating to capitalism’s deepest pockets, may well be and most probably is now enormously sensitive to The Wall Street Journal’s position as a Murdock clarion call. Those of us from the laboring class who cut our teeth on our parents’ blue-collar rally to the intelligence, humanism and courage of Adlai E. Stevenson were profoundly impressed with The Times colossal efforts at revealing the depravities of the Cold War’s arms-merchant playground in Vietnam and Kissinger’s insidious liaison with domestic policies run by thugs and fascists. Even we fervent advocates of The New Left sometimes had to credit The Times with bringing to light things that proved seismic in the shift from Eisenhower’s noblisse oblige to Jack’s, Bobby’s and Martin’s stirring arousal of conscience as an American anthem. My late father taught me early in life to keep an eye on the publications of those with whom I disagree, because “ya gotta keep an eye on them sons-a-bitches.” Like you, Ms. Douglas, I don’t know what I’d do without ITT, The Progressive, The Nation, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone and other publications that appeal to my sense of things and yearning for comfort in a culture that no longer provides respectful appreciation of leftist perspectives. An avid reader of The Times, The Post, and The Globe, I find myself as amused by the selection of Kristol as I am on my local newspaper’s (The New London Day) overly generous and, therefore, suspect allotment of op-ed space to Cal Thomas. Those of us who, like you, if I may be so presumptuous, are comfortable in their skin and unabashed about their leftist leanings, are not at all outraged by Mr. Kristol’s inclusion in that Pantheon of elitism that this op-ed Hilton beds. We are hopeful, however, that the NYT’s leadership may be setting Mr. Krisol up as its antidote to the venom that the neo-con rattler’s fangs will inject into the body politic in the year ahead. Let’s hope that with Krisol in the op-ed suite, NYT editors have him as foil against Swift Boat thrusts. Mayhaps a Radical Chic revival is waiting in the wings.  Like Nicholas Von Hoffman, Kristol is a man to be reckoned with.  Unlike Von Hoffman, however, it’s not because of his intelligence. Bring it on, Mr. Kristol. We welcome something to laugh at in these most direly trying times of anger without rage. Keep an eye on him, Ms. Douglas. His value lies in his service as Sycophant Weathervane: pointing right, rarely right, unable to write, gilded sound bites for our delight.

    Posted by Bud Wizer on Feb 13, 2008 at 2:41 PM

    Billy Kristol:  Hees So Funny, I seen all of his movies!  But really, this article told it like it is.  I really don’t take the TIMES seriously anymore.  What sucks is that Billy has is own rag that he prints and his mug is all over the corporate media.  Why did the TIMES give him another outlet? Bastards!

    Posted by jazzfan on Feb 13, 2008 at 6:19 PM

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Appeared in the March 2008 Issue
Also by Susan J. Douglas
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