The "Tolerant" Left Spews on Bill Kristol, the Times' Newest Columnist
Along with the goings-on in Iowa and New Hampshire, it's also hate-Bill Kristol week for the left-wing blogosphere, now that the Times has given into neo-con perfidy by granting The Weekly Standard founder (and strong supporter of a muscular strategy in Iraq) a column every Monday, opposite economist-turned-leftist Paul Krugman. Kristol joins David Brooks as one of two right-of-center voices on the Times op-ed page.
All of the paper's other regular columnists are twice a week, while Kristol will only get one weekly shot. But even that's one too many for the left to tolerate.
Before his column even appeared, novelist and left-wing Huffington Post contributor Jane Smiley melodramatically canceled her subscription, while Katha Pollitt of The Nation opened her blog post:
"Just shoot me."
Kristol's first column, "President Mike Huckabee?" is not the most scintillating or controversial op-ed ever written, mostly harmless cracks at Barack Obama after thanking him for beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses.
James Fallows on his blog at The Atlantic criticized the "breathtaking banality of expression."
Media gossip-site Gawker responded , under the charming headline, "Bill Kristol Spews, America Heaves":
"Bill Kristol's inaugural New York Times column appeared today and it confirmed our suspicion that Kristol's head is so far up his ass that he views the world from inside his own mouth, which might, actually, explain his world view."
The more restrainedheadline over Greg Sargent's post at Talking Points Memo said Kristol's column was "larded with awful clichés."
And the unbiased folks at Editor& Publisher jumped on Kristol for his "embarrassing error," confusing one "MM" (conservative journalist Michelle Malkin) for another (conservative journalist Michael Medved) in a quote.
