The Lost Kristol Tapes

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2895

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3246

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2997

As Eric Alterman has written, he’s the “journalist” of “perpetual wrongness” (as well as an “apparatchik” of the first order and a “right-wing holy warrior”). And for that, he’s perpetually hired or published: Fox News, the Washington Post op-ed page, Time Magazine, and most recently, the New York Times where, in his very first column, he made a goof that had to be corrected at the bottom of column two (and where, with his usual perspicacity when it comes to the future, he predicted an Obama victory in the New Hampshire primary). Liberal websites devote time to listing his many mistakes and mis-predictions. In a roiling mass of neocons, right-wingers, and liberal war hawks, he’s certainly been in fierce competition for the title of “wrongest” of all when it came to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. (“Iraq’s always been very secular…”) I hardly have to spell out the name of He Who Strides Amongst Us, the editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard. But, okay, for the one person on the planet who doesn’t know — it’s Bill http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1437. The notorious Mr. Kristol, the man whose crystal ball never works. But isn’t it the essence of American punditry that serial mistakes don’t matter and no one is ever held to account (as in this primary season) for ridiculous predictions that add up to nothing? As New York Times editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal put it after his paper signed Kristol to a one-year contract, “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?”

How intolerant indeed! Since no one in the mainstream is accountable for anything they’ve written, the management of the Times can exhibit remarkable tolerance for error in its gesture to the neocon right by hiring a man who’s essentially never right. His has been a remarkable winning record when it comes to being right(-wing) by doing wrong. Former Saturday Night Live contributor Jonathan Schwarz pays homage to that record in what follows.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/

2008-02-15