I am late on this, as usual...

But what a vicious graff from George Packer on Bill Kristol:

It's not just that he was fundamentally wrong at least every other week throughout the year (misattributing a quote in his first column, counting Clinton out after Iowa, placing Obama at a Jeremiah Wright sermon that Obama didn't attend, predicting the imminent return of a McCain adviser named Mike Murphy who ended up staying off the campaign, all but predicting a McCain victory, sort of predicting that McCain would oppose the bailout, praising McCain's "suspension" of his campaign as a smart move, preferring fake populism to professional excellence and Joe the Plumber to Horace the Poet, urging Ayers-Wright attack tactics as the way for McCain to win, basically telling McCain to ignore all the advice Kristol had given him throughout the year, but above all, vouching again and again and again, privately and publicly, for Palin as an excellent Vice-Presidential choice). What the hell--it was an unpredictable year.

And the Lord said let there be hyperlinks. The beauty of the web is that none of us can hide, these days. The more successful you become, the more people are watching. As for Kristol himself, I don't much care whether the Times replaces him. I love the paper, but I'd rather take a daily jaunt through the blogs than read their columnists. Blogs are just so much more alive.

Comments

> I love the paper, but I'd rather take a daily jaunt through
> the blogs than read their columnists. Blogs are just so
> much more alive.

Amen.

Posted by Andy | November 23, 2008 8:59 AM

You wonder just how many of today's Big Op-Ed Columnists could make it in the blogosphere, even if we turned the calendar back to 2002 when there weren't many people blogging yet.

I don't read the Times much, but most of the WaPo op-ed pundits would sink like stones, Broder and Will especially. They have nothing but their reputations and their prominent real estate in print and on the Sunday talk shows.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | November 23, 2008 9:18 AM

The flip side of that is that if newspapers genuinely wanted to improve their product, their op-ed pages present a big opportunity. Toss out the dead weight, replace them with people who've managed to make it out here in blogland. What op-ed page wouldn't improve if Hilzoy or Ezra Klein appeared there twice a week?

They wouldn't have to do it all at once, but maybe do one drop-and-add every four months until they'd gotten rid of the trash, and after that, aim for 10% turnover per year just to keep things from getting too stultified.

But whether or not we're a center-right nation, the Big Newspapers seem to regard it as part of their core mission to have op-ed pages that sell a center-right worldview. That's clearly more important to them than reinvigorating their medium.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | November 23, 2008 9:30 AM

He should be fired, because he never should have been hired. There must be a right-winger out there with more credibility, because this clown, has been wrong every step of the way since 2001.

Posted by rikyrah | November 23, 2008 11:16 AM

That seems a tad self-serving, no? I mean, regardless, millions of people are still reacting to columnists and editorialists on the pages of the WaPo, the Times, the WSJ are some others. I'm sure a professional blogger would find blogs more "alive" or somesuch. And that's cool. It's a matter of preference, not about who's right.

There are thousands of sorry, thoughtless bloggers out there too. Hell, for all I know, I'm one of them.

But the issue here is the writing and the nuance behind it. You know, do you have game or not? That's why Kristol would be the epitome of "weak sauce" no matter the medium.

Posted by blackink | November 23, 2008 11:16 AM

One big part of Kristol's failure was laziness, with an assist from scheduling.

Kristol's column ran on Monday mornings. To write an effective Monday morning column, you must either (a) write it on Sunday afternoon or evening, or (b) say things no one else is saying, so that what you wrote on Thursday or Friday isn't stale and warmed-over by the time it shows up in print on Monday.

Kristol did neither. His columns showed no up-to-the-minute awareness of weekend developments, but were generally the same GOP talking points that everyone who followed politics had heard plenty of times over the preceding weekend.

Posted by Dirty Davey | November 23, 2008 12:13 PM

Kristol who went to the charm school of smarm is Limbaugh for the delicate. While Michael Moore-- who lessee has written films about the auto industry abandoning its working stiffs (years before it became au courant), random nut case gun mania, for which he received an academy award, the impotence and incompetence of George W. Bush from 9/11 through the invasion of Iraq--not only won best film at Cannes, but pretty much nailed W in a way that conservatives only seemed to have caught on to now that they have been thrown out of power, and hit on the health care crisis in America, which despite its sentimentality, seems to have gotten everyone nodding their heads at one another--is considered an over the top left wing crazy, people actually take Bill Kristol seriously, proving once again that what the men don't know, the little girls understand.

Posted by CitizenE | November 23, 2008 12:45 PM

Interseting juxapostion Soophia Nelson and Bill kristol. Both representing the failure of the Republican party, conservatism and themselves. Ms Nelson because she choose to stay w/ people whom told her she was a N@##$% to her face. She could be a conservative and could still walk. She didn't. Frak her.
Kristol because her told her she was a N@##45 to her face because that is what conservatism meant to him and how he wished the Republican Party to appeal to a large enough audience to acheive electoral politics Frak him and his party.

Posted by Robert M | November 23, 2008 5:47 PM

Times columnists are indeed pretty bad! But I think you err in not giving props to Krugman, who has been and remains indispensable; and Gail Collins is pretty damn funny: funnier even than Megan McArdle! On purpose, yet!

I have to admit, though, that it might be that the presence of David Brooks and Maureen Dowd, who is now officially psychotic (the tragic wreck of a once-fine writer, see her piece about an ESL class on the lower east side in the early 80s) essentially validates your point. Maybe we should just give the opinion pages to Krugman? Works for me.....

Posted by Kevin E. | November 24, 2008 3:27 AM

Kristol's economic advice today was pretty ridiculous.

Allen McDuffee at governmentality wrote two entries today that I thought were pretty funny!

www.governmentalityblog.com

Posted by a2b4u2 | November 24, 2008 10:55 AM