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February 10, 2012
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David G. Savage: Why activists may not be in a hurry to have High Court rule on alternative marriage
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Kimberly Palmer: How to actually enjoy -- relaxing, financially -- your vacation
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The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
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February 6, 2012
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Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
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Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
Jordan Rau: In quest to grow, Catholic hospital system will announce this morning its break from church
Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
David Francis: Where to Invest in 2012: With stocks expected to rebound, opportunity abounds for investors
January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
Warren Richey: Supreme Court says no to new rule on eyewitness testimony
John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
The Kosher Gourmet by Joseph Erdos: This mushroom and barley soup has an intense -- almost nutty -- flavor that mixes robust with Middle East. It has creaminess without cream
January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
January 29, 2009
/ 4 Shevat 5769
Kristol's health scare
By
Bob Tyrrell
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Let us put an end to the dark murmurings over why The New York Times did not renew its contract with its lone conservative columnist, Bill Kristol. Some say it was a matter of politics. Kristol is a Republican. The Times is Obamist. For a certitude, the political disagreement was there, but politics were not the ultimate cause of Kristol's departure.
I can report on copper-bottom authority that The New York Times let Kristol go owing to public health concerns. As the Times' financial condition has grown fragile, the publisher of the Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., has become apprehensive that Kristol's conservative views could endanger the health of some of the newspaper's neurotic liberal readers. During the past year, readers unexpectedly encountering Kristol in the otherwise lenitive company of Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert have complained on the correspondence page of various discomforts. None appeared life-threatening, but what if an aged environmentalist or an infirm McGovernite lost in reveries of 1972 actually suffered a coronary? The trial lawyers would move upon the Times in an instant. Sulzberger might not survive.
Of course, the Times might not survive anyway. It labors under $1.1 billion of debt. So precarious are its finances that it recently had to accept a $250 million loan from a Mexican with the unlikely name of Carlos Slim. Whether he really is a Mexican is not clear, and the Times' team of investigative reporters is now so tiny that Executive Editor Bill Keller has not been able to spare even one reporter to inquire. As far as I have been able to ascertain, no reporter even has Googled to verify Slim's nationality. He might be Portuguese. He could be dangerously overweight. Actually, I am told that investigative reporters at the Times now, in an effort to economize, rarely leave their offices and conduct many of their investigations on the telephone. Sulzberger likes them to call collect.
Yet, to return to Kristol's departure, frankly I shall miss him. During this past year, he rarely filed a boring column, which doubtlessly offended many of his colleagues on the op-ed page. "Boredom is a virtue" is their motto, and the only other Times columnist who regularly breaks with the general tedium is that perpetual high-school rowdy, Maureen Dowd, who often mistakes a cackle for a syllogism. Moreover, Kristol's conservatism is usually sound, solidly reasoned and often amusing. This has led to charges from unnamed journalists in a Washington Post column by Howard Kurtz that Kristol was "predictable." This is a charge liberals often file against conservatives, giving us still more evidence of their double standard. The adherence to principle that renders a conservative "predictable" in the eyes of liberals is exalted as "highly principled" and even "heroic" when exhibited by a liberal.
Another charge against Kristol from unnamed journalists is that he has been cavalier about facts. Kurtz writes that Kristol "had to correct three factual errors," presumably during the past year. What the errors were Kurtz does not say, but the Times' "Corrections" section overflows daily, rarely with Kristol's name. Once, a Times reporter had to interview me in an attempt to correct errors in a news story that I had broken in The New York Sun. When the "correction" appeared, is was still inaccurate.
Kurtz also reports that Kristol at least when he has written in The Washington Post has been "controversial." Well, at least he was not predictable, or was he? Kurtz reports that in the summer of 2007, Kristol wrote that the presidency of George W. Bush "will probably be a successful one." On that judgment, I would side with the herd of unnamed journalists, though by using selective criteria, Kristol can make a case. Elsewhere, Kurtz apparently in consultation with the herd adjudges "controversial" Kristol's 2007 observation that "military progress on the ground in Iraq in the past few months has been greater than even surge proponents like me expected." I cannot find anything controversial about that.
This is not the first time Kristol has departed the mainstream media. In the late 1990s, he was a regular with George Stephanopoulos, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson in a round-table discussion on ABC's "This Week." He left amid rumors that ABC thought him too involved in politics. After a period of reorganizing, ABC put Stephanopoulos in charge of the whole show. Stephanopoulos had been a Democratic political apparatchik all his adult life, before joining ABC as a "political analyst." What prepared him for journalism at ABC? In his 1999 autobiography, he admitted that while serving as a senior adviser to Bill Clinton, he would "spin" the press, beginning with the Gennifer Flowers tape. Looking back on his years of spinning, Stephanopoulos lamented, "I have been willing to suspend my disbelief about some of (Clinton's) more suspect denials." Suspension of disbelief there is the mark of a great American journalist!
Kristol simply does not measure up.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.
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