“this weird fear of opposing views….We have views on our op-ed page that are as hawkish or more so than Bill….”

Wow, talk about missing the point. Maybe it’s the fact that you *do* have all those hawkish views on your editorial page–and not just on your editorial page–that makes people wonder why the hell you need to add another, not to mention why it should be one so lacking in any sort of credibility.

JOURNALISTIC CULPABILITY — I’M TALKING TO YOU

Remember that Pinch Sulzberger totally supported the insupportable lies and BushCo transcriptions of Judith (Ms. WMD) Miller and Michael (Mr. Aluminum Tube) Gordon which fanned the flames of the War on Iraq. Now, he hires a total flaming (and personally cowardly) asshole like William “the Bloodthirsty and Perpetually Wrong about everything Neocon” Putz Kristol to further defile the integrity of the New York Times. Something definitely went sour in the Sulzberger gene pool this last generation.

Same with the Grahams at the Post. Katharine Graham died with more balls than her own son has now. Judging from his retention of Hiatt, it may be too late for him to grow any of his own. He may indeed be the heir with no hair.

Unfortunately, at the L.A. Times, the scion was the setting sun of progress (Otis Chandler made the L. A. Times into one of the nation’s great newspapers before his useless, John Birch, right-wing, stock-bond clipping cousins sold out to the useless and ineffectual Tribune Co. of Chicago — and toward nowheresville).

Funny, isn’t it, none or our preeminent newspapers would hire the late, great Thomas Paine now, the man who set the stage and the stakes for the American Revolution, and yet they’ll hire effete, cowardly, intellectual bottomfeeders like Kristol or Brooks or Broder or Boot or Krauthammer and their odious ilk (all of whom have approved the War on Iraq and numerous other criminal acts by our Bush-league government). These “men” are all limp-wristed neocons who have never put on the uniform of their country and yet they tell other (poor and minority) people that they must fight for “freedom and democracy” so that the United States has access to Oil in the Persian Gulf. When you think of these people, remember that they are sniveling, physical cowards (picture Kristol or Brooks or Broder or Krauthammer or any of these punks with a gun in his hand and think how easily you could take it away. These people are the true picture of right-wing “pansy power” — “faeries of the gun imagination”).

Please remember that Bush and Cheney had designs on Iraq before 9/11 (since their first Cabinet meetings in 2001– see Don O’Neill and since the Secret Cheney Energy Task Force –which was all about divvying up the Iraqi oil fields). We know now that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and yet Bush and Cheney kept selling their lies. Aren’t you people at least ashamed?

William Kristol is a poisonous pustule on the face of humanity. His enablers like Pinch Sulzberger are the producers and underground purveyers of this virulent political puss.

Where does it end? Obviously, newspapers are your playthings. But don’t you people think you have any responsibility to truth, to justice, to the American people?

Or, as it seems, are you happy to publish the ugly posturings of right-wing welfare babies (the Podhoretzes, the Kristols, the Kagans, the Goldbergs, and their loathsome ilk)? Where are the voices of a true progressive America — Glenn Greenwald of Salon, Digby of Hullabaloo, David Sirota?

We, the American people, are much more liberal and progressive and caring about other Americans than you think we are. We oppose the War on Iraq by more than 70% and yet you don’t figure that into your polls.

The Washington-Beltway media paved the way to a Bush victory in 2000 because they thought Al Gore was “wooden”. Well, yes he was, but isn’t that better than a President who is a total mind-fuckingly stupid person who would get us into a totally unnecessary, bloody war that is going to cost our children more than 3 trillion dollars?

Still with me? George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are still the main culprits in this debacle — but the mainstream media, particularly the Washington Post, the NY Times, and the L.A. Times, share in the culpability, because you people had to know that Bush and Cheney and all of their minions were lying, at every step of the way.

Myself, I knew just from reading betwen the lines of the papers I was reading in 2002 (the L.A. Times and the NY Times) that Bush was taking us inexorably to war. Neither paper announced it, but I could tell. The troop movements alone proved it, before any UN resolutions.

Still, Bush and the NT Times and the L.A. Times and the Washington Post lied (in keeping with “official” policy). It’s one thing to have your government lie to you (with Bush, it’s expected), but to have the three most important newspapers in our country lie at the same time is unforgiveable.

You may have had lying stenotypists in your midst (Judith Miller and Michael Gordon of the NY Times, Sue Schmidt of the Washington Post, in addition to journalistic quislings like Howard Kurtz and Wolf Blitzer), but there is still no excuse for the spineless journalistic reactions to Plamegate, Libbygate, et. al.

None of the big three of newspaper journalism have shown any backbone, any cojones, any heart in the last seven years opposing the “Mayberry Machiavellian” rule of the ever stupid George W. Bush or the ever evil Dick Cheney.

We, the American people, expect better.

I hope that you can begin to give it. At last.

Best,

Andrew Rosenthal thinks Bill Kristol is a respected conservative intellectual. Omigod. By what standards, I wonder?

I just got one question–would you trust someone with Bill Kristol’s record to be your dentist hairstylist gastric bypass surgeon plumber?

Some people wouldn’t know competence if it… well, some people should get to know competence.

There is one helluva distinction between someone who has an opposing view, or a different view that can be constructive for all of us, and Bill Kristol, who like many of the diehard Iraq Neocons are well beyond the point of delusional thought processes.

If Kristol were to have the guts to travel Iraq outside the Green Zone, and he was blown up by a suicide bomber, he’d conceive of it as cloning.

Hate to be all conspiracy theory. But, if there were a plan to destroy the NYT, it seems to be well under way. Well, all things must pass.

“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,” Rosenthal added. “How intolerant is that?”

You can smell the facetiousness dripping off of every word – he knows damn well what they did, and why they did it.

“Hey plebes! Suck. On. This.”

Fuckers.

Serious, respected, conservative, intellectual….

Whiny-assed, nepotism benefiting, neo-con, chickenhawk is more like it.

“Serious, respected conservative intellectual”?!? Kristol?!? C’mon, Andy. Dana Perino knows more about recent Cuban history than Bill Kristol knows about anything. Ignorance and contempt of fact may get him lots of cred with the mouth breathers at the AEI, but for the readers of the NYT? Not so much.

Too bad for Mr. Rosenthal that Dr. Goebbels isn’t around to write anymore, huh? I mean, given the standards that Andy is applying, Adolph’s old spin meister would have been a shoe-in for that coveted “opposing view” slot at the NYT — and he was a waay better writer than Kristol could ever hope to be.

The last time I came face-to-face with the print edition of the NYT I had to marvel: what a quaint and antiquated concept this thing is. Decent kindling, good for drying boots — not much else, really. And, sadly, Andy and his ilk are doing their best to ensure that the paper’s inevitable demise becomes so much swifter and uglier…

So the great history of Jewish intellectualism has come to this. May my ancestors forgive them.

um, I have no quarrel with your overall thesis, but you’re getting into Ahnold turf with your choice of epithets. “Limp-wristed”?

Also, I despise Krauthammer with the best of them, but do you perhaps not know that he’s a paraplegic?

” a serious, respected conservative intellectual”

That statement only reveals, in all its blinding glory, the intellectual bankruptcy of the conservative movement. Kristol is a certifiably psychotic idiot and a full blown fascist. That is not simply “differing points of view” that is an alternative reality (and a very ugly one at that).

T, I wish you would quit sugar coating your opinions!

Bottom line, the NYT’s is just another branch of the main stream media- nothing more and nothing less.

T, luurve your post. i despise KKKristol & the grey lady’s keepers of the status quo gang of fucktards…

“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,” Rosenthal added.

Uh, yeah, it IS a bad thing, when the only thing that has made him seem in the eyes of some to be “serious”, “respected” or “intellectual” is the fact that he shows up in places like the NYTimes.

That’s it for me – no more NYTimes, not even online. If I want fairy tales, I can go to the local bookstore and find ones that are both more convincing and more well-written than anything Kristol has ever conceived. That’s not what I’m looking for when I open a paper.

The Times, they aren’t a-changin’….

calling this man a ’serious oposing point if view” is rediculous

the fact that he makes claims doesn’t make them serious, if I say water is wet and he says “no, it’s dry” and you want to allow him the same credibility, that isn’t being “ballanced” it’s being an enabler to lies

this man is not only wrong about everything he says, he knows he’s wrong before he says it, he is nothing less then a liar

..fails to understand “this weird fear of opposing views….We have views on our op-ed page that are as hawkish or more so than Bill..

Soooo, their editorial content ranges all the way from Far Right all the way to Very Far Right.

Okey-doke.

First, Jonah’s gig at the LA Times, now this.

How is this guy an “opposing view” if by Rosenthal’s own admission they already have people who have the same views as Kristol? Wouldn’t that make a progressive writer the “opposing view”? Rosenthal doesn’t even bother to have his defense make sense.

Whatever. It’s been apparent for some time that journalism is nothing but a closed, insular, incestuous little club. I hope they enjoy talking to themselves, because increasingly they are the only people who are listening.

Whatever happened to the NYT motto: “All the truth that’s fit to print”?

Apparently the new motto is: “All wingnut delusions, all the time”.

If the paper of record actually believes this helps their reputation with the wingnuttosphere, they are as delusional as Kristol and Brooks. What was that again David? Reagan didn’t mean to be a racist when he capitalized on the southern strategy? Now you have a reality-challenged partner in crime on the op-ed page. That will be some race to the bottom of wingnuttia.

The mainstream liberal media is neither, as with the religious right, the moral majority and compassionate conservatism.

Is it any wonder these inbred halfwits oppose the inheritance tax so vociferously?

Rosenthal’s response calls to mind Roman Hruska’s defense of Harold Carswell.

“So what if he is mediocre? There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they? We can’t have all Brandeises, Cardozos, and Frankfurters and stuff like that there.”

So what if Kristol is always wrong? There are a lot of people here at the NYT who are wrong all the time. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they? We can’t have all Krugmans and Herberts and stuff like that here.

Great post [esp. the final rant], although you probably could have stopped with just the photo. Ten bucks says that guy’s blood can’t clot.

bn

If Rosenthal thinks Kristol on staff will prevent Coulter from wishing the Times building would be bombed to oblivion, he’s mistaken. Coulter will continue to terrorize people like Rosenthal just because she can. Trying to please wingers like her only makes Rosenthal complicit in his own demise.

I suspect that Rosenthal thinks that if all the opinions coming out of the Times say that the war was a good idea and all Democrats who aren’t actually Joe Lieberman are fools, soon enough everyone will forgive that anyone ever thought anything else.

Keep in mind that it took literally months of polls showing that the american people didn’t support impeachment for them to switch over from Americans support impeachment to Americans are teh stupid and we should impeach anyway.

It boggles the mind that some marketing genius actually believed hiring Kristol would make the legions of local Roger Hedgecock disciples take out a subscription to the NYT.

“Liberal bloggers had been up in arms over the move. Kristol said, in an interview with Politico.com, it gave him some pleasure to see their “heads explode.”

It is this kind of childish stupidity by Mr. Kristol that makes him unfit for the pages of the Times, or should I say the Times of distant memory. Mr. Rosenthal deeply offends long-time readers by implying that we are unable to tolerate opposing views. The Times has always published opposing views. That is not the same thing as hiring someone to hurl vitriolic insults at your loyal readership on a regular basis. Here is my cancellation notice sent to the editor:

To Whom it May Concern:

Sadly, I felt compelled to cancel my subscription to the New York Times today based on the announcement that William Kristol will be a contributing columnist. It has been a rocky couple of years for your readers, but this was one straw too many. Perhaps you believe that Mr. Kristol’s participation provides “balance” and you certainly have a right to that opinion. However, Mr. Kristol has proven time and again that he has no shame in pushing dishonest positions. In fact, the only outstanding quality Mr. Kristol possesses is his uncanny ability to get it wrong 100% of the time. Given this record, we are left with only two options: He is a shameless liar who believes his ideological ends justify any means or he actually believes the ridiculous assertions he spouts, in which case he is just plain foolish. Mr. Kristol’s offensive assumed superiority and disdain for the intelligent and deeply thoughtful individuals who don’t subscribe to his narrow, intolerant and bloodthirsty world view has insulted me on numerous occasions. To continue my subscription would be, I feel, contributing to my own mistreatment and additionally would support his erroneous elitist belief in the absolute value of his opinion. I just cannot do that.

Honestly, I can’t for the life of me figure out what you are trying to do. Given the times we are living in and the critical need for reliable sources for information, this apparent headlong rush into irrelevancy on the part of the Times seems almost criminal. I actually feel like I lost a trusted friend. I can’t speak for all your readers, but I suspect that a large percentage of them feel like I do. We have done our homework, we understand the difference between a legitimate conservative position and right-wing hackery and we don’t see any value in supporting the later. It is a blasted shame that you do!