A few words on Bill Kristol

By Heraclitus

No, not that guy. Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, neo-con talking head, Bush suck-up. Our excellent new co-blogger Libby Spencer wrote a post about Kristol recently, and in the comments Michael reminded me that he and I both saw Kristol speak in Toronto a few years ago, and asked my opinion of him. I responded rather tartly, as is my wont, and Michael recommended I put my acid-tongued reflections up here as a post. And, since he's the Editor and Founder around these parts, I will of course comply. So here they are (though I have softened my initial conclusion, which really wasn't very nice at all).

Yes, I remember seeing and listening to Mr. Kristol. At the time, I thought more highly of him, and was somewaht impressed/relieved to find that he wasn't as ideological as I had expected, and even used most of his direct references to Bush to mock him. There were the obvious jokes about Bush being none too bright, and the jokes about the not-so-obvious fact that the Bushies were still holding it against Kristol that he and TWS supported McCain early in the Republican primaries in 2000, which is presumably why poor little Kristol was still languishing at TWS, rather than having another great job like chief of staff to Dan Quayle.

Since then, though, I've come to despise Kristol completely, and all the more so precisely because he is so cynical, and his incessant cheerleading for Bush is simply lying for personal and professional gain. He's one of the few neocons, in or out of government, not to have acknowledged that the Iraq War is a thoroughly botched debacle, and accordingly to abandon it, which says more about his own ego and narrow and grasping ambitions than anything else. If Wolfowitz and Perle can say mea culpa, you'd think Kristol could.

Last year, the office I worked in had a subscription to TWS. Every week, their cover story was just mindless and slavish fellating of whatever power grab the Bushies were attempting. I remember the cover I found most annoying -- a black and white picture of a man listening to an old-timey wall phone, with the headline "Let's hear it for wiretapping!" ("hear it" -- get it?). They're stuck in that late-'90s, Patio Man, we're the outsider frat boys speaking truth to power tone of flippancy and glibness. And, supposedly, everything changed on September 11th. In fact, they're maybe the only ones who haven't changed, and Kristol's one of the most callous and feckless in his attitudes towards the war in Iraq. Feh.