Kristol clear

You may have heard by now that the New York Times' contribution to the Great Liberal Media Conspiracy in 2008 will be to hire William Kristol as a columnist.

Fascinating, since just this past October 14 on Fox he said that the Times giving the naming of the third Congressional Medal of Honor winner in the war on terror "about one one-thousandth of the coverage of the Nobel peace prize" was an example of "something sick about our culture." (Actually, the Times would go on to memorialize the posthumous honoree in a nearly three thousand word piece.)

As a friend of mine points out, conservatives should think of this the way Lenin described capitalists: as willing to sell you the rope you use to hang them with.

In the Times, exploiting the house rule that columnists are not subject to correction or editorial control, Kristol will be able to do what he does best—mainline imperialist lies into the public conversation—with the "liberal" Times imprimateur—syndicated, also, in hundreds of smaller papers around the country.

But there's also something in it for the Times. Hiring Kristol reinforces the message that we should reward, not revile, those who were wrong about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction—like the New York Times.