NEW YORK OBSERVER: Two conservative Time magazine columnists are on their way out the door: Neither William Kristol nor longtime contributor Charles Krauthammer will be on contract with the magazine starting next month. Mr. Krauthammer confirmed the news to Off the Record, and a spokeswoman for Time said Mr. Kristol’s contract would not be renewed.
The exact reasons for the departures of Mr. Krauthammer and Mr. Kristol, both high-profile backers of the Iraq war, are not entirely clear.“ I was very happy to work with them,” said Mr. Krauthammer on the phone from his Washington office.
Asked if he would have preferred to stay with the magazine, Mr. Krauthammer, a Pulitzer Prize winner who writes a regular column for The Washington Post, suggested there wasn’t much of a choice. “It’s a hypothetical that didn’t arise,” he said. MORE
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WORTH REPEATING: January 4th, 2007
Why Being TIME’S PERSON OF THE YEAR Makes You A Hero To Most But It Doesn’t Mean Shit To Me
BY THE EDITOR: In the ’90s, William Kristol was one of those Scaife-funded right-wing ankle-biters, part of the same pathological Clinton Hater cabal that helped Gingrich kill health care reform dead. Nice guys. They got what they had coming when the got their subpoenas caught in the rusty fly of impeachment. Since 9/11 Kristol’s morphed from Fox News’ avuncular pro-war Guy Smiley to shrugging quagmire apologist to one of those guys insisting the way to lower the body count is to send in more bodies and somehow remains gainfully employed as a right-wing talking head. Here he is back in March of 2003,
on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, all cackles and barely-contained I-told-you-so righteousness, crowing that the dogs of war were about to be unleashed and Moment of Truth was, at long last, finally here. He didn’t know how right he was. Kristol had a Viagra woody for invading Iraq for almost as long as Cheney — which is to say hard as nails for three or four hours at a time. And oh! How manly they felt when they played Hunting With Dick, strapping on the Magnificent Horned Codpiece of War and ran around the secure undisclosed location in just their boxers and their wingtips. You can almost hear the heavy breathing and sweaty elation in his syntax, and then there’s the way he betrays more Night Before Christmas kid’s happy-happy-joy-joy than any moral man has a right to on the eve of a pointless slaughter he’s helped orchestrate:
We are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N., and the French, and the Democrats. But the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. It will reveal the aspirations of the people of Iraq, and expose the truth about Saddam’s regime. It will produce whatever effects it will produce on neighboring countries and on the broader war on terror. We would note now that even the threat of war against Saddam seems to be encouraging stirrings toward political reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and a measure of cooperation in the war against al Qaeda from other governments in the region. It turns out it really is better to be respected and feared than to be thought to share, with exquisite sensitivity, other people’s pain. History and reality are about to weigh in, and we are inclined simply to let them render their verdicts.
Oh, and by the way Time Magazine just hired this guy as a columnist.
UNCLAIMED TERRITORY: At Least A Broken Watch Is Right Twice A Day, But A Broken Record Keeps Playing The Same Note Over And Over And Over
[Artwork courtesy of David Feldman]
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