Bill Kristol, the gift that keeps on giving

June 2, 2008

It’s just about reached the point for me that I look forward to Bill Kristol’s NYT columns. What kind of embarrassing mistakes will he make this week? How much more damage can he do to the reputation of the nation’s best newspaper? How similar will his content be to that of random conservative blogs?

This week, Kristol is (surprise!) going after Barack Obama, this time for a commencement address he delivered at Wesleyan University eight days ago. Obama urged his audience to consider investing their time and energies in public service, but as far as Kristol was concerned, the senator’s call was incomplete.

[T]here’s one obvious path of service Obama doesn’t recommend — or even mention: military service. He does mention war twice: “At a time of war, we need you to work for peace.” And, we face “big challenges like war and recession.” But there’s nothing about serving your country in uniform. […]

[A]t an elite Northeastern college campus, Obama obviously felt no need to disturb the placid atmosphere of easy self-congratulation. He felt no need to remind students of a different kind of public service — one that entails more risks than community organizing. He felt no need to tell the graduating seniors in the lovely groves of Middletown that they should be grateful to their peers who were far away facing dangers on behalf of their country

Nor did Obama choose to mention all those college graduates who are now entering the military, either for a tour of duty or as a career, in order to serve their country. He certainly felt no impulse to wonder whether the nation wouldn’t be better off if R.O.T.C. were more widely and easily available on elite college campuses.

This strikes me as an unusual line of attack for a few reasons. First, Kristol extols the virtue of military service without noting that he, you know, avoided military service during a war. Indeed, Kristol is one of the media establishment’s most enthusiastic supporters of sending other people into multiple wars.

Second, I’ve seen many criticisms over the years of the Bush-Cheney White House — led by two people who avoided military service during a war — not encouraging Americans to enlist in the Armed Forces. Indeed, when Bush has delivered big speeches on national service, he’s neglected to emphasize military service as an option, too. Somehow, Kristol neglected to criticize the president for the same “sin of omission.” I can’t imagine why.

Kristol also used his column to take an odd shot at Obama’s professional background.

Obama chooses to introduce the notion of public service from an autobiographical point of view. In college, he explains, “I began to notice a world beyond myself.” So while his friends were seeking jobs on Wall Street, he applied for jobs as a grass-roots activist. And one day, a group of churches in Chicago offered him a job as a community organizer for “$12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an old, beat-up car.”

“And I said yes.”

Those four words form their own paragraph in the prepared text. Obama wants us to be impressed by the drama of his spurning the big bucks, by his bold acceptance of such a pittance of money in order that he could do good.

Leave aside the fact that two years elapsed between Obama’s graduation from Columbia in 1983 and his heading off to Chicago in 1985. Dramatic foreshortening is, after all, sometimes necessary. And leave aside whether $14,000 in 1985 was really such a shockingly low salary for someone recently out of college — in inflation-adjusted dollars, it’s about what we pay entry-level editorial assistants today at The Weekly Standard.

I’ve always thought Obama going from an Ivy League school to a low-paying job as a community organizer was pretty admirable. But Kristol would have us believe it wasn’t especially impressive given the value of a $12,000 salary 23 years ago.

But, as usual, Kristol didn’t do his homework before publishing a column in the paper of record. As Ben at TP noted, “In today’s dollars, Obama’s $12,000/year in 1985 translates into an inflation-adjusted current salary of $23,958. It seems Kristol may be living in a time warp because what he pays his new employees is less than the average salary for the lowest-level congressional staffer.”

I’m already looking forward to next week’s column, aren’t you?

Note: Kristol was 18 years old in 1970, just when the Vietnam war was in the starting stages of Vietnamization. Most US ground forces left in 1972. Bill has gone on the record as stating the US Army didn’t take volunteers at the time which is why he never went. Of course, this is bullshit. The US Army took plenty of volunteers including some 20,000 Canadians who served in Vietnam.

Just going back to the “Let’s send them to Iraq to have all the war they missed out on when they were young.” well again. Not as the generals they want to be, but as mere grunts who always get the shit end of the stick when it comes to mistakes by the dear leaders. It might do Bill to lose some weight.

  • who knows? maybe kristol does pay entry-level assistants at the weekly standard $25K year (with fringes, i’m betting, but who’s counting?). that’s because they’re prepping for a well-paid career as right-wing propagandists.

    what well-paid career does community organizing prep you for?

  • Bill Kristol comes from the land of a thousand smirks. I want to know what nasty little sexual favor one must perform and on whom in order get a gig like his: make stuff up and get printed, lie and get paid, smirk all you want. What a job!

  • Obama obviously felt no need to disturb the placid atmosphere of easy self-congratulation. He felt no need to remind students of a different kind of public service — one that entails more risks than community organizing. He felt no need to tell the graduating seniors in the lovely groves of Middletown that they should be grateful to their peers who were far away facing dangers on behalf of their country

    Why should he when we have heros like Kristol who share their brave War deeds with us.
    Please Bill the Bloody go on,tell us of your brave exploits, this Viet Vet wants to know.
    I can’ t hear ya , speak up man!

  • At some point, the Times is going to realize that having to print a correction each week for Kristol’s inevitable factual mistakes is costing them precious space that could be put to better use.

    If they really want to make him popular, they should have him use the space to give predictions for stocks and sports. Given his impressive track record of being 100% wrong about everything, the Times readers could make a killing betting against his picks.

  • No doubt, had Obama mentioned military service to the grads, jerks like Kristol would have attacked him for asking others to volunteer for service that he didn’t have the guts to volunteer for. To me, the worst part of Kristol’s column (besides rudely comparing Obama’s experience with the slugs the Weekly Standard hires) was how boring the whole thing was. Were that guy a no-name blogger, even his friends wouldn’t read his posts.

    The NYT really needs to hire me to ghostwrite Kristol’s column. I didn’t even read the speech, but blasted Obama based upon a news article that mentioned he wore a BLACK robe and was so elitist that he spent the whole time telling other people what they should do with their lives.

    You can read it here and compare it with Kristol’s far more mundane column:
    Elitist Obama and the BLACK Robe

  • I’m putting two and two together her but hear me out. Have you ever noticed how many Republicans/conservatives are so pro-military to the point of almost fawning adulation? And it seems like almost none of them have served themselves. Now consider all of the pathetic closet cases that seem to be fairly well represented amongst the Republican/conservative ranks. I’m guessing there’s alot of repressed and closeted military fetish fantasies. I’m sure Mike Jones and Jeff Gannon only charge a bit more to wear a uniform or dog tags. I implore the Republican/conservative military “enthusiasts to please consider it. It would save the rest of us alot of grief.

  • And since 1985 … the cost of tuition has gone up at least 400%. At the University of Texas, classes were $4/credit in 1985 (even at their law school)! At a nice private college in Texas, tuition, room and board was $4500/year (tuition, room and board). This year at UofWa, tuition and fees is about $7800/year.

    By raising the cost of college we force graduates to seek corporate jobs. It is almost like that was the goal.

  • “…they should be grateful to their peers who were far away facing dangers on behalf of their country…”

    Grateful for what? That there are sufficient volunteers that a draft is not mandatory (assuming there are, which there aren’t)?

    Or is this another iteration of “Land of the free BECAUSE of the Brave,” as one bumper sticker puts it? That always struck me as a vapid slogan, since there have been few times in history when freedom, democracy, and “the lovely groves of Middleton” have been in genuine jeopardy. Now is not one of those times.

  • Gee, maybe those college grads might have considered the military if the GI BIll had been as good as it was when John McSame was drafted, hmmm?

    Ah, but he knows better. Military service is a calling which would only be sullied by enhancing monetary considerations.
    Thank God for the war hawks leaving the ranks of our protectors free from people who concern themselves with earning luxuries that take into account frivolities of family and retirement.

  • If ever you have a need to find the smiling fool in the room, merely turn in the general direction of one Mr. Kristol! -Kevo

  • I think many readers of CB know that Kristol – although influential in many right-wing circles, and reaches a wide audience with his column – isn’t very good at writing columns that require facts. It’s not just him, Friedman is another one that comes to mind. I think that’s primarily the reason why the NYT has him there. Seriously, those on the left only give this guy more ammo to write up more idiocy (and the NYT to continue printing it) by linking to his column, and clicking on it to read it.

    Frankly I’d like nothing better than to put his writing and influencing out of business. Let him go off and do something else in life like the rest of us. The first way to doing that is to stop reading his columns and stop paying attention to him. I know that’s hard – he writes such moronic pieces. And it’s hard when we all know he reaches a wide audience with the NYT. But I cannot help but think we are only contributing to the problem by continuing to respond to every latest thing he choose to write. It keeps the cycle going, when I think it’s more important to focus on people and things that actually matter.

    Am I off base here?

  • CB, I think you’ve found an excellent headline for your weekly Bill Kristol blog.

    Right-wing chickenhawks believe that wars are for them to start and others to fight. And they call Obama “elitist.”

    (Is it possible that the New York Times, mothership of the “Liberal Media,” hired Kristol so that he would be duped into weekly sabotage of the entire neocon movement on the NYT op-ed pages? No other explanation makes sense.)

  • How couod anyone be dense enough to think that $14000 was a lot of money in 1985? How far removed would one have to be from having to work for a salary in one’s life to actually confidently write something like this down? It is breathtaking really.

  • Mathew (12):Seriously, those on the left only give this guy more ammo to write up more idiocy (and the NYT to continue printing it) by linking to his column, and clicking on it to read it.

    I think you are a little off base here. The last thing the NYT wants is to be lampooned by anybody. They know that a certain number of those hits are coming from blogs like this one, and they’ve run enough corrections on Kristal columns to know they are being highlighted. The adage “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” doesn’t apply when your main asset is credibility.

  • I’m sure mr Kristol will soon be doing a tour of college campuses, extolling the virtues of joining the military he decided not to join even though his famous family was a huge supporter of the quagmire-du-jour. Hell, I’ll chip in for the gas if he’ll go, just to see him being pelted with rotten tomatoes.

    The fucking war whores like Kristol really ought to get out more, there’s millions of us who would love to meet them in person.

  • Kristol extols the virtue of military service without noting that he, you know, avoided military service during a war.

    During the entire Iraq war the Republicans have been steadfast in their determination to fight in Iraq until victory is achieved, even if it takes the last drop of blood . . . of other people’s children.

    To John McCain’s credit, his family is walking the walk. But most of the Republicans are just Chickenhawks.

  • Note to Bill. Served in the Navy 1969-1973. Two tours of Nam, released in February 73 due to de-escalation. You conservative bastards lie because you own the press and you are never called on it. Just say it and they will print it. I hope the whole lot of you die of a rash, ever so slowly…

  • one more time

    intellect in the service
    of hubris/avarice/deception
    is a most fowl use of the gift
    given to us all to discern the
    truth and/or project it

  • A]t an elite Northeastern college campus…

    I’ve programmed my bullshitometer to sound an alarm at the word “elite” as a warning that lies and nonsense are likely to follow. Worked great on the Kristol piece.

  • RE: DanP (15)

    The adage “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” doesn’t apply when your main asset is credibility.

    My thinking is that they (pretty much all of the corporate media establishment in this country) have no credibility, and haven’t for a long time. Certainly none at all since Bush began occupying the White House. Had they simply done their job of the past, this country could’ve avoided this painful, costly, stupid war in Iraq. They are primarily driven by business people, and are accountable to their advertisers and stockholders, not their readers.

    They revenue-driven. That is, it doesn’t matter how much ‘credibility’ it has or hasn’t, or how many corrections it needs to print – the latter of which is I think largely funded by how much they can charge for advirtising space, in addition to how much volume they think they can generate. Revenue is and always will be the bottom line for any business, be it a media corporation or otherwise.

    I try to view several sources (as many not connected to the corporate media establishment) on issues of the day, and draw my conclusions based on thinking, researching, and discussing (like in discussion boards here :>). I find I learn more about the news reading from sources, and seeing feedback from discussion boards, and giving my thoughts, comments.

    So this guy Kristol, along with Disney/ABC, GE/NBC Universal, CBS/Paramount, all cable news, WaPo, Politico, Time, Newsweek, etc, are a waste of my time, energy and money. Any lampooning of him or the NYT here on anywhere else I think will have zero effect on changing things for the better.

    I think if one really wants an effective media, I think they have to support those groups that really provide it, and not do business with the ones that don’t. Since revenue is all these media companies understand, avoid them. Eventually if enough people don’t use them, their advirtisers will come complaining and their revenue will drop.

    I know on many levels it’s naive to think that – but I have to start somewhere. So I start with myself.

  • “[A]t an elite Northeastern college campus, Obama obviously felt no need to disturb the placid atmosphere of easy self-congratulation”

    Yeah, way to stick it to them, Mr Private Manhattan Prep School/Harvard Graduate.

    God, what I would give to have Kristol’s worthless ass sent to Ft. Benning.

  • As a starting salary in 1985, $14,000 is definitely low in the range, for comparison, when I started working as a recent college graduate in September 1984 as an accountant, the starting salary was about 50% higher. It’s hardly relevant to compare what you pay a stringer to what you pay an Ivy League law school graduate. Not to mention equity incentives like partnership opportunities that he would never be offered as a community organizer.

  • Mathew (21) – I agree with almost everything you write, and I certainly would not consider you naive. But I would disagree with you a bit. News outlets like Fox News, the Wash. Times, Wall Street Journal and others have a targeted audience, and can afford to err on the side of right (make that right-wing). Sadly more and more outlets fall into this category.

    The WaPo and NYT, I believe, are two exceptions. Their mistake is a different one. They try to provide a balance for readers with two polar opposite worldviews. The trick for them is to find columnists who express these opposite points of view while not making truly insincere arguments or using blatant falsehoods. It’s like no one criticizes a prof at a community college for saying something outrageous, but Harvard? That’s a different story.

    The NYT bent over backwards to clean house when Jason Blair was caught plagiarizing. While the sin was unforgivable, the things he wrote were at worst, slightly untrue, but almost entirely insignificant. When Judy Miller wrote took cues from Chalabi to print her prewar propaganda, the NYT got rid of her, and again wrote major mea culpas. Likewise the WaPo when a Pulitzer Prize winner got caught making up a story about the daily life of a heroin addict. Or more recently, when they dumped David Broder, who like Kristol, had become the laughing stock of the left wing blogosphere.

    You are absolutely right to seek multiple sources, and hold skepticism about what you read or hear. But if you start relying totally on blogs, you will see a deterioration here, as well. Personally, I think CB, TPM and ThinkProgress do an excellent job in terms of not extending beyond the verifiable. But I would suggest that part of the reason is that they are looked at under a microscope. And here (CB) in particular, there are a lot of people who carefully scan the media for details, errors, and biases. And that is healthy.

  • Where does he get off telling Obama what he should be saying in his speeches. Kristol writes like a tenth grader. Another demonstration of why hypocrisy is the only virtue Kristol has left. Soldiers in Iraq are not out there doing their countries bidding…they are doing Bush’s bidding. The “country” is trying to find ways to get around Bush to bring them home.

  • the military, like the cia, can’t promote itself on campus at wesleyan because it discriminates against homosexuals. so no surprise that that avenue wasn’t mentioned.

  • RE: 24 DanP:

    Heh heh, I’m not sure if I’d even call any of those right-wing places News outlets.

    But regarding WaPo and NYT, I’m not sure if it’s question of actual balance, vs. a perception of balance. I do recognize your points about Blair/Broder, though I’m not sure if it really changes my opinion of them much.

    And I guess that’s where I see a problem. News itself – should not be left or right in term of reporting. Somehow over the last 15 years, the editorial boards of various institutions have been lumped in with the ‘pundits’ and are now used interchangebly with news reporters. So much so, that eventually, people like me cannot tell the difference.

    I see a lot of that in places like AP. Watch out for any articles written by Nedra Pickler. She has no credibility as a reporter, most of her stories have a Faux News slant. Frankly her stories are very easy to pick apart. It’s enough to almost convince me that conservatives and right-wingers are getting slobby. At the same time, because she’s listed under AP, her ‘stories’ about the Democratic Presidential campaign get picked up by many outlets, including various blogs.

    Don’t get me wrong – scanning and holding media outlets accountable by identifying errors, flaws, hypocracies, is great. Media Matters is one of my favorites. But I tend to think of them in particular as a storehouse for the right-wing contradictions in the media, rather than a real-time source for news.

    Regarding other sources, yes blogs are one source, but I go on them mostly to read view points and discussion mostly on stories I’m already following. In many cases, they weren’t actually what I was thinking of for news sources.

    I was referring to media links outside the United States (various sources Canada, UK, India, Australia, Israel I’ve looked at in the recent past). Their news, while also largely corporately driven, is not nearly as skewed as it is here in the US. Yes it’s a trade-off, but until a truly objective independant news organization really exists, this will have to do.

    I honestly believe if Americans viewed news sites in Europe, Asia, to get their coverage of domestic issues, they would be far more informed. Certainly I think they would’ve questioned the Bush Administration’s motivations for going to war with Iraq a lot sooner, and perhaps could’ve prevented it from happening.

  • Actually what I objected to was Kristol comparing the entry level wage for his editorial assistants, who we can assume have BA degrees, with an entry level job for a Magna Cum Laude graduate of a top tier law school.

    Not even apples and oranges…more like apples and cow dung.

    Of course I graduated from a not-top-tier law school in 1986 and remember well what starting salaries were like. Good salaries were in the mid-fifties to seventy K range and the going rate for a non-honors graduate of a second tier law school was about 20K. One year earlier Obama goes off to work in an inner city neighborhood in a non-career track job for 14K total compensation…Harvard Law School Magna Cum Laude graduate. And Kristol has the gall to criticize this?

  • It IS hard to see what the NYT thinks it’s getting with Kristol. Fact-checkers are a truth teller’s best friends (it’s easy to make small errors or misread notes) and obviously his column doesn’t get much. As a result he provides a pure (as in undiluted) neo-con view. That it is flimsy, gossamer, hot air stuff is all too apparent; the mistakes and contradictions are ludicrous, frequent and easy to spot. Meanwhile, there’s Billy himself, The Grinning Neo-Con Poster Boy himself — exposed, a laughing stock except that given the tragedy of the last seven years no one is laughing. (For the fact-checkers among you, I think the damage done to the country, the Constitution, the people of New Orleans, those who need health care, the military, and on and on, is Greek in its dimensions.) Isn’t that, in a way, news fit to print?

  • $14,000 in 1985 was a very low salary. I started out working as a planner for a regional planning commission in the Chicago suburbs in 1981 for $15,000. Even that was not that much money!

  • One thing to remember is that conservatives are strict constitutionalists who believe 1787 was the standard year to base all future years by, and so when Kristol adjusts for inflation, it’s simply in terms of translating it into how much that would be worth when the Constitution was adopted. And so in those terms, $12000 was a small fortune, and a $2,000 car would be a miracle.

  • Mathew (27): I have a wider definition of news than you. For example, I wouldn’t know about Gramm and his UBS connections without blogs. In fact, while I certainly don’t get “a majority” of my news from the Daily Show, there have been many times I learned something I wouldn’t have otherwise found out.

    But you are absolutely right that news and opinion have become blurred. On a recent thread, I challenged people to name a journalist that they couldn’t identify on a left/right political scale. It used to be that there was one set of facts out there, and all the MSM was reporting roughly the same things. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a bias. I think there was a higher standard for checking out facts.

    I’m not sure you can report news with no bias, however. Do you report war deaths every day? Do you do a bio of each casualty? Do you show pictures of bombings or draped coffins? At some point you are doing a disservice to your audience, the military, the government, the families, etc. if you go too close to all or nothing. So then it comes down to what is the standard? What they need to know? What they have a right to know? The top five stories?

    Today you have to look for both bias and credibility. I think that actually can be quite healthy, if people accept the challenge. My bigger problem is that the right-wing owns too much of the media.

  • For any wingnut – from Irving Kirstol’s incompetent adopted redheaded son Billy to Mrs. Goldberg’s favorite pear-shaped offspring Jonah the whale – to talk about military service, something they never had the courage to consider, being the cowards they are, is proof that the Republican right has now understanding whatsoever of irony.

  • Apparently Mr. Kristol read a transcript of the speech, but was not there.
    ( http://www.wfsb.com/news/16389467/detail.html )
    I was there, and the speech was quite good. What Mr. Kristol seems to have missed is that Barack Obama has described the current war in Iraq as a war that never should have been authorized and never should have been started (“waged”). Given that this is known to be Obama’s position on this particular war, it is pretty clear to ME exactly what Obama meant when he said “At a time of war, we need you to work for peace.” He wants more Americans to work for peace so that we don’t end up sending our young people overseas to die in wars that should have been avoided.
    Kristol’s criticism is like criticizing a commencement speaker for encouraging students to go into medical research to find a cure for cancer, because he didn’t mention nursing as an honorable career.
    Obama was not trying to catalog every honorable vocation a person could pursue.
    PSF Wesleyan 1973

  • […] the WaPo when a Pulitzer Prize winner got caught making up a story about the daily life of a heroin addict. Or more recently, when they dumped David Broder, — Danp, @24

    Whatever gave you the idea they’d dumped Broder? He was there, big as life (and twice as shitty), in the Outlook section yesterday, opining as usual…

  • libra – I don’t remember where I first read it. In fact, I would have guessed it was here at CB. But here is one article. Apparently, WaPo bought out his contract to cut costs, but it doesn’t go into effect until next year. And even then he will or may write for them on a contract basis.

    http://www.first-draft.com/2008/05/broder-buyout.html

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