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Bill Kristol, the gift that keeps on giving

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In the print edition of the New York Times this morning, Bill Kristol’s column noted the talk that John McCain may not have been in “the cone of silence” during Saturday night’s event at the Saddleback Church, and may have heard some of the questions before he took the stage. Kristol dismissed the talk out of hand, calling the suggestion from Obama campaign aides “astonishing,” and insisting there’s “absolutely no basis for the charge.”

Of course, as we discussed this morning, McCain wasn’t in a “cone of silence”; he was in a limo en route to the event while Obama was answering questions. Did McCain hear the questions in advance? I have no idea, but simply raising the question isn’t “astonishing” at all.

Clearly, there are more important political controversies, but the point is, Kristol’s column, once again, got specific factual claims wrong. As Tom Tomorrow noted, the Times gave the online edition of Kristol’s piece a little touch-up.

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on “Meet the Press” that “the Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context…. What they’re putting out privately is that McCain … may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.”

There’s no evidence that McCain had any such advantage.

In other words, it’s no longer “astonishing” and there is a “basis for the charge.”

This may seem like small potatoes, and to a certain extent, it is. But the New York Times is the paper of record, it’s op-ed page is the most valuable media real estate in the country for political opinion, and it’s hard not to notice a troubling trend — Bill Kristol, who never should have been hired in the first place, keeps making mistakes.

Indeed, with this morning’s online touch-up, the Times doesn’t even alert readers to the fact that the column was changed; it just quietly makes Kristol’s work less wrong than it was when it went to print.

Every writer makes mistakes; I’ve made plenty myself. But Kristol’s writing is pedestrian and predictable; the Times has editors and fact-checkers; and he’s only been on the job since January. And how many times has the Times been forced to run corrections relating to Kristol’s sloppiness? Based on a count from Amanda at TP

, we’ve seen three in the last eight months, and today’s error would be #4. (If you want to get picky about it, one of Amanda’s examples included two separate factual errors in the same column, which would make today’s mistake #5.)

Back in May, Glenn Greenwald had an item on the “sloppy, error-plagued and incomparably hackish columns” Kristol has produced. I half-expected the Times to start being more careful with his columns, to save him (and the paper) additional embarrassment. Apparently, that’s not happening.

Any chance the NYT’s editors hired Kristol to make conservative writers in general look bad?

Comments

  • sdh

    says:

    Three mistakes in eight months doesn’t sound like much.

    However, its worth pointing out that these are the mistakes that actually made it into print.

    Who knows how many mistakes were picked up in the editing process?

  • tomj

    says:

    I assume that all five factual errors tended to support his views more strongly? He never made a error which aided a democrat or a liberal?

  • joey

    says:

    NYT knows it will go unnoticed by it’s many readers and only those dirty fucking hippy pundits would make a big deal out of it. The point is not what is said. The point is to end up at the same place…McCain –good; Obama–bad.

  • Stevio

    says:

    Kristol has always been an elitist neocon hack who got his position at the Times because one of his good friends is an editor. One has to wonder just what that “editor” that hired him actually does at the Times.

  • JC

    says:

    “Astonishing.”

    “Outrageous.”

    “Unsubstantiated, partisan claims.”

    Yet know one in the McCain campaign seems to have said:

    “John McCain did not hear the conversation between Pastor Warren and Barack Obama, and was not informed in any way by anyone of its content.”

    Instead, Rick Davis says: “Senator McCain was in a motorcade to the event and then held in a green room with no broadcast feed.”

    OK, so I sit in my car and listen to CNN on Sirius. I walk into “a green room with no broadcast feed” two minutes before going onstage. Technically, I’m telling the truth.

    More interestingly, at least to me – Warren announced that McCain was in a “Cone of Silence,” then discusses it with McCain. Did McCain lie to Warren?

  • SadOldVet

    says:

    One thing we can know for sure is that Pastor Warren would never have lied to his congregation and to the CNN viewing audience.

    Therefore, McCain was in a ‘cone of silence’. Anything else would make a liar of Pastor Warren and we all know that television preachers would never lie to help get republicans elected.

    I was actually surprised that the audience was polite to Obama and it was not as big a sandbag job as I expected.

    Just remember, it is immoral to disagree with the RR about abortion and stem cells and gays. Just remember, is is moral for the RR to support wars that kill hundreds of thousands of people.

  • JesusIsComing

    says:

    Saint Thomas Aquinas “the presence of injustice should provoke a righteous anger, which if absent constitutes a sinful insensibility”

    Jesus “it is easier for a camel to fit thru the eye of a needle than for a poor man to go to heaven”

    Revelation 6:8 “And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat upon him was Bush, and Hell followed with him”

    One of these is an accurate presentation – that of St Thomas Aquinas.

  • Chris

    says:

    HuffPost correctly pointed out that the issue isn’t whether McCain actually heard the questions in advance. This issue is that, despite assurances to the contrary, McCain could have heard the questions in advance.

    The viewing audience was led to believe that McCain had voluntarily placed himself in a position where knowing the questions in advance would be impossible. That was not true…thereby putting the audience in a position of having to trust McCain and his staff (CB regulars know better than trust McCain and his collection of Rove acolytes).

  • Curmudgeon

    says:

    “Bill Kristol, who never should have been hired in the first place, keeps making mistakes.”

    So why is the New York Times still paying him? Have they no pride at all?

    “Any chance the NYT’s editors hired Kristol to make conservative writers in general look bad?”

    A better question might be, “Who has such control over the paper’s hiring policies that they were able to force the NYT’s editors to hire a talentless hack who wouldn’t even qualify as a shoeshine boy under any rational standard of competency?”

    Any ideas?

  • Chad

    says:

    Why can’t you just say that McCain won this saddleback debate and was more prepared? Both candidates were given a synopsis of the questions beforehand, it was just that McCain was more prepared than Obama and it clearly showed.

    And besides, if Obama is so damn good and is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it wouldn’t have made a difference if McCain knew or not. This just showed that without a script, Obama cannot come up with answers off the cuff without looking like an amateur, which in fact he is.

  • libra

    says:

    Any chance the NYT’s editors hired Kristol to make conservative writers in general look bad? — CB

    Nope. If that were the case, they’d not have covered up for him in the online edition and the late edition that Steve M, @6, mentions. They’d have let the column run “as is”, with an explanatory note/correction. As things are… They probably won’t even run a correction at all, so his “astonishment” at such obvious canard will stand, as will the people’s who have read that version and don’t know the facts.

  • Edo

    says:

    Chad,

    Both candidates were given a synopsis of the questions beforehand…

    I haven’t seen this before. Do you have a source for this or a citation?

  • Always hopeful

    says:

    Chad, perhaps McCain would’ve had a harder time of it if he always had to dig himself out of the “he’s a Muslim” hole every time he addresses the RR…

    Did anyone notice how bad McCain looked? My husband said, “I’ve seen dead people in their coffins look better..” and he is right! I’d be real careful about that VP pick. Hope you like him Chad…

  • Chad

    says:

    This is from ABCnews blogs. I couldn’t track down the source for sure, but I’ve heard it over the weekend:

    Rick Warren said that 2 or 3 of the opening questions were told to the candidates ahead of time, along with a general description of the topics to be raised. John McCain was in a motorcade at the beginning and on arrival, went immediately to the “cone of silence” lobby of the building.

  • RepublicanPointOfView

    says:

    Chad is absolutely correct. Everyone knows that an American Patriot, like John McCain, would not cheat or lie. Everyone knows that a true American does not need to cheat or lie to best an African Muslim.

  • Chad

    says:

    Always Hopeful: I don’t recall the Muslim card being played. Is this something you actually heard, or do you just assume that’s the case? If Obama is so damn confident about himself, he wouldn’t worry about the muslim card, the race card, or any other card for that matter.

  • Chad

    says:

    Repub POV. There you go playing the muslim-race card again. Please, please, please, someone cite anywhere where McCain or his campaign have ever played the muslim-race card. I’d really like to see what you guys use to back up your race baiting game.

  • Charles

    says:

    This came up in the other thread, where somebody else made the claim that “both candidates knew the questions in advance” — and then backed off and admitted that Warren told them some of the questions they’d be asked. Here’s my reply, reposted from that thread.

    It is a far different thing to know all the questions in advance (which is what you said above) as opposed to knowing some of the questions in advance.

    Given the venue, it would be elementary to deduce that some questions would be about religion. However, it would not be simple to craft careful replies unless one knew the wording of the questions in advance. Of course, here’s where McCain has an advantage. All he has to do is spout a talking point, and the braid-dead audience cheers.

    The issue isn’t whether McCain or his campaign staff listened to Obama and hence knew the questions in advance.

    The campaign staff obviously listened. They wouldn’t be doing their job, otherwise. Equally obviously, McCain wouldn’t be listening — that’s the job for his strategic staff, who prep him for his appearances.

    The question should be: did the people who prepped McCain listen to the questions before they finished prepping McCain? And the answer is: obviously.

  • Hannah

    says:

    Chad:
    “Both candidates were given a synopsis of the questions beforehand”

    Warren said they were both given the broad categories that would be covered, not what the specific questions would be. That would be a synopsis of the questions.

    “it was just that McCain was more prepared”

    Glad to see that you agree with most of us that McCain must have known the questions ahead of time – people helped him “prepare” for them.

    “This just showed that without a script, Obama cannot come up with answers off the cuff without looking like an amateur, which in fact he is.”

    Why would any intelligent person come up with simplistic answers to serious and complex questions? A simple, forceful “yes” or “no” does not indicate one’s thought process (unless one is a 3-year-old). Anyway, I guess you didn’t really listen to Obama, because he gave some very thoughtful answers to some serious questions.

  • Hannah

    says:

    Always Hopeful: “Chad, perhaps McCain would’ve had a harder time of it if he always had to dig himself out of the “he’s a Muslim” hole every time he addresses the RR…”

    Chad: “I don’t recall the Muslim card being played.”

    Chad, Chad, Chad, have you not been paying attention? Always Hopeful was not specifically talking about this forum, but the way that Obama has been lied about by the media, the religious right, email smears, the rightwing blogs, etc, etc, etc. Obama is a secret Muslim? And did you hear he attended a madrassa? Did you hear he’s not one of us? That he’s exotic? That he doesn’t support our troops? That he’s not patriotic? And it goes on and on and on.

    That’s the hole Obama has to dig himself out of every time he speaks, especially in front of a conservative religious audience. Try to expand your thinking please.

  • Chad

    says:

    Hannah,
    So Obama has to speak his way out of a whole because of what some right-wing blogs are saying and other groups. Is he trying to appeal to the right-wing blogs? No, He’s trying to appeal to the working Americans he’s trying to get to vote for him. He should care less what the right says and stick with his agenda. It sounds like your painting Obama as a victim. Poor, poor Obama. That’s how he got into the position he’s in now. He’s not ready to be president, but don’t you just feel sorry for him, we should just give it to him. He’s such a victim.

    What about all the left wing blogs painting McCain as a senile old, confused, Post-traumatic stress syndrome victim, who’s running a 3rd term Bush administration and also running for Prisoner of War of the United States? I don’t think McCain gets rattled about that, but nooooo, we can’t say anything bad about Obama because we might hurt his feelings, and he’ll have to be careful how he answers questions.

    He’s running for POTUS. If he can’t take the heat, get out of the proverbial kitchen.

  • SadOldVet

    says:

    Chad said

    “If Obama is so damn confident about himself, he wouldn’t worry about the muslim card, the race card, or any other card for that matter.”

    If McCrap is so damn confident about himself, he wouldn’t have to play the ‘patriot’ card. If McBush is so damn confident about himself, he wouldn’t have to play the ‘real american’ card. If McSame is so damn confident, he wouldn’t worry about the age card, the senile card, or the Bush card for that matter.

  • John Sargent

    says:

    To recap:

    1. McCain promised to be in the cone of silence. He broke that promise.

    2. When asked about the cone of silence by Rick Warren, the pastor of the church whose debate he was attending, McCain lied about having broken his promise to be in the cone of silence.

    3. When exposed as having broken his promise to be in the cone of silence and lying about it on national television, McCain’s campaign insisted he could not have cheated because he is a war hero, notwithstanding the fact that he had just been caught breaking a promise and lying about it on national television to man of faith in his own church.

    4. Whether he cheated or not, it is a fact that McCain had the opportunity to cheat.

    Isn’t this obviously a loss for McCain? This doesn’t look like straight-talk to me. Frankly, I didn’t get to catch the Saddleback debate when it first happened, and I watched it after hearing McCain may have cheated. His performance didn’t look so good when I suspected the performer was a cheating liar.

  • T-Rex

    says:

    Disclosure: I didn’t watch the event. So what I know is second-hand. But McCain’s admirers are praising him to the skies for answering every question quickly, directly, and simply. Does this square with his previous performance — for example, the long, helpless, fawn-in-the-headlights stare when asked about his own votes on bills involving Medicare coverage for contraceptives? He sure didn’t expect that question, even though he probably should have, since it involved his own voting record. A few people who saw the interviews have said that McCain started answering some questions before they’d actually been asked. So, one of two things is true: McCain is psychic and prescient, in which case he’s obviously extraordinarily well qualified to lead the free world, or maybe a big war-hero-ex-POW will cheat after all.

  • Lance

    says:

    Thank you John Sargent for the concise summary.

    McC*nt lied after he broke a promise.

    George Herbert Walker Bush lied after he broke a promise to stand up to the Congress and not let them force him to raise taxes (his lie was that they forced him, when in fact it was Darman’s tax increase idea).

    GHWB lost his next election.

    Hopefully JSMcC*nt will lose his next election.

  • Crissa

    says:

    synopsis isn’t the same as having the exact questions. It’s no use asking someone questions about something they might have to think about if you want their answer right then and there.

    I’m sure they probably knew the topics to be covered, so they could study up and have some responses.

    Now, I have no way of knowing if the limo had a tv or radio, but it’s entirely plausible that the church had someone make sure those weren’t tuned to Obama’s portion.

    Of course, that’s hardly ‘no evidence’ that McCain couldn’t have peeked.

  • Chad

    says:

    McCain Lied!!! He Lied!!! He’s a Liar!!! What a Liar!!!

    Guess what people. He’s a politician, he lies. Obama’s a politician, he lies. Clinton, Bush, Pelosi, Reid, your governor, your senator, all liars. Every single politician is a liar. So what’s your point. Why are you so shocked? Have you ever seen a campaign where all the candidates told the truth?

  • a1

    says:

    Glad to see you acknowledge McCain’s lying ways Chad. People might get a bit “shocked” when they hear about it, though, because they’re constantly being told about how McCain is this glorious Straight-Talking Maverick. This plain spoken honesty of his is kind of the biggest selling point of his campaign, and stories like this kind of point out what a steaming load of BS that facade really is. I can imagine you’ll be too happy to help point out that one of McCain’s biggest claims to virtue and character is complete nonsense, right?

  • libra

    says:

    What about all the left wing blogs painting McCain as a senile old, confused, Post-traumatic stress syndrome victim, who’s running a 3rd term Bush administration and also running for Prisoner of War of the United States? I don’t think McCain gets rattled about that, but nooooo, we can’t say anything bad about Obama […] — Czad (bad smell), @24

    You can say anything bad you want about Obama, as long as it’s TRUE. You know… the way *all those things* that you mentioned us saying about John Sidney are true.

  • Steven Earl Salmony

    says:

    When I was a boy, we were taught that each generation had responsibilities to assume and duties to perform with regard to the acknowledgement and acceptance of the challenges that are present at that time, so that the next generation can have a chance at a better life. Under no circumstances, would it be correct to pose as willfully blind, hysterically deaf or electively mute in the face of any challenge, as many too many in my not-so-great generation are doing in these days.

    What has happened to the misguided leaders of my generation? So many in the elder generation have determined to let the looming challenges in our time fall into the laps of our children. At least to me, today’s leaders show an astonishing unwillingness to examine the prospects of a good life for those who directly follow us, let alone coming generations.

    After my single, not-so-great generation finishes the `missions’ (ie, fools’ errands) the leading, self-proclaimed “masters of the universe” among us have set before the human community, what resources will be left for our children to consume; how many more people will have to share what remains of the dissipated and degraded resources; where will they find clean air to breathe, clean water to drink? I shudder when thinking about what our children might say about what we have done so poorly and failed to do so spectacularly, all for sake of selfishly fulfilling our insatiable desires for endless material possessions and freedom without responsibility…..come what may for the children, coming generations, global biodiversity, the environment and Earth’s body.

    How could one generation go so wrong? Here are some of the ways.

    First, the leaders in my generation of elders wish to live without having to accept limits to growth of seemingly endless economic globalization, of increasing per capita consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers; our desires are evidently insatiable. We choose to believe anything that is politically convenient, economically expedient and socially agreeable; our way of life is not negotiable. We dare anyone to question our values or behaviors.

    We religiously promote our widely shared and consensually-validated fantasies of `real’ endless economic growth and soon to be unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities, and in so doing deny that Earth has limited resources and frangible ecosystems upon which the survival of life as we know it depends.

    Second, my not-so-great generation appears to be doing a disservice to everything and everyone but ourselves. We are the “what’s in it for me?” generation. We demonstrate precious little regard for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth; shallow willingness to actually protect the environment from crippling degradation; lack of serious consideration for the preservation of biodiversity, wilderness, and a good enough future for our children and coming generations; and no appreciation of the vital understanding that humans are no more or less than magnificent living beings with “feet of clay.”

    Perhaps we live in unsustainable ways in our planetary home; but we are proud of it nonetheless. Certainly, we will “have our cake and eat it, too.” We will own fleets of cars, fly around in thousands of private jets, live in McMansions, exchange secret handshakes, frequent exclusive clubs and distant hideouts, and risk nothing of value to us. We will live long, large and free. Please do not bother us with the problems of the world. We choose not to hear, see or speak of them. We are the economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and the many minions in the mass media. We hold much of the world’s wealth and the extraordinary power great wealth purchases. If left to our own devices, we will continue in the exercise of our `inalienable rights’ to outrageously consume Earth’s limited resources; to recklessly expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; and to carelessly consent to the unbridled global growth of human numbers so that where there are now 6+ billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human community and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more in the distant future, if that is what we desire.

    We are the reigning, self-proclaimed masters of the universe. We enjoy freedom and living without limits; of course, we adamantly eschew any talk of the personal responsibilities that come with the exercise of personal freedoms or any discussion of the existence of biophysical limitations of any kind.
    We deny the existence of human limits and Earth’s limitations.

    Please understand that we do not want anyone presenting us with scientific evidence that we could be living unsustainably in an artificially designed, temporary world of our own making….a manmade world filling up with gigantic enterprises, virtual mountains of material possessions, and boundless amounts of filthy lucre.

    Third, most of our top rank experts appear not to have found adequate ways of communicating to the family of humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the rapacious dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet’s environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding at breakneck speed toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world’s colossal, ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global political economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic `wall’ called “unsustainability” at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.

    Who knows, perhaps we can realistically and hopefully hold onto the expectation that behavioral changes in the direction of sustainable production, per human consumption, and propagation are in the offing…..changes that save both the economy and the Creation.

    Steven Earl Salmony
    AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, est. 2001
    http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php

  • Bob

    says:

    McCain was in his limo with access to cell and internet.. Staffer gets the questioned texted to him and quizzes John as they ride.. John suddenly seems way sharper than his does when a reporter asks him similar questions a week earlier.. Sheesh!! At one point Pastor Rick Warrens is asking a 3 part question about teachers.. McCAin cuts him off/interrupts before the Reverend has gotten through part 2 and before he even STARTS part 3 of the question… McCain blurts out “Yes”, “Yes”, AND “Find poor teachers another line of work”. But he cut off Rev Warrens 3rd part… THE ONLY way McCain can answer the unasked 3rd part is if someone gave him the question and answer in the Limo.. CLEARLY McCain cheated OR his staff fed him the answers and the old fool didn’t realize that they were prepping him with the live questions and not hypotheticals!!! I don’t think Johhnie McSame is that senile.. HE KNEW he was being fed the real questions and their answers.. Or at least he did by the time he answered the 3rd one that had been fed to him in the car just a few minutes earlier! At that point the old staight shooter should have pulled he plug on the whole session and immediatly fired the staff that fed him the answers!!

  • kenneth

    says:

    John McCain has perfected the art of lying and being untruthful. His Saddleback performance was quite unlike his off-the-cuff remarks that show the shallowness of his thinking. See the following article:

    Does being a jerk work?
    John McCain is a liar and flip-flopper and panderer and bully and whiner. And it seems to be working

    From the Guardian – Michael Tomasky

  • Ruth Werre

    says:

    I just know that if McCain would answer his questions with ah, hum, oh, oooh, ah, umm, ahh, oh, etc. etc. the media and the left wingers would scream “see he is senile, he has alzheimers. But if its Barack Hussein Obama with the looong, drawn out replies he is just being “thoughtful”.

    Spell Obama with a Zero not an O. He is a loser.

    RW
    Colorado