Bill Kristol Could Use A Nanny
by tristero
As expected, Billy’s column is pure propaganda and nothing else. It makes a useful contrast to Krugman’s, which the Times in its wisdom is running on the same day.
Kristol treats his readers like stupid, impulsive children that need to be told what to think. Y’don’t bother explaining anything – after all, how do you reason with an infant? Here’s Billy’s lede:
Thank you, Senator Obama. You’ve defeated Senator Clinton in Iowa. It looks as if you’re about to beat her in New Hampshire. There will be no Clinton Restoration. A nation turns its grateful eyes to you.
True, there are facts. I’ll bet you didn’t know Obama won the Iowa caucus. And you surely didn’t know Obama was leading in New Hampshire. So, like the patient nanny he thinks he is, Billy tells you all about it! And like a good nanny, he also tells you how to feel about it – worshipful gratitude to our savior, Senator Obama (which of course he will take back momentarily – logic and consistency are not Billy’s strong suit).
Now here’s Krugman’s opener:
The unemployment report on Friday was brutally bad. Unemployment rose in December, while job creation was minimal — and it’s highly likely, for technical reasons, that the job number will be revised down, showing an actual decline in employment.
Slightly different, eh? We’re not told we should feel bad about the unemployment report. We’re told it is bad, an assertion based on Krugman’s implicit claim to authority, a claim for which he has numerous credentials. But since this is a conclusion based on fact, you can, if you care to, double check and if you dispute the analysis of the facts, you can argue over it (and in fact, Krugman invites you to, helpfully linking to charts on his blog, which itself has links to the underlying data). Oh yes, Krugman spares us the details of the technical reasons as to why it’s even worse than it looks, but not because we’re too immature to understand it. Rather he doesn’t want to obscure the major point with academic and unnecessary complications as to why the “brutally bad” report cannot be explained away as mere opinion – if there’s a mistake, Krugman’s saying, it’s in underestimating the brutality of the badness. And if you don’t believe him, fine. You can look it up.
This stark difference in tone carries through both pieces. Kristol merely whines like an unruly child:
We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.
Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch! Clearly, Kristol needs a stricter nanny.
Krugman, however, explains and analyzes. He assumes we’ve outgrown both nannies and stern daddies, but can reason for ourselves:
It’s the latest piece of bad news about an economy in which the employment situation has actually been deteriorating for the past year. It’s no longer possible to hope that the effects of the housing slump will remain “contained,” as one of 2007’s buzzwords had it. The levees have been breached, and the repercussions of the housing crisis are spreading across the economy as a whole.
It’s not certain, even now, that we’ll have a formal recession, although given the news on Friday you have to say that the odds are that we will. But what is clear is that 2008 will be a troubled year for the U.S. economy — and that as a result, the overall economic record of the Bush years will have been dreary at best: two and a half years of slumping employment, three and a half years of good but not great growth, and two more years of renewed economic distress.
Of course, Krugman draws a conclusion, that the Bush years are “dreary” and immediately backs it up with a summary of data. And notice how the data are summarized. He doesn’t try to pump up the adjectives – there were, he allows, 3 1/2 years of “good but not great growth” – and that’s just one of the hedges he uses to make us understand the nuances in the analysis.
Kristol? It’s all black and white.
I’m going to skip over Kristol’s most idiotic point… heh-heh, just kidding.
Kristol compares the Huckabee persona with Bush’s:
After the last two elections, featuring the well-born George Bush and Al Gore and John Kerry, Americans — even Republicans! — are ready for a likable regular guy.
Well, one thing you can’t accuse Republicans of is not being really “with it,” as the kids say. They’re positively postmodern! Here’s Peggy Noonan:
Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He’s normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He’s not exotic. But if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help. He’ll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, “Where’s Sally?”
He’s responsible. He’s not an intellectual.
Why shee – it, Peggy-dear, it sure sounds like good ol’ George would be right glad to set down on the porch, chew the fat with that right Reverend Huckabee over a meal of fried squirrel and grits. I don’t hear nothin’ about him bein well-born – and got-DAMN, what kind of lily-livered New York brie gobbler talks about folks bein’ “well-born?” Where I come from, they’re jes’ called “rich.”
Speaking of New York brie gobblers -because we all know what those particular well-borns are -, that brings up the most striking thing about Kristol’s column, namely its self-hate. Funny, isn’t it? Here’s the NY Times displaying its self-hate by hiring a columnist that wants to arrest his bosses. And Kristol passes it forward by penning a love letter to a fundamentalist Christian that wants to take back the country “for Christ,” as Huckabee put it, thereby consigning Billy and his co-religionists to second-rate status in the Christian States of America.
That’s right, Huckabee no hearts Jews. In addition to his numerous playing of the Christ card – truly loathsome even if you’re Christian – Huckabee’s been taken to task by the Anti-Defamation league for his use of the term “Holocaust” in a fashion that politicizes and trivializes its meaning for Jews.
And then there’s Huckabee’s embrace of one Pastor Hagee, who has written
“It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day….
How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings He had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come…. it rises from the judgment of God uppon his rebellious chosen people.” ( “Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude To War”, paperback edition, pages 92 and 93 )
That’s right, folks. Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves, sez Hagee. Here’s some more of Hagee’s anti-Semitism:
‘ “Our whole purpose is to hasten the end times”, he said, “The Bible says Jews will be brought to jealousy when they see Christians and Jewish believers together as one — they’ll want to be a part of that. That’s going to signal Jesus’ return.” ‘
Jews and others who don’t accept Jesus, he added matter-of-factly, “are toast.”
Jews who don’t accept Jesus are toast. I have a pretty strong stomach, but after I read that I thought I was going to be sick. ****Not Huckabee:
Taking a break from the Iowa campaign trail, Huckabee delivered a Christmas season sermon at Cornerstone [Hagee’s church] about Christ’s birth and embraced Hagee, calling him “one of the great Christian leaders of our nation.”
Oh, Hagee also hates Catholics. A lot. And he, like Huckabee, is all fehrklemmt about Israel because – well, it’s kinda hard to explain, but it’s part of this nutty idea that the sooner all the Jews return to Israel, the sooner the Apocalypse which means the return of Christ to Earth.
Oh, but Huckabee supports Israel! Uh, huh, the way Mel Gibson says he loves Jews. He prays for them all the time.
Michael Huckabee. Just a regular guy, eh Billy Kristol? Your average hail fellow well met, the kind of guy who embraces anti-Semites, sides with the rapist instead of his victims, lies through his teeth on everything, and whose only qualification for president is that he’s slept with no other woman but his wife – and that’s hardly a qualification.
Seriously, Billy, you really must hate yourself and your fellow Jews to fluff for this sleazeball. Have you considered psychoanalysis? Or at least a better nanny?
****This was misatrributed to Hagee. In fact it was spoken by Bill McCartney, co-founder of Promise Keepers. I deeply regret the error. Thank you, Bruce, from Talk To Action for catching my mistake.