FORGET WAR, THIS IS IMPORTANT

Isn't it about time we learned about the things that are truly important?  Instruction begins now.

If you link up with Scott Johnson at Power Line, you'll see his latest on the anguish suffered by readers of The New York Times.  They scream because The Times has named Bill Kristol, trained as a neo-conservative by the Devil, a man who schemes to make the Earth even hotter, as an op-ed columnist.  I can personally attest that the crisis is paralyzing the West Side of Manhattan, where people wearing Birkenstocks in 30-degree-cold gather at a place called Zabar's to mourn the tragedy and plot nonviolent resistance.  (Zabar's is a delicatessen known, among other treats, for its Nova Scotia salmon.  This is a pinkish food consumed by those who believe it enhances the brain and raises the chances of channeling Lenin.)

There is precedent.  In 1973 The Times named William Safire, also a starboard thinker, as an op-ed writer.  He'd worked for both Nixon and Agnew - Hitler and Goebbels in the leftish dictionary - and had been a PR guy.  There was a similar uproar.  This was the equivalent of slipping Batman comics into the Ark of the Covenant.  I suspect some subscriptions were cancelled.  Safire went on to a distinguished tenure, and people even spoke to him.

Kristol is a good choice.  The Times hired him even though he'd written that the paper should be prosecuted for revealing national secrets.  Is maturity infiltrating The Times's management?  As Sinatra used to put it, "Leave us we should pray."

Posted on January 17, 2008.