Whiny-ass-titty-baby Bill Kristol uses his valuable NY Times real estate to bitch about Obama not mentioning the military in his commencement address at Wesleyan last week.
I have to admit, I watched the speech, and I didn’t see that criticism coming. And if military service is so great (and I thought it was), how come Kristol never served? Or is that just for the proles?
I bet the NY Times sure is proud they chose Kristol. I think every great newspaper needs a full-fledged propagandist on the op-ed pages.
Punchy
In other news, Paris Hilton is a whore, Jen Love-Hewitt is WAY past her prime, and dogs bark.
EdTheRed
You know what, I graduated from Wesleyan back in ’94, and I don’t recall Lowell Weicker mentioning the military during his commencement address. Wow, maybe my not walking out on the proceedings in protest triggered a butterfly effect that caused 9/11.
Or maybe Bill Kristol is an idiot d-bag.
rachel
Also works if you substitue ‘Paris Hilton’, ‘Jen Love-Hewitt’, and ‘dogs’ with ‘Bill Kristol’.
gypsy howell
They got nuthin’
Jim Pharo
It’s only valuable if people read it…
I don’t, and think I’m happier as a fairly direct result. Try it!
Dug Jay
Kristol merely joined the other full time propogandists already resident on the NYT’s oped page.
r€nato
Surely, somewhere out there, there is a brilliant inventor who could solve all of our energy dependence problems by inventing a device which could harness the incredible energy expended by right-wing faux outrage.
stinky mcgee
Presumably, college graduates have either already decided against a military career, or attended school as part of the R.O.T.C. (or already completed their service). So, why would you stress military service in this context?
I know, I know. Pointless to try to bring reason and logic into a debate with a conservative.
libarbarian
Did he mention the priesthood? No?
Must hate God too.
Dusty
The MSNBC pundits covering the speech, whoever they were, I don’t recall, noted that Obama didn’t include military service when he was outlining the ways graduates could serve their country. They weren’t all that outraged by it. Just took note.
rachel
Maybe Kristol thought Obama was speaking at West Point or Annapolis?
Chinn Romney
Columns like that used to irk me, because they were effective. Now? They seem tired and lazy. I get the sense that that middle 10 percent of the voting public that tilts things one way or the other have really had enough of this empty tactic and are ready for some real beef.
I can’t wait until the spotlight is focused entirely on John McCain. That has yet to happen and when it does that geezer is going to melt before our eyes. The time when you could prop up such a weak candidate with smoke and mirrors is over. Finally.
Zifnab
OBAMA IS GAFF PRONE! BEHOLD!
Zifnab
November 9th, 2008. The speech / column / blog rant will be entitled “Why we should have dumped McCain and picked my guy for the nominee because then the GOP would have won for sure.” This will be followed by 40 years, wandering through the wilderness, telling tree squirrels and blue jays how trickle down economics can work for them too.
You won’t hear more than a handful of words against McCain until he’s been consigned to the dust bin of has-been Presidential nominees. Then he’ll be the poster child for everything a Republican shouldn’t be – an immigrant-loving, tax-loving, America-hating stealth liberal on par with Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, and Hitler.
jake
They’re working on it but they’re running into a major supply problem. You see WingNuts are powered by two corn-derivative products: Cheetos and Mt. Dew and your average WN needs 40 oz of each to produce one unit of energy. What, you thought all of that corn was going into ethanol?
The amount of corn needed to provide this country’s energy needs would require 60 – 75% of the nation to do nothing but grow corn. In addition, the WN output is erratic and difficult to harness. Initial bursts of outrage maybe strong enough to take out an entire Dunkin Donuts but the power quickly fades as the WN is distracted by TV, mom shouting at him to mow the lawn, shiny objects, etc.
rachel
Godawful Fan Fiction? Howcome I’ve never seen him on the boards over there?
Mary
POTD.
Napoleon
Actually although I think McCain was the most damaging the Reps could put up from the standpoint of the Dems, in that I think he stood the best chance of winning, he also gives them the best long term upside if they win the election in that it puts off the Reps coming to terms with the fact they have nothing to offer the majority of people of this country. If they ran someone who was basically RayGun II and he got beat they would have a harder time indulging in that fantasy.
The Moar You Know
Dammit, Rachel, I’ve never seen that site before – now my faith in mankind has taken yet another hit.
Jack H.
Things the Tubes taught me- There are no great newspapers anymore. The media isn’t liberal. Most journalists are propagandists by their own admission (see Greenwald and Digby). There has been a Bush or a Clinton in the White House since January 1981 (P or VP). Kristol is a barking whore who is WAY past his prime. (He had a prime?)
srv
Er, clue, John.
The NYT has always been a propaganda platform.
RSA
So now dinging candidates for what they don’t say is fair game? I don’t recall McCain mentioning efforts to crack down on pedophiles in his last speech. Or crack whores. Or even bad fashion trends. What about it, McCain? Huh? Where are your priorities?
Dennis - SGMM
I just read Obama’s speech. Other things he didn’t mention:
The War on Terror
The Irish
Puppies
Fresh vegetables
Toothpaste
etc.
Tsulagi
You’re mocking an icon of our valiant patriot warrior class? Damn, you know full well Kristol would be among the first to man up with six-deferment, other-priorities Cheney to exchange flag lapel pins and Purple Heart bandaids. That’s how Bush Republican manly men commit to each other forming a band of really special brothers fully prepared for service. Servicing each other. Priorities, bitch.
jake
OT but cross your fingers, light a candle, say a prayer, sacrifice a goat or whatever. Kennedy is about half-way through surgery to remove his tumor.
oh really
Kristol’s column is just one more example of the hard reality of no journalistic standards.
Pity. He was such a cute baby.
Dork
And if he would have mentioned the military, Kristol woulda Gone Malkin(TM) about how inappropriate it was for a guy who never served to discuss military careers.
Something tells me that if Obama were to save some old grandma from getting hit by a Toyota, Kristol would op-ed some 1000-word screed about how Obama only cares about imported cars.
4tehlulz
Wait a minute. Don’t you lurk 4chan?
justinb
He didn’t mention volunteering in nursing homes or hospitals, either, so it’s pretty obvious he hates sick old people too.
IanY77
Y’know who else should try to advertise military service?
THE FUCKING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!!
Sorry, kinda lost it there. But seriously, when has Bush ever stumped for the military? When has he ever asked for any kind of sacrifice?
ThymeZone
Edited for clarity.
TheFountainHead
Fuck Bill Kristol with a rusty pipe-wrench.
That’s all I got.
The Moar You Know
Yeah, just trying to be sociable. My faith in mankind left the building a long time ago.
Zifnab
So, I know Kristol is vapid and full of crap, but I always have to read his editorials to come to terms with exactly how vapid and full of crap.
POOR ORATORY! LIBERAL BIGOTS! UNPATRIOTIC! LAZY AND STUPID!
Kristol has a way of serving the same old Bill O’Reily style ignorant crap to the more refined of taste and class. How he gets away with this shit continues to amaze me. How do I get a job on wingnut welfare, anyway? Seven figure salary for working at the NYT to spew this crap? Nice work if you can get it.
Zifnab
There was that time after 9/11 when he politely asked everyone to take time out of their busy days and go shopping.
Sasha
Hey! Love-Hewitt is no where near way past her prime. Not a fresh face anymore but certainly not rotten.
r€nato
In your next life, arrange to be born to a prominent wingnut.
Chris Johnson
“It can’t be that the possibility of military service as an admirable form of public service didn’t occur to Obama.”
Sure it can. I think it was very good of him to quietly skip that rather than having to ask the graduates to “please don’t torture people or pose them in naked human pyramids, or work for Blackwater and randomly shoot Iraqis in the street”.
I have a number of military friends- three in particular come to mind. Two of the three are now no longer in the military. I know from one’s own words that he left out of shame for what had become of the military- don’t know why the other one left, but he was a Navy Commander. I crashed in his room at a con once, and he saw fit to warn me that it was possible he would wake screaming, and not to worry if he did, it was only nightmares. He’d been posted overseas for a while post 9/11.
Sorry: as it now stands, the military is not necessarily an honorable public service. Much of the blame for this can be placed on Bush, Rumsfeld and the urgency with which they turned the American soldier into a torturer, against the fierce objections of the Army (and other services) JAGs.
Teak111
Sure, join the military, go to Iraq or Afghanistan and fight in right wing oil/religious wars and hand out John 3:16 coins…thats what graduates want to hear. No wonder Obama never mentioned military service, he would have been booed off the stage.
I love that Kristol has a column in the NYT. He supposed to be one of the best right wing writers/thinkers out there, and he consistently shows himself as a simple mouthpiece. I thought he was an original thinker, but they don’t have any in the GOP anymore, at least none they let out.
Keep up the good work, Bill.
Dennis - SGMM
And not a word of McCain patriotically running away from the vote for the Webb GI bill or any mention of the president patriotically threatening to veto it.
I’ve said it before; there is no sacrifice for the war that is so small that Republicans will make it.
Dork
He asked us to sacrifice some payola to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting.
Tax Analyst
You know what’s really sad? Paris Hilton is the only personality in your comment who is actually doing BETTER than they used to. That’s right…since her stretch in the big-house she’s been a, well, “Model” citizen. No 502’s, no driving with an expired license, apparently a lot less party-hopping than before…and I read she earned somewhere around $2 million for APPEARING at a Fashion Show for some up-and-coming new designer.
If she’s a whore, sign me up for the class.
As for Bill Kristol, well, NOW we’re talking “whores”…he’s been fellating the Republican Party and all their separate acts of malignant stupidity longer than some STD’s have existed.
Hell, it’s a good possibility some of them STARTED with him.
Dennis - SGMM
The NYT has a deep bench when it comes to that.
TenguPhule
Service is for poor people, dontcha know.
Dennis - SGMM
The appearance of syphilis in the Old World in the 15th century argues for McCain.
calipygian
What do you want from a shitty newspaper that chronicles how the rich, and in particular, the children are suffering terribly from the downturn in the economy.
Imagine the shame of your daddy’s income declining to eight figures from nine and not getting invited to the right birthday parties anymore.
That’s what’s important to the Times – not whatever it is that FuckSmirk says.
Lee
How much longer can Kristol be on the Times OpEd page if this is their policy?
From this article by Clark Hoyt the Public Editor.
J Smith II
As good a question as “why hasn’t Kristol servered”, and perhaps it’s even more relevant is – Why hasn’t Kristol used his column to extol the benefits of military service?
He can make up tons of excuses for why he can’t/won’t server (see Goldberg, Johan), but if military service is so important to him, why hasn’t he used his column to try and get folks to sign up? That’s the question I’d like to see him answer…
jake
WTF is up with RightWingers and mind reading? Not only does Kristol know what was on Obama’s mind but he also used his super wingnut powers to peer into the brains of those elite Wesleyan grads and saw that they had a prejudice against serving in the military.
Bill is the date-from-hell who never hears what you say but instead hears what he has decided you were thinking.
RSA
Kristol is such a moron that he can’t even follow his own chain of logic. An excerpt:
Is it conceivable that in setting the stage for the rest of his speech, by taking an autobiographical point of view, Obama simply left out material that didn’t fit or wasn’t something he considered doing in his own life, like military service? I think so. I talk in front of an audience all the time, and you always have to choose what to leave out.
DFD
We’re the filthy plebeians in the Great Conservative Empire.
SPQR
pseudonymous in nc
Kristol’s remarkable for the amount of wrong he can fit into 700 words.
He’s also outed himself a shitty employer. I hope the pissboys and pissgirls at the Weakly Standard have trust funds or other sources of wingnut welfare to rely upon.
croatoan
how come Kristol never served?
Don’t ask, don’t tell, baby!
Punchy
Pretty sure Wesleyan is about as liberal a campus as you’ll find. Just mentioning “military” or “service” would have gotten him booed offstage. He might as well just hung one of the giant, 2-story LOOK! GIANT CHOPPED UP ABORTION PEOPLE! posters on-stage to garner a similar response.
jake
You’re over-thinking this (which is more than can be said for Billzilla). This is the speech Obama gave because Kennedy is sick. Is it concievable he wrote this at the last minute or cobbled it together from previous speeches because he’s kind of busy? Yep.
Just held my nose, followed the link and …
Obama didn’t give the speech I think he should have given even though he had no time to prepare and my spent hours over my speech and it was a bomb!
Verily, it is la hilarious.
Tax Analyst
Well, that’s probably right…I saw a picture of McCain a week or two ago…had a little cup of latte or something like that in his right hand and he was winking grotesquely at the camera so he had one eye closed. Gawd, he looked like he was rotting by the minute. Think, “The Picture of Dorian McCain”…so he’s more like the syph-source, but Kristol is probably responsible for some of it’s fouler mutations.
Face
OT — Bo Diddley, ATM DOA in JAX, FL.
Adam
For the record, Kristol’s son is in ROTC while he currently attends Harvard.
Napoleon
I swear I read something from Jim Fallows over on his Atlantic blog that in fact it is similar to something he gave years ago.
jibeaux
Jennifer Love Hewitt is 29 years old.
To Tim F., I have found Dale’s at Whole Foods for nearly 9 dollars a six-pack…I cannot believe what beer costs these days. I’ll let you know if I like it, but I’m no connoseiur. And, no, I don’t know how to spell that word, which, indeed, is central to my point.
Actually, it sort of makes sense there, killing the joke, but I’m gonna leave it.
Apsaras
Screw you, Bill Kristol. You can’t ruin my day. It’s looking like Ted Kennedy is going to make it through his surgery successfully, and Hillary seems to be preparing a concession speech for tomorrow night. Plenty of sunshiiiiine heading my waaaaaay…
Apsaras
Ok, nevermind. Looks like Clinton aides have said that it’s not going to be a “concession” speech. Still, enough good news all around to offset whatever attempt at social control Bill Kristol might choose to engage in.
RSA
Well, you’ve certainly got Occam’s Razor going for you; I’m persuaded.
Phoenix Woman
Assrocket over at PowerLine’s mouthing the same cracks. They must all text-message each other with the latest talking points.
PattyK
The unmitigated gall of Kristol to accuse Obama of indulging “in a soft patriotism of low expectations” when that is a spot-on description of a chicken hawk like himself who has never served in the military himself but is fine with others risking their lives. How about his three children? Has he been encouraging them to “serve their country” by volunteering to go to Iraq? His column afforded him a perfect opportunity to enlighten us on that but oddly enough he passed it by.
Leo
This was a big argument over in the comments at the transterrestrial blog (the place where the guy called Buchenwald “not historically abnormal”).
It seemed quite “revealing” to them.
jake
I also recall reading something to that effect but I believe Uncle Tom Paynegate broke a few days after and I was too busy laughing about that. Here’s a guy in the middle of a presidential campaign when a friend finds out he has a brain tumor with a very poor survival rate. Friend says “Kid, I want you to do a commencement speech for me next week.”
Imagine (if you can stand it) the screams from the foes of MUPtopia if he’d said “Sorry Teddy, I don’t have time to write a new speech.” Even Our Lady of the Perpetual RageON would be a-swooning over how icky Barachmed HUSSEIN OBAMA threw poor TK under the bus. So he did what bazillions of speakers have done before. He took an old speech and polished it, edited for his audience, whatever.
But suddenly this is a problem because some asslimpets don’t realize they’re clawing a hole in the Barrell o’ Outrage and we’re all laughing at their feet kicking around in the air.
jvill
Yeah, because who doesn’t want to lose their limbs in a pointless war fought because someone tried to assassinate President Codpiece’s daddy?
But more importantly…
Who the hell is actually reading Kristol in the Times? You paying someone to give you a summary or something?
OkieByAccident
Ironically, in his May 28th commencement address at the Air Force Academy, Bush did urge the graduates to consider the option of military service.
tofubo
and as that commie race traitor atrios posited, has kristol ever asked, in any one of his many newspaper and magazine columns, radio, or television appearances over the years, for his readers, listeneners, viewers, or conservative supporters to enlist ?? just wonderin’
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_06_01_archive.html#2862899972449636891
rachel
Head, meet desk.