Nicholas D. Kristoff, the Timesman and His Tripe

I really don't like Nicholas D. Kristoff? Whhy? I think he's just a half-bright jackass.

A pattern of poor journalism begins with his August 27 article, "Whimps on Iraq" . Kristoff is saying he has no moral problems with invading Iraq, and would support a war if it weren't too costly. He then starts to invent practical problems with the invasion. In his September 27, 2002 article writes that the US will face ugly urban combat in Iraq, that nationalist Iraqi civilinans will fight against the American invaders. Kristoff bases these concerns on interviews he had with Iraqi citizens.However, as the New Republic has pointed out, the interviews he has with Iraqi citizens were conducted in the presence of Iraqi Government officials...

and now he seems to have drifted to an anti-war posistion, which makes me suspicious.
I think Kristoff maybe just a dishonest dove. Opposed on principle to war, but refusing to admit it, for fear of being shunned as a standard liberal or something like that, rather than the "original" or "thoughtful" or "unorthodox", the "maverik" writer he wants to sell himself as. So what does he do? He says "I'm ok with war, if it isn't too bloody" and then writes series of falsehoods and imagined dangers. This approach is actually probably the most effective from the anti-war perspective, because saying (dishonestly) that he's a "cautious hawk" (which most Americans are), makes him more trusted and accepted, giving you the opporunity to sow doubt. I'm not saying it is that sinister, but....

it just might be


or much more likely, Kristoff is just a bad writer, a poor journalist and a hack, which seems to be the case. Further proving the point is Kristoff's election day column on leftwing stupidity. Normally I don't mind people criticizing the left, after all, it is how I spend a good deal of my time, but Kristoff's article seems like a lame attempt to score dinner party points. Which goes back to my earlier comments about his Iraq posistion and what seems to be a desire for "independent chic". His article, "The Left Dumbs Down" is probably one of the poorest criticisms I've heard of the Left in a long time, it fails to attack any specific failing, but rather moans about "incivility" and other nonsense.

Bottom Line: Brian good. Kristoff not. Kristoff overpaid. Brian not paid at all. Brian jealous. Wants Kristoff's job. Can't, so he writes weblog no one reads.