Quote of the day: Is it possible that NYT op-ed chump-in-chief Andrew Rosenthal has the odious Bill Kristol mixed up with the sublime Billy Crystal?

"The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual - and somehow that’s a bad thing. How intolerant is that?"
--NYT Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal to politico.com

Rosenthal, it appears, knows Bill K. from his own days in the NYT's Washington bureau, when they seem to have done an inordinate amount of hobnobbing. Now you always have to worry about people who actually know transparently bogus people like our Bill and don't see through them, and sure enough, by the time Mr. Rosenthal is describing his Bill as "a serious, respected conservative intellectual," you know he's been totally hornswoggled.

It's like those people who claim to have known Chimpy the Prez before he made the big career change to defiling the White House, and tell us what a "nice guy" he is. No, he's not, and in all likelihood the reason theythink so is that whenever theyspoke to him, he mostly nodded in agreement and said things like, "You're so right." And they didn't even notice the blank glazed look in his eyes.

Just for the record, Andy, I can't imagine any rational acquaintance or detached observer describing Billy the K as "serious" OR "respected" OR "intellectual," and I like to think that no serious conservative would accept him into that fraternity either. All the guy is, and I mean all, is the son of a famous father who did a famous, even pioneering political crossover from left to right to become, as he's often referred to, "the godfather of neoconservatism," and has ever since shown himself to be a blithering idiot.

I suppose you could still call Irving Kristol an "intellectual"--just a very stupid and thuggish one. Little Billy has inherited (or acquired--I don't want to assume the primacy of nature or nurture here; the kid was probably doomed either way) the stupidity and thuggishness, with nothing to accompany them but his outsize lack of self-awareness. So no, Andy, we on the left aren't afraid of opposing views. We're just embarrassed for the NYT to see them lending space and credibility to a no-account, vicious pseudo-intellectual hooligan.

Note about the head on this post: I didn't meant to tar Billy Crystal with the suggestion that he's conservative, which as far as I know is far from the truth. But he is certainly worlds more serious, respected, and intellectual than Bill K., which makes him three-for-four on the Rosenthal Scale, where Bill K. finishes with an oh-fer.

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