In his New York Times column today, Bill Kristol tries to make the case that the reason that “the media” doesn’t like Sarah Palin is that McCain picked her “without, so to speak, consulting them.” The logic seems to be that our press is all upset because since Palin’s name didn’t surface via the Veep-stakes, and therefore never got a chance to vet her themselves.
Whatever. Kristol doesn’t actually give any evidence or even a quote suggesting that the supposed Palin-mocity comes from this usurpation. Instead, he moves on to a post from Marty Peretz’s New Republic blog, The Spine (Read as: “I’ve got one, you don’t”). And yes, there’s animosity. Kristol writes:
Thus Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of the venerable New Republic for the last 34 years, wrote a blog post Thursday while he was “still reeling from last night’s malign hysteria at the Republican convention. This is a rotten crowd, even the pious Christian Huckabee and certainly Mayor Giuliani and the aspiring vice president, Sarah Palin.”
Despite reeling from the speeches, Peretz was able to “give [Palin] her due: she is pretty like a cosmetics saleswoman at Macy’s.” He continued that it was “good to see that the Palin family didn’t torture poor Bristol, at least in the open.” And he concluded: “Yes, please God, do bless America and rescue us from these swilly people.”
No malign hysteria there.
So Kristol found an angry “liberal” member of the media to use as a whipping boy. Good work! But to say that his anger has much to do with Palin is deeply, deeply, unfair to Peretz. That’s because Peretz uses “malign hysteria” all the time, like a car stuck in reverse.
Here he is on his own (maybe?) party, the Democrats:
…psychiatrically malfunctioning…
On his own employee, John Judis:
John Judis has often had a soft spot for America’s enemies … doughface tripe.
And here he is on a liberal 527 group planning to send a hardball letter to those it suspected might bankroll anti-Obama attacks:
Perhaps the second move will be to the head of a horse in the bed of the recipients or, better yet, put a bullet in their knee-caps. These people call themselves “liberal” and are called “liberal” by others. But they are really fascists, using terror…
All that’s from the last month.
(And I also hear he maybe sorta doesn’t really like Palestinians or Arabs much.)
Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.