Needlenose

Via Think Progress, Jeff Bercovici of Portfolio.com reports on a conversation with perversely influential moron Bill Kristol (whose career arc has taken him from being the “brains behind Dan Quayle” to the impressive dual misadventure of helping bring America both the Iraq war and Sarah Palin):

I asked Kristol about the rumors that he might be leaving the New York Times op-ed page after his contract expires next month. Did he expect to have it renewed?

“I don’t think I’ve had that conversation yet,” he told me.

You don’t think you’ve “had that conversation yet”?  You’d think a lifelong neoconservative would be a more convincing liar.  Bercovici continues:

Okay — but would he like to have it renewed? “I’m ambivalent. It’s been fun. It’s a lot of work. I have a lot of things going on. But I haven’t really focused on it.”

Yep, he’s toast.  Assuming this firing non-renewal comes to pass, though, it would constitute an event so unlikely many observers considered it physically impossible — a conservative actually being held responsible for failure.

An example of the dangers of the looming Clear Channel monopoly.  It’s one thing to complain, like a wailing Cassandra, of the general danger of our broadcast and print media falling into the clutches of a single monopolist vendor like Clear Channel Communications.   It’s quite another to share an actual example of the speech-throttling and community stomping effect of the growing monopoly in a regional market like the aquisition of the San Francisco Bay Area’s KMEL by the Clear Channel octopus.

Of particular interest, note the firing of radio personality David “Davey D” Cook after his show “aired Rep. Barbara Lee’s and the Coup’s Boots Riley’s objections to the war in Afghanistan.” Better watch out, Jeff Chang (author of the piece) – maybe the San Francisco Bay Guardian will be the first print target of your paper and you’ll find yourself on the street! Preposterous? Well check out the shenanigans of New Times Media, Clear Channel’s “mini-me” in the local entertainment calendar-rag business. New Times Media would make a great first print acquisition for Clear Channel, who should then have little trouble in either gobbling up or shutting down the Bay Guardian.

“…there is a place called The New York Times populated by several dozen basically feckless and cocooned reporters, constantly outdone and corrected and outwitted and generally ground into the dirt by a few bloggers up at odd hours jabbing away at a laptop keyboard. As Mickey Kaus said at dinner last night, it’s easy when you’re writing one of these things to start thinking that you rule the world.”

– Josh Marshall

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/nov0204.html#112302112pm