How Do Liberals Hate Bill Kristol? Let Them Count the Ways

Over at City Journal, writer Harry Stein underlined just how infuriated liberals are that the New York Times has hired William Kristol as a columnist. "For conservatives, long accustomed to self-serving liberal pieties about tolerance, the orgy of outrage at having to face an alien point of view was wonderful to behold...Here is just a tiny, tiny sample of the reaction on the Huffington Post to the announcement that William Kristol will be writing a weekly column in the New York Times:

– "William ‘the Bloody’ Kristol is a beady eyed warmonger."

– "Worthless suck up Kristol should be cleaning toilets in public restrooms for his GOP ‘friends.’"

– "I will never, ever, buy another issue of the newspaper, I will never again be a subscriber to your newspaper and I will do my level best to avoid any purchases from any NY Times advertiser."

– "If the New York Times is going to hire a liar and a racist like Bill Kristol then they might as well hire Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly, and Ari Fleischer."

– "Kristol is an arrogant warmongering prick. I can’t stand the sight of him."

– "Listening to Kristol, that war mongering crater face, is worse than listening to Bush, Cheney, and Richard Pearle all rolled up in one . . . I hate that decision and I will do everything I can to discredit this decision until they finally flush him down the toilet like the turd he is."

And so it went, on this and dozens of other left-of-center sites. Sputtering fury. Vicious name-calling. Denunciations of the Times for this unspeakable act. Threats to cancel subscriptions and otherwise exact revenge....Over and over on the Web, one found variations on the following: "I never read William Saphire [sic], and I never read David Brooks. I will take great pleasure in never reading Bill Kristol!"

Stein added:

As [David] Brooks once wryly put it, "Being the house conservative at the New York Times is like being the chief rabbi in Mecca."

PS: Over at Radar, liberal media critic Charles Kaiser approvingly quoted comic writer Jon Schwartz:

"It's as though an NFL coach decided to start a four-foot, 65-pound Korean eight-year-old at middle linebacker, and when he got criticized, responded: 'People are mad we're using a player of such tremendous size and experience, just because he's Korean. How intolerant!'"