Michael Kinsley

Diversity, New York Times style. “Bipolar America,” the cover feature for the Sunday New York Times Book Review, compiles reviews of three new books on Tea Party-related politics, one reviewed by veteran liberal journalist Michael Kinsley, two others judged by Timothy Noah, veteran liberal journalist for The New Republic.

Noah says Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of the strongly titled Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party: From Eisenhower to the Tea Party, "argues persuasively that Republican moderates remained a powerful, even dominant, political force well into the 1970s." But, Noah argued:

Is Michael Kinsley sure he wants to go down this path?

In a Bloomberg View column and then in a clip run on "Good Morning America" today, the liberal pundit claims Chris Christie is "just too fat" to be president.  According to Kinsley, Christie's weight is evidence of a lack of the self-control necessary to be an effective president.

If self-control is a key requirement for the presidency, I wonder how Kinsley would apply that standard to other recent occupants of the White House?  GMA video after the jump.

CNN's Fareed Zakaria made a bit of a Kinsley gaffe Friday.

On NPR's "Morning Edition," Zakaria said, "The people who watch Fox are not going to watch CNN...Our competitors should properly be The New York Times, the BBC, NPR" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Could Michael Kinsley possibly be any more predictable?  His review of George Bush's "Decision Points," appearing in today's Sunday New York Times, is precisely the smug piece of sneering partisanship you would expect in this paper and from this quintessential liberal MSM elitist.

As the headline indicates, Kinsley flatly accuses W of "stealing" the 2000 election.  Kinsley offers no proof, but surely most of the people who will read this review require none.  They take it as a matter of deep partisan faith.  Speaking of faith, the former Crossfire man is mocking of Bush's.  Consider this excerpt:

"[H]e stopped drinking with the help of God, who spoke to him while he was out jogging. (I make light, but this part of his story is actually fascinating, gutsy and very well told.) Thirteen years later, after he had made a quick fortune buying and selling a baseball team and then had been elected governor of Texas, God told him to run for president."

If Kinsley admired Bush's telling of how his faith helped him to stop drinking, why then would he "make light"?  Could it be that he needs to remind his audience and himself that they are way too sophisticated to take this religion stuff seriously?

At least he didn't call them "clean and articulate" . . .

Joe Biden has given the latest, best example of the adage that "a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth."

Appearing on Good Morning America today to talk up Pres. Obama's health care speech to Congress, the veep praised his boss for debunking various supposedly false assertions, including "how we're going to insure illegal aliens."  Biden was just about to move on when, realizing his crime against political correctness, he revised his remark: "undocumented aliens," quoth the VP.

On the eve of the Senate voting overwhelmingly to condemn MoveOn's recent "General Betray Us" ad, Michael Kinsley chose to defend the actions of this far-left group while poking fun at conservatives for being so outraged (h/t NB reader Lee Martin).

In an article published by Time Wednesday, the former "Crossfire" host stated that the ad could be interpreted "merely as questioning the general's honesty, not his patriotism," and that Republicans were suddenly practicing "political correctness" that could turn "discussions of substance into arguments over etiquette."

Here were some of the lowlights: