Nicholas D. Kristof is a syndicated NY Times columnist, who writes in a bitchy, petulant style, and has posted one of the most self-absorbed bios I’ve seen in a while. He betrays a serious lack of historical and theological perspective, and loves to bash Bush, Republicans, and an amazingly big-tent definition of “conservative Christians” that includes Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses—two cults that deny the lion’s share of Christian doctrine.
Let’s dissect a few of his recent columns and have some fun.
Kristof cites passages from a fiction work, Glorious Appearing, part of the “Left Behind” series, referring to the final Judgment…
“Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again.”
Then, he asks how we would react “If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of Glorious Appearing and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God…”
Hello! Nearly every poll taken in every Muslim country shows more than a 50% approval rating for Osama Bin Laden, so who cares about fiction? On the other hand, he may have a point. There is a fiction work that was responsible for tens of millions of deaths. That would be Silent Spring, by the execrable Rachel Carson, lover of malaria-carrying mosquitoes and hater of African lives. It’s difficult for me to square this liberal icon, whom Kristof surely loves, with his newfound concern for genocide in Sudan (see other columns of his). Nick, they’re Black and they’re just as dead, whether at the hands of bloodthirsty men or mosquitoes.
An earlier piece attacked John Ashcroft’s battle against Oregon’s so-called Death with Dignity Act, revealing his smugness in the second paragraph, describing the plight of Oregonian Florence Tauber…
Tauber’s husband, Al, was a business consultant who jogged, lifted weights and seemed destined to live forever. Then a doctor told him he had chronic lymphatic leukemia, and the Taubers’ world shattered.
The leukemia left him so weak that he couldn’t even hold a book, and he became utterly demoralized.
Last year, Al Tauber said his farewells and drank the [lethal] medicine.
The Death With Dignity Act is part of a broader—and welcome—reinterpretation of the role of medicine.
How many liberal/atheistic conceits can you jam into so few words? That death is optional if you have the right lifestyle? That life should be free of suffering? That the way to establish the dignity of man is to euthanize him as if he were a sick dog? That the healing profession be transformed into the killing profession, now at both the beginning and the end of life?
Another article sings the praises of John Edwards, the guy who had to run for president because he would not have been reelected as senator, and will probably not carry a single Southern state for Kerry.
Sen. John Edwards is America’s best natural politician since Bill Clinton, and he’ll help with the Democrats’ most crucial task: reconnecting the party to Middle American voters.
Do we really need any more “natural politicians”? After all, if ANYONE was a natural politician, it would be Adolf Hitler, the Left’s all time favorite negative role model. More to the point, one wonders just how a despicable plaintiff’s attorney is going to be able to connect with Middle American voters. Impoverish or close down a hospital for the benefit of pure greed? Identify with a regular guy worth $50 million? Provide absolutely no value-added, but merely bleed dry the health care system, contributing to its costs going up? Sure thing, Nicholas.
Somehow, because Edwards is the SON of a mill worker, the Democrats will…
…gain street credibility among blue-collar voters, and a leader who can help win back the Reagan Democrats.
If there has ever been a more transparent example of a New York City slicker’s myopic view of rural or middle class America, I have yet to see it. Maybe this is why the Dems continue to be the party of the upscale urban moral degenerates, the Union bosses, the victocrat minorities, and the baby-killers.
Finally, Kristof blames Europe’s “new” anti-Americanism on President George W. Bush.
It’s not just that the Bush administration’s arrogance and unilateralism have led Pakistanis to give Osama bin Laden a 65 percent favorable rating, compared with 7 percent for President Bush (the latest international polls from the Pew Research Center make you want to cry). Even in traditional allies like Spain, which we now need to fix the mess in Iraq, the good will after 9/11 has dissolved into suspicion and hostility.
But the Bush administration had to work hard to take all the good will accumulated over the decades since World War II and the Marshall Plan, and replace it with distrust and hostility. As my Uncle Jose, who is profoundly pro-American, puts it sadly: “There’s so much anti-Americanism now. That is Bush’s achievement.”
Such invincible ignorance! The Europeans have ALWAYS hated the US! From the bowler hat elitists of Britain to the snobs of France, to the Prussians of WWI, and all the millions of Commies. They hate us for our success, our relatively classless society, and our basic goodness in the face of their innumerable wars, purges, excesses of royalty, disappearance of even traces of morality, and an always moribund economy.
Just one more moronic syndicated columnist, in the storied tradition of the NY Times, former home of Walter Duranty and Jayson Blair.