On an infinitely less serious note, there is quite a lot of discussion about who will replace Bill Kristol as a columnist at The New York Times. It is tempting to ask, “Who cares?” This is perhaps as insiderish and irrelevant as blog commentary can get, on par with academic gossip about who got what job and why, but I think it may merit a few words. However, I think the discussion is helpful as a window onto the thinking of conservatives about the sort of people they want to have representing them in such a venue. Ruffini suggests Limbaugh, which seems appropriate for a movement that wants to anoint Palin as their political champion, and Peter Suderman responds:

The job of the Times isn’t to cater to any of those people. No, the job of the NYT is to sell newspapers; in particular, it’s to sell newspapers to the country’s educated, affluent, urban classes. Being provocative is part of that, of course, but Limbaugh’s more than provocative; he’s hostile.

More to the point, he is not a writer by trade or by training. If the problem with many of Kristol’s columns was the feeling that he was phoning it in, what are the odds that a radio host whose public persona is built to a large extent on mocking establishment media outlets would take the job more seriously? Were it offered to him, his audience would probably accuse him of “selling out” if he took such a position. He has no incentive to do it, and the last thing conservatives need at the moment is to have Limbaugh take an even more prominent place as one of their major spokesmen. There are no doubt many mainstream conservative syndicated columnists who should be considered, as these are people who already write columns professionally, have a well-established readership and frankly have better instincts for what most other mainstream conservatives want to read than various heterodox alternatives do. If the NYT’s goal was to expand its circulation and increase traffic on its site, while also regularly providing a conservative perspective on its op-ed page, it would look at columnists already familiar and acceptable to the broader conservative movement. If the goal is to find a more “safe” conservative writer who will not antagonize regular subscribers and readers, their options are very limited these days.

Filed under: media, miscellaneous, politics