We are supposed to be afraid of the big bad wolf (Kristol)

Who's Afraid of Bill Kristol?

Last week's appointment of Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol to a once-a-week slot on the New York Times op-ed page induced grand mal seizures among the Huffington Post left and their political bedfellows.

A "supercilious man," wrote Nora Ephron, who called for Kristol's dismissal before he filed his first column. A "confirmed propagandist," added Erica Jong. An "ideological bully and thug," wrote Katha Pollitt. Jane Smiley upped the ante to "a war-monger and a hate-monger" while Charles Kaiser wrote, with apparent endorsement, that many "Times readers consider Kristol a third-rate neocon apparatchik."

Speaking for the multitudes, David Corn writes that it's "bizarre" that after editorializing against the Iraq war since before the beginning, the Times would hire one of the conflict's "chief cheerleaders." And Josh Marshall asked what sense the hire made when Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. already has David Brooks—"the house-broken William Kristol"—writing for op-ed page unless Sulzberger "got some sort of two for one deal or other kind of group discount."

In a campaign year like this one, Kristol will capitalize on the Times imprimatur to expand his source list to include Democrats of all stripes. He'll traffic in political intelligence, some of it as reliable as the CIA's WMD-Iraq findings, so caveat emptor. He'll start political feuds. He'll attack his friends and reward his enemies if it suits him. He'll stir the animals up, which was H.L. Mencken's goal. I can't promise that he'll be good, but he'll be different, he'll be interesting, and I guarantee he'll never be as bad as Roger Cohen.

Times readers who expect the paper's columnists to mirror their views may not like the idea of an alleged war criminal like Kristol infesting its pages any more than they liked the idea of Nixon's pal Safire setting up a squat there. But they're the same people who'd boycott a restaurant just because it starts serving an entrée they hate.