The short answer is no. The great modern mythology that the NY Times is a so-called “liberal” newspaper is unsurprisingly persistent. I say unsurprisingly because the country has been so tilted to the right that the hiring of Bill Kristol by the NY Times has a good chance of tilting the earth on its axis. But more importantly, this notion has entirely distorted all ideas of what left and right really means.

The constant whining and complaining by the cry-babies, also known as conservatives, greatly accelerates this myth. If Maureen Dowd dares to write a totally bullshit column about “Darth Vader” Cheney or some other totally substance-less editorial, she is automatically labeled “liberal”, which in the “real” America (the red part of it) is obviously evil and anti-American. God forbid Thomas Friedman disagrees with George Bush’s methodology of invading a sovereign country, he is obviously a “pinko”. Forget that Maureen Dowd doesn’t even write columns about real issues or that Thomas Friedman constantly supports the mostly right-wing globalization efforts and its “Free Trade Agreements”. No, those issues don’t even enter the public forum. So now the great liberal paper from New York finally hired Bill Kristol, an icon of the Neocon movement and an editor of the Weekly Standard.

Of course this decision by the NY Times is not incidental. With the plummeting of their ratings in the recent years and a decline in readership, NY Times is in a desperate need to raise their stock. The real liberals are now spending a lot more time reading popular blogs about all sorts of topics from politics to technology, while the older population still has not made that switch. Not incidentally, the older population is generally more conservative and it only makes sense for the NY Times to hire some rambling Neocon who will spend his columns and space promoting the continuation of the war in Iraq:a new war with Iran, followed by Syria, Pakistan, Pacific Ocean, Mars and all liberals that reside in the outer space. And as much disdain as I have for the likes of Bill Kristol, I am actually happy that he was given this 1-year contract for the following reasons:

1) It exposes the NY Times for who they really are

2) It may finally deflect some criticism that has become so ingrained in the minds of the conservative establishment that NY Times is a liberal newspaper, which Mr. Kristol himself has charged and

3) His columns will expose the Neoconservative ideology, of which he is a main icon, without any filter

I just hope that Mr. Bill Kristol lives up to his reputation and continues to deliver his right-wing ideology on a weekly basis, thanks to which our standing in the world is now at an all time low. Of course it’s precisely what conservatives love to brag about, since at the core of their ideology lies the notion that it somehow proves that the rest of the world is uncivilized and has no moral integrity.