Bill Kristol, Carlos Slim and The Gray Lady's Last Dance

Perhaps my favorite columnist, Emmett Tyrell, honcho of the best conservative magazine on the planet, The American Specator, has the inside story on why The Noo Yawk Times has seen fit to purge its ranks of the sole token conservative on its op-ed page or the entire staff, Bill Kristol.

I can report on copper-bottom authority that The New York Times let Kristol go owing to public health concerns. As the Times' financial condition has grown fragile, the publisher of the Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., has become apprehensive that Kristol's conservative views could endanger the health of some of the newspaper's neurotic liberal readers. During the past year, readers unexpectedly encountering Kristol in the otherwise lenitive company of Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert have complained on the correspondence page of various discomforts. None appeared life-threatening, but what if an aged environmentalist or an infirm McGovernite lost in reveries of 1972 actually suffered a coronary? The trial lawyers would move upon the Times in an instant. Sulzberger might not survive.

Of course, the Times might not survive anyway. It labors under $1.1 billion of debt. So precarious are its finances that it recently had to accept a $250 million loan from a Mexican with the unlikely name of Carlos Slim. Whether he really is a Mexican is not clear, and the Times' team of investigative reporters is now so tiny that executive editor Bill Keller has not been able to spare even one reporter to inquire. So far as I have been able to ascertain, no reporter has even googled to verify Mr. Slim's nationality. He might be Portuguese. He could be dangerously overweight. Actually, I am told that investigative reporters at the Times now, in an effort to economize, rarely leave their offices and conduct many of their investigations on the telephone. Mr. Sulzberger likes them to call collect.

Carlos Slim? I knew the old Gray Lady was on her last legs but I hadn't considered how shaky The NY Times must be if they're staying afloat with a loan from an unknown Mexican benefactor. I'd say since the last conservative has left, it's time to turn out the lights in Noo Yawk. The old Gray Lady is taking her last dance as midnight approaches. All I can say is don't let the doorknob hit ya where the Good Lord split ya. Say good bye to the Noo Yawk Times.

And if you haven't already, say hello to Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard and especially the Weekly Standard Blog. While there, be sure to read anything by my beautiful young friend, Mary Katharine Ham, who keeps up with the crazy world events in The Daily Grind.