Nicholas Kristof

NYT's Kristof Characterizes 'Provocateur' Ayaan Hirsi Ali as Bomb-Throwing Anti-Muslim Antagonist
By Clay Waters | June 1, 2010 | 4:15 PM EDT
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has a bad habit of inappropriate flippancy, and it's on display in his review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new memoir "Nomad," introduced with the headline "The Gadfly," that efficiently captures Kristof's condescending tone.

Hirsi Ali is a feminist intellectual born Muslim in Somalia, raised in Saudi Arabia, escaped an arranged marriage, fled to the Netherlands and began speaking out against Islam's treatment of women. She now lives in the United States and is a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, which is perhaps why her story does not delight liberals like it should on the surface.

As historian Andrew Roberts wrote in an attack at The Daily Beast, Kristof sounded condescending. Hirsi Ali's brave fight for women's rights against fundamentalist religious bigotry certainly sounds like something to be admired without reservation by any sincere liberal. Yet liberals often seem too afraid of sounding like anti-Islamic conservatives to applaud Hirsi Ali without criticism. Kristof makes it sound as if Hirsi Ali shared the blame for the threats on her life because "she has managed to outrage more people...," as if her goal is to provoke anger, not to expand freedom for women under Islam.
If there were a "Ms. Globalization" title, it might well go to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali woman who wrote the best--selling memoir "Infidel." She has managed to outrage more people -- in some cases to the point that they want to assassinate her -- in more languages in more countries on more continents than almost any writer in the world today.

CNN Offers Two Liberal Journalists Who Hate the Idea of Transparent ObamaCare Negotiations
By Matthew Balan | January 11, 2010 | 2:16 PM EST
Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist, & Karen Tumulty, Time Magazine Correspondent | NewsBusters.orgCNN made no accommodation for balance during a panel discussion segment on ObamaCare on Monday’s American Morning, bringing on two leftists- New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Time magazine’s Karen Tumulty- who both dismissed the Democrats’ lack of transparency in the congressional negotiations over the health care “reform” bills, and both shilled for the legislation.

Anchor Kiran Chetry introduced Kristof as someone who merely “supports the health care bill as it stands now” during a panel discussion segment at the bottom of the 7 am Eastern hour. After introducing Kristof and his liberal colleague Tumulty, Chetry asked, “Does this hurt the President if indeed Congress goes forward with doing this behind the scenes?”

Kristof acknowledged that “to some degree it hurts him politically [and] I think he shouldn’t have actually made that promise,” but continued that, from his experience as a journalist, the lack of transparency was actually a good sign:
Malkin Annihilates Nicholas Kristof's Guilt-Tripping NY Times Column on Obama-Care
By Clay Waters | December 3, 2009 | 2:43 PM EST

Michelle Malkin absolutely ripped apart Nicholas Kristof's "crappy" Sunday New York Times column, "Are We Going to Let John Die?", a remorseless tear-jerker using a tragic story to guilt-trip recalcitrant Democrats like Sen. Joe Lieberman into supporting Obama-care. Kristof explained that John Brodniak, a sawmill worker in Oregon, has hemangioma (an abnormal growth of blood vessels, causing him spasms, memory loss, and painful headaches) but can't get treatment for it in Oregon. Brodniak told Kristof he had been unable to get insurance, and thus unable to get relief from his agony. Kristof bemoaned intransigent politicians:

If a senator strolled indifferently by as John retched in pain, we would think that person pitiless. But isn't it just as monstrous for politicians to avert their eyes, make excuses and deny coverage to innumerable Americans just like John?
Again, Major Media Figures Speak at Clinton Global Initiative
By Tim Graham | September 25, 2008 | 3:19 PM EDT

It's become an annual tradition at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative for journalists to appear as Featured Attendees and moderate or speak on panel discussions. This morning's session featuring both John McCain and Barack Obama was moderated by NBC's current Meet the Press host, Tom Brokaw.

Nick Kristof: Chop Off Body Parts = 'Torment'; Interrogation = 'Torture'
By Tom Blumer | July 11, 2008 | 9:29 AM EDT

kristofYou would be hard-pressed to find a "better" example of a walking, talking, typing Old Media double standard-bearer than New York Times columnist and International Herald Tribune (IHT) contributor Nicholas Kristof.

Keep in mind as you read this post that Kristof infamously wrote the following in a 2005 New York Times book review about the person who was "the worst monster in world history," China's Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong):

..... his legacy is not all bad ..... The emancipation of women and end of child marriages moved China from one of the worst places in the world to be a girl to one where women have more equality than in, say, Japan or Korea. ..... Mao’s ruthlessness was a catastrophe at the time ..... yet there’s more to the story: Mao also helped lay the groundwork for the rebirth and rise of China after five centuries of slumber.

Here is Kristof describing an example of what is currently happening in Zimbabwe in the June 29 IHT (bold after headline is mine):

One of NYT's Guantanamo Bay 'Innocents' Turned Suicide Bomber on Release
By Clay Waters | May 8, 2008 | 5:30 PM EDT

Nicholas Kristof's Sunday column on Guantanamo prisoners, "A Prison of Shame, and It's Ours," makes the case, in typically arch prose, that his New York Times colleague Barry Bearak got off easy. The Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe imprisoned Bearak in disgusting conditions for four days, but Kristof thought it could have been worse:  It could have been Guantanamo Bay.

My Times colleague Barry Bearak was imprisoned by the brutal regime in Zimbabwe last month. Barry was not beaten, but he was infected with scabies while in a bug-infested jail. He was finally brought before a court after four nights in jail and then released. Alas, we don't treat our own inmates in Guantánamo with even that much respect for law. On Thursday, America released Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera who had been held without charges for more than six years. Mr. Hajj has credibly alleged that he was beaten, and that he was punished for a hunger strike by having feeding tubes forcibly inserted in his nose and throat without lubricant, so as to rub tissue raw.
Kristof: Abortion Will Bring Dems Together
By Mark Finkelstein | May 8, 2008 | 6:38 AM EDT
It was just another ho-hum piece by another liberal columnist. Hillary Clinton should get out now because staying in hurts Barack Obama against McCain. Yada yada yada.

But in his column of today, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, almost in passing, makes what is, on reflection, a telling disclosure of what is truly the fundamental value, the uniting principle of the Democratic party: abortion. After first fretting that many Hillary supporters will sit on their hands or vote for McCain, Kristof offers this countervailing fact:
It’s true that most of Senator Clinton’s supporters presumably will flinch if they contemplate a McCain Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
Bozell Column: Obama's Church of Slurs
By Brent Bozell | March 18, 2008 | 4:07 PM EDT
It’s Damage Control Time for the liberal press. Count New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as one in the media masses who have been outraged, just outraged at the supposed conservative bigotry against Barack Obama. This "most monstrous bigotry" isn’t just about race, but also religion.