THE DORK KRISTOL. Now that Ross Douthat has the Billy Kristol Chair in Applied Bullshit at NYT, I have supplied my dozens of Voice readers with a primer. Longtime followers of alicublog will already be familiar with his schtick. I noticed in looking back that I haven't written so much about Douthat lately, though I regularly scan him for material; this suggests to me that he has been playing it cool, gibberish-wise, in case the Times people were actually reviewing his work before deciding.

I suspect the Times was mainly attracted to Douthat's difference-splitting side -- his Grand New Party and "an intellectually healthy American Right that's influenced by Rod Dreher and the Cato Institute" side -- which gave them confidence that his Times columns would have enough conservative dog-whistles in them to keep that crowd happy, and be so full of fake outreach and fudging that no one reading them for sense would understand them sufficiently to be offended.