The Con Man and His Pet Columnist (Brutal Takedown of NYT's Nicholas Kristof)

Commentary ^ | June 2011 | James Kirchick

[mojito]

When Greg Mortenson—the Montana nurse who earned worldwide fame with his campaign to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan and then recounted the tale in his mammoth international bestseller Three Cups of Tea—was exposed as a fraud in April, there was one prominent media figure he could count on for support: the Pulitzer-prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

“One of the people I’ve enormously admired in recent years is Greg Mortenson,” Kristof wrote in his April 20 column. While conceding that the accusations against Mortenson “raised serious questions,” Kristof countered that “it’s indisputable that Greg has educated many thousands of children, and he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.” He acknowledged that Mortenson gave “a blurb for my most recent book, Half the Sky, and I read his book Three Cups of Tea to my daughter.”

[mojito]

The con men certainly know who likes to live in the world of make believe.

The article is a long one, but well worth reading for the brutal eviseration of Mortenson, the Times, Kristof, the Obama administration, and sanctimonious liberal foreign policy in general. It's a target-rich environment, and Kirchick is emptying all his clips.

I've particularly despised Kristof for a number of years now, so it's satisfying to know that there are others who find this pompous prig as insufferable as I do.

[Siena Dreaming]

Mortensen claimed in his book to despise the Taliban, but in the next breath he's excoriate the US Military who were the ones who got rid of them so he could do his work.

There were lots of inconsistencies in Mortensen's writing. Never thought he was a hero, but more a bohemian coming from a liberal-missionary family trying to find a cause.

[Jim Scott]

Nicholas Kristof is like most leftists, carrying unwarranted guilt for being born and raised in a free, affluent nation - the United States of America. They spend most of their life railing against it in some form. Always anti-military and subscribing to Utopian dreams that are mere fantasies. They are often well-educated (Kristof is a Harvard man), make a good living as professors and/or writers,among other professions, constantly criticizing America with a special disdain for the middle class, which they consider little more than peasants with the trappings of civilization. I’ve long tired of these tedious people with their pretensions and predictably vapid commentaries on ‘social justice’ that they spew on liberal websites and TV networks. Kristof isn’t the worst of these posers but he is certainly near the top.

[Joe Brower]

Kristof is a textbook case of liberal cognitive dissonance. A prime example has been his long-held derision towards our military actions in Iraq, which trades places in his weekly column with his entreaties for U.S. military action in Sudan.

His double-standards are as big and glaring as the sun in the sky, and he just can't see it. Ergo, I have no interest in anything he has to say.

[Dr. Thorne]

That’s going to leave a mark, hopefully on Kristof’s effete ego.

[Fishtalk]

Wow.

Just wow.

First, this article, which I read every word, reminds me of another, very similar story from my own childhood.

I was around 12 years old. the books was “The Ugly American”.

I was such a naive lass, full of good thoughts and, of course, love.

I read that book and decided, right away, I would join The Peace Corps...yes I would.

Because the ugly Americans built a beautiful 6 lane highway through the jungles of Cambodia or some such. Whilst meanwhile little old hump-back Cambodian women were sweeping their floors with tiny little brooms which contributed more to their agony of the curving backbone.

They needed me, so my 12 year old self thought. They needed me to wrest away the small brooms and give those suffering woman a decent-sized brooms. They needed me to tear down the big unused highways through leafy jungles and provide trails for better traversing of the region.

The whole book was one big lie, something I didn’t discover until grown into my 20’s.

This is an example of a couple of evil liberals using people’s good intentions to their own advantage.

The bigger problem is they have this big platform...the NYTimes being one, to publish their lies.

Just awful....just awful.

Really good article.

[aruanan]

Whilst meanwhile little old hump-back Cambodian women were sweeping their floors with tiny little brooms which contributed more to their agony of the curving backbone.

I remember a missionary telling about giving out full sized brooms so the African women wouldn't have to crouch to sweep. They held the new brooms so that the handle jutted up under their arms above their backs as they crouched to sweep with the new brooms.

[Fishtalk]

You can’t make it up.

But I bought into it, hook, line and proverbial sinker.

Useful Idiots....isn’t that what they’re called?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks mojito.

When Greg Mortenson -- the Montana nurse who earned worldwide fame with his campaign to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan and then recounted the tale in his mammoth international bestseller Three Cups of Tea -- was exposed as a fraud in April, there was one prominent media figure he could count on for support: the Pulitzer-prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

Mortenson will be the Demwits' nominee for the presidency in 2016.

[Brad from Tennessee]

FROM THE COLUMN: Kristof’s leeriness of American power fits hand in glove with his meliorist view of radical Islam. That perspective was no better displayed than in his review last year of the Somali-born ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s memoir, Nomad. Entitled “The Gadfly,” Kristof’s notice belittled this unimaginably brave woman, who lives under 24-hour security protection thanks to the death threats from Islamists, for having the gall to write about Islam as she experienced it. As to Hirsi Ali’s suggestion that it was her family’s Islamist beliefs that led them to abuse her (up to and including the mutilation of her clitoris and labia as a young girl), Kristof offered this astonishing riposte: “Perhaps Hirsi Ali’s family is dysfunctional because its members never learned to bite their tongues and just say to one another: ‘I love you.’”

[DB]

“Fake but accurate” is the world the left chooses to live in... Truth is whatever feels good...