"The real grounds for firing Kristol are that he didn’t take his column seriously."

"In his year on the Op-Ed page, not one memorable sentence, not one provocative thought, not one valuable piece of information appeared under his name."

Is that fair? What about the time he said "What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over" — 3 weeks before election day? "McCain can make the substantive case for his broadly centrist conservatism." That was provocative.

UPDATE: From the NYT:

“It was mutual agreement,” Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor, said in an interview. “We discussed this before the election, and decided that we would end now.”

As for whether The Times would find another conservative voice for its Op-Ed page, Mr. Rosenthal said: “Sadly, I can’t answer that question, except to say stay tuned. We have some interesting plans.”

That article uses the same quote I used above in my post title. So maybe the NYT is reading this, perhaps to consider me as a replacement for Kristol. I did temp there once, on the op-ed page, you know. In any case, the quote is from the New Yorker's George Packer, and I suddenly remember I have a feud with that guy... not that I remember the reason. Oh, here.

ADDED: A little straight talk. Kristol wasn't an exciting, traffic-winning commentator, like Dowd or Rich. Even in a conservative, the NYT has to demand that. It's a dog-eat-dog world here in political media, and the employees of the NYT, however glorified, must drag in the readers. How you do that with mere words, who knows? But it must be done, and the employers must demand it.