Just because I think that the New York Times should leave vacant the opinion-columnist position just evacuated by William Kristol doesn't mean I think he's irreplaceable. He's completely replaceable: I can name a thousand bloggers who filed better copy daily during the year Kristol wrote weekly for the Times. Why did his work reek? He's a good writer, a smart thinker, well-connected, and a dazzling smiler. Was he being deliberately perverse about the gig, trying to test the crap-acceptance threshold of the Times with his copy? Or just lazy? That's my guess. Has any big-league columnist put less effort into his pieces than Kristol? If he labored more than 45 minutes on the average piece, I'd be astonished.Posted by Stephen Silver at February 5, 2009 08:33 PM