I disagree. This makes perfect sense, in the rarified air of the WSJ offices.

The WSJ has proven itself to be distainful of "ordinary folk" over and over again, exemplified by its condescending attitude toward anyone who dares question the Journal's open borders advocacy. Proponents of border security and immigration control are routinely dismissed, as if they were ignorant rubes, flyover country hicks, and know-nothings. So it makes perfect sense for the elitists at the WSJ to hire a purveyor of similar ideas.

Thomas Frank makes condescension into an art form. Bad art, like the equally elitist city hall Picasso foisted off onto the artistic wannabees who run Chicago, but art nonetheless.

This art form is quite appealing to many. Witness Barack Obama's comments about the forlorn gun-totin' bible-thumpin' lower class losers of Pennsylvania.

No, the WSJ has done nothing surprising here at all. Except, perhaps, to startle people who have obliviously assumed the publication to be conservative in nature.

I wonder if people like Kristol, and now Murdoch, have a corner office many many cubicles away from the rest of the think tank.

On a lighter note...
Larry King just signed a contract extension until 2011.
I thought he'd lost it long ago. Not sure what CNN's thinking there!
How old is that guy anyway?

("Do you even know who I am?")

Oh, dear! Larry King's sell-by date expired in the mid-1940s. The few times I've seen his act it's been just embarrassing to watch, the Seinfeld incident being just one particularly egregious example among many. In a further bow to their liberal overlords, CNN just hired on Tony Snow. My WSJ subscription has lapsed; I do miss it, but it's an expensive indulgence.

And between this comment and his perspective on the Ben-Ami column, I've quite given up on responding to Redbeard. All I can do is marvel at the parallel universe he inhabits.

Ben-Ami is a leftist, his opinions are those of a leftist, and any critique of those opinions must take those factors into account.

Tangentially, it's disappointing that my opinion is being relegated to a "parallel universe." I did hope we were venturing into a different realm of civility on this blog.

So did I. But you dismissively characterized as “an extreme leftist” a former very highly placed Israeli official, including as you did a laughably gross and deliberately sensationalized distortion of his views.

If "any critique of [his] opinions must take" his supposed extreme leftness into account, say what you think marks him as an "extreme leftist" (Israel's Minister of Security?) and take it into account. Just don't let that be the sum total of your critique: "I call him an extreme leftist. There, that's done."

Then you ridiculously insist the WSJ, whose editorial page has marked the epicenter of conservative opinion, is not conservative. (I really wish you'd distinguish between a paper's reporting and its editorial policies, but you seem really determined that fact can't be separated from opinion.)

Sorry, Red, yours is just not a universe I recognize.