Times' Kristol Also Thinks Charlie Gibson Was Like a Teacher

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By Matt Haber

September 15, 2008 | 10:22 a.m.

Kristol: What, Me Wordy?

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Last week, Media Mob took note of a new cliché used by critics, pundits, and journalists to describe the dynamic between Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin and ABC News' Charlie Gibson. Apparently some thought he was very much like a teacher or a professor.

Today, late the party, comes The New York Times' William Kristol, a writer who never met a cliché he didn't like. (In January, The Atlantic's James Fallows noted "the breathtaking banality of expression" in Mr. Kristlol's column.)

Here's what Mr. Kristol writes of Ms. Palin's ascendency (after his two Times' colleagues Jim Rutenberg and Alessandra Stanley made the same reference last week):

The media establishment was horrified. Its members expressed their disapproval. Palin became more popular. They got even more frustrated. And so we had the spectacle last week of ABC’s Charlie Gibson, one of the most civil of the media bigwigs, unable to help himself from condescending to Palin as if he were a senior professor forced to waste time administering a Ph.D. exam to a particularly unpromising graduate student.

Likening Ms. Palin to a graduate student made Mr. Kristol a lot kinder to to the candidate: Slate's Jack Shafer compared her to a remedial social studies student.