Kristof "grew up on a sheep and cherry farm in Yamhill, Ore." That sounds wonderful.
October 14, 2021
"But you all know how much I love Oregon, and how much I’ve been seared by the suffering of old friends there. So I’ve reluctantly concluded that I should try not only to expose problems but also see if I can fix them directly."
Writes Nicholas Kristof, quoted in "Nicholas Kristof Leaves New York Times as He Considers a Political Run/Mr. Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is weighing a run for governor of Oregon, the state where he grew up" (NYT).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
56 comments:
Oregon has been run by a Democrat Governor who is only leaving the job due to term limits.
What kind of suffering does he see? The lack of another Democrat to replace her?
He couldn't due much worse than the current governor.
Growing up on a farm around animals and fruit groves is hard demanding 24/7/365 work and constant dice rolling with nature. Growing up next to the beach or ski slopes is fun.
All depending on your family of course...
He needs to run for responsible local office first, like county commissioner or something. Or get on the planning board. That's where the rubber meets the road.That's usually enough to cure you of higher ambitions.
But no, only the top position for this guy. He'll find out that writers for elite publications have zero visibility to ordinary voters.
Our mayor here was this useless fat guy who wrote a humor column for the local paper about, well, being a fat guy.
Oh, and in his copious spare time he went around to every fundraiser for every group in town to do his spiel and help them raise money. Then ran for council.
We'll never get rid of him.
Well...normally at this point I'd say in a snarky way,what could go wrong? But given the current Governor is Kate Brown, and their major city is now a shithole that no business wants to be part of, I'd say any change in Governor is a positive for Oregon.
I look forward to other Times reporters leaving New York to run entire states around the country. Should be eye-opening.
Sheep and cherries...think of all the flatulence...
If you reluctantly run for governor, you'll find hordes of people reluctant to vote for you.
I am sure his time at the NYT pedaling debunked conspiracy theories like Russian Collusion and that Hunters laptop was Russian disinformation will prepare him well for government "service."
I spent a summer doing agricultural work when I was 14, about 10 miles from Yamhill. It was wonderful.
Portland in the mid 70s was a great place to live (well, apart from the rain) but they were politically squirrely even then (not even, exactly, leftist, they were just downright odd). I guess it's not surprising that it eventually caught up with them.
Oregon embodies just about every principle found in NYT's editorials. Perfectly blue in all aspects. What on earth could he offer that would be different?
'Seared by the suffering of old friends there.'
In other words, "If I can fake enough sincerity, I should be able to get into office and get my hands on the loot also."
What's he bringing to the table as far as ability to govern goes? Two Pulitzers and a career writing for the NYT is pretty thin material to build a campaign on if you're wanting to govern a state.
I picked cherries in Michigan, and you get tired of them very quickly. They allowed you to eat all you want. The only rule was you have to finish picking any tree you start. No picking from just the accessible branches.
You got a card punch for each bucket, and money for punches at the end of the day.
A cousin recently decided to leave Oregon and move back to New Jersey.
Need I say more?
There's a LOT of really good Pinot Noir, and Merlot that comes out of the Yamhill neighborhood today.
So I’ve reluctantly concluded that I should try not only to expose problems but also see if I can fix them directly.
I have good intentions.
The Education of N*I*C*H*O*L*A*S K*R*I*S*T*O*F
I guess we'll see if he can go home. I suspect he'll be surprised at the strength and depth of radical views that are nothing like the polite liberal views that he grew up with.
Carpetbagger?
If he hasn't lived in Oregon for decades, is he really an Oregonian?
When you're in politics, it's helps to know a lot about sheep.
I heard this in the voice of Stuart Smalley.
I lived in Eugene, Oregon, during my high-school and college years, and I lived there again during 1998-1999. All my siblings still live in Oregon and Washington state.
Oregon's a nice place, but my fantasy is to move back to Seward, Nebraska, where I lived through my sophomore year of high school. I was there in July for my 50-year high-school reunion, and I still love that town more than any other place.
-----
One thing that I remember about Kristof's journalism is that he publicly begged for someone in the IRS to leak Trump's tax returns to him. In other words, he urged US Government officials to break the law and to violate a citizen's legal privacy. Keep that in mind when you think about Kristof being a state governor.
Years ago I read his review of Jung Chang's bio of Mao in the NYT Book Reviews. He claimed that Jung Chang had exaggerated Mao's body count. He said that Mao had only killed about twenty million as opposed to the fifty or so million Jung Chang claimed that he killed. WTF.... He also pointed out that women have more rights in China than the women in Japan. Probably that does not include newborn infant females who have a tendency to die on hillsides in China. I don't know whether Jung Chang considered all those murdered liveborn females in her body count but that might account for some of the discrepancy.....Who searches for a balanced view of Hitler's accomplishments versus his flaws? The same rule ought to apply to Mao. Kristof is a jerk.
There are a couple of cherry orchards and at least one walnut and one olive orchard, but most all the crop trees are hazelnut. As for hillsides with sheep? Now Vineyards. Yamhill is the epicenter of world class Oregon Pimot and Chard. My favs?
- Ayoub
- Alexana
- Ken Wright
oh, and our Governor is an idiot
If Kristof is the savior Oregon gets, then Oregon is truly and well fucked.
Nick's gonna run for governor.
Hard to believe but Oregon probably hasn't yet had its fill of leftist government.
Oregon is now a deep blue state. And like Calf, a small number of high level D party officials decide who gets the office. The D voters are just libtard sheep who follow the party line and vote for who they're given. They count for nothing.
Does the NYT guy have friends in the upper levels of the D party? Will he be their hand picked candidate? If so, he will win. If not, he will lose.
Hmmm. I know that Kristoff grew up in Yamhill -- he has written a couple of moving NYT Op-Ed pieces on one Yamhill family, every single member of which is dead (shot, killed in a meth-lab explosion, &c.) or in prison. And I think the nation might be better served with Kristof replacing Kate Brown than with him continuing at the NYT.
Kristof would be a good fit for Oregon. Lefties should cluster in lefty states like that.
Oregon doesn't need more Democrats.
He's a carpet bagger. I grew up in Southern California and still have family down there. I visit once in a while. That doesn't make me a Californian. Kristol's feelings don't make him an Oregonian.
What other complex high level job of significance and importance can be competently and successfully done with zero related experience? Not counting President of the United States of America of course.
At least he can get a book out of the experience. I doubt he understands politics in practice, so it will be interesting to see how it goes, if it goes.
Rhodes Scholar. Noblesse oblige.
A Portland couple will be renting the top floor of the house we're renting (we're renting the bottom floor). I haven't met them yet, but I speculate that they're getting out of Portland while the getting out is still good.
As long as Portland treats antifa like royalty, I'm never spending another penny in Portland.
The Portland City Council is peopled by left-wing wackos. Jo Anne Hardesty hates the police and would vote to zero-out their budget. She's so left wing she makes Kate Brown look right-wing. She was briefly a person of interest in an hit-and-run. She flipped out when the police bureau announced that. After a few hours, the PPB determined it wasn't her car involved in the hit-and-run and dropped her from the investigation. She still wants head to roll for her brief part of the story.
I'm getting a George McGovern "I tried to open a bed and breakfast in South Dakota but discovered the horrible impact of all the laws I'd helped pass over the years" vibe.
My dad and stepmom got out of Portland earlier this year. They have land in eastern Oregon and were hoping to wait until dad finished building his house. Instead they're renting a smaller place over there. They could read the writing on the wall.
I don't know that much about Portland, but I love the Benson.
Kristoff couldn’t possibly be worse than the current Governor or, for that matter, anyone else likely to be nominated by the Democratic Party. The GOP in Oregon, so far as I can tell from my short time living here, is “just resting,” like the parrot in Monty Python.
Pining for the fjords, yes. Still, if the run forced him to live in Salem, it might do some good. Salem is basically the reddish dot in the blueish half of a half-blue state. It might be more fun if he were made to live in, say, Pendleton, or even Bend, but Salem will do for practical purposes.
Now Vineyards. Yamhill is the epicenter of world class Oregon Pimot and Chard. My favs?
Rex Hill and A-to-Z vineyards.
We were able to find A-to-Z at neighborhood markets just behind the hotels on E. Wacker Drive in Chicago.....which surprised me!
Antifa (just an idea) thugs rule the streets of downtown Portland with the permission of the radical leftists who are voted into office.
Good luck with that.
Jessica Gomez, a mom and latina tech entrepeneur/CEO in Medford, is running for the GOP nomination, and is also a political newcomer. After 37 uninterrupted years of Democratic governors, her positions feel like a breath of fresh Rogue Valley air.
Sounds like some of the commenters will be holding Kristof's beer.
Kristoff couldn’t possibly be worse than the current Governor or, for that matter, anyone else likely to be nominated by the Democratic Party.
Now, that's damning with faint praise. Bravo!
madAsHell said...
Now Vineyards. Yamhill is the epicenter of world class Oregon Pimot and Chard. My favs?
Rex Hill and A-to-Z vineyards.
their Pinot Gris is great value and a national brand, but they don't come close to world class. Go to the Dundee hills or yamhill AVAs.
as for being a BLUE state, 20-30% of the state is brilliant BLUE, but 60% so RED, it wants to merge with Idaho. very schizoid out here
Kristof doesn't mention that his shepherd father and his cherry picker mother were tenured professors at Portland State.
To me, he seems like the worst possible candidate. Part Gavin Newsom, part Michael Ignatieff, who became leader of Canada's Liberal Party after decades of living outside of Canada and, not surprisingly, led his party to its worst defeat ever.
But unfortunately Blue State voters like candidates like Kristof. He has the right resume, he's punched the right tickets, and he's sort of handsome. Like John F. Kennedy or John Lindsay, I guess.
I’m sure that Kristof can capitulate to Antifa as effectively as any other Democrat.
That's a novel way of announcing you've been fired.
Like saying you want to spend more time with your family.
Nicholas Kristof would have to make a real effort to be worse than Kate Brown as governor.
For the sake of accuracy and given Kristof's leftist mindset, he should run on the "LLR Ticket".
“Nicholas Kristof would have to make a real effort to be worse than Kate Brown as governor.”
I think he’s got it in him to race right to the bottom.
Kristof’s grotesque denial of millions of murders and his early silence on female infanticide in China should have ended his journalistic empathy tours decades ago. He out-Durantied Duranty.
Weirdly, what he has so far put forward as a platform sounds like Trump: concern for the left-behind rural and industrial workers and drug blighted lives. But that would involve denouncing every single policy he’s promoted for decades. It would involve endorsing a wall, denouncing globalization, and enforcing law and order.
He’s no Victor Davis Hansen.
“Nicholas Kristof would have to make a real effort to be worse than Kate Brown as governor.”
"I think he’s got it in him to race right to the bottom."
Well all he has to do is get the vote in city of Portland/Multnomah County. The population is concentrated there. The rest of the state has to go along with what Portland wants.
No. Absolutely not. I prefer to vote for a potato, and I will. I will write in "Mr. Potato Head" on my ballot.
Kristof has never run for office, and he has no idea how to lead anything. My state is already messed up enough to let a complete novice mess it up even more.
No, go away, I don't care what you think about China or sweatshops or anything else. Oregon is a state in the United States of Reality, and you don't have any good reason to be governor other than you want to.
Post a Comment