it was all in vane

Media Bistro reports that Time magazine will be laying off two dozen employees including some senior staff.  Unfortunately, none of them is Joe Klein.  Nope, these layoffs target the consumer marketing department.  Apparently, managing editor Richard Stengel is sticking to his plan as outlined in the WaPo last May:

Stengel, 51, said that he sees Time, the top-selling newsmagazine, as "a guide through the media chaos" and that he hopes to hire and develop more "star writers" in the mold of columnist Joe Klein. As a "writer's editor," he said, "I'd like us to have a stronger point of view about things."

Ah, yes, and what greater champion of "a stronger point of view" could we have than Joe Klein, the man whose moral compass is so wonky that he gets lost in the bathtub?  Well, clearly Stengel's plan is reaping the whirlwind if they're having to do a set of personnel cuts right before Christmas like this. 

Funny, I was just thinking about Joe Klein today.  Atrios pointed me to a Greg Sargent piece that details Joke Line's latest about-face on the Iraq War.

Sargent:

As Atrios has noted, six months ago Klein wrote this:

What can the Democrats do? They can play politics or be responsible. The political option is to embrace "cut and run"; call for an immediate withdrawal, as Kerry did; and hope the public is so sick of Bush and sick of the war that it will punish the g.o.p. in the fall. But embracing defeat is a risky political strategy, especially for a party not known for its warrior ethic. In fact, the responsible path is the Democrats' only politically plausible choice: they will have to give yet another new Iraqi government one last shot to succeed.

Right.  So, in other words, six months ago to call for a withdrawal from Iraq was to "cut and run" and "embrace defeat", a course of action Joe painted as "political" and slightly less palatable than eating a litter of live kittens.  To Klein's thinking at the time, the only "responsible" way to quit Iraq was to take another massive gamble on yet another makeshift Iraqi government.

Kleiny's such a mensch to carry all that heavy water for the Republicans, isn't he?  With "democrats" like Joe Klein, why on earth does Tom DeLay need a blog?

Well, somewhere in the intervening six months, Klein has suffered a sea change in his views on Iraq, but buries the evidence in the closing paragraphs of his November 25th column: 

JOE KLEIN "EMBRACES DEFEAT," CALLS FOR WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ.

At least, that's what it seems like Joe Klein has now done. Check out these passages buried in his latest column just posted on Time magazine's site:

And so we have reached the point where there is only one meaningful decision left for George W. Bush in Iraq: what to do with our troops there.... Now, finally, the uniformed brass seem poised to speak more candidly. But that doesn't make a military solution to this disaster any more plausible. "You know, we're trained to complete the mission," a senior military officer told me. "And that's our reflex reaction, to come up with a can-do plan—'Here's how you fix it, sir!' But we may lack perspective now. The situation may be reaching the point of no return." Indeed, the best advice for the military to give the President at this point may not be how to "win" in Iraq—but how to withdraw creatively...

Are you sure you want to say that, Mr. Klein?  What will your bipartisan (translation: "Republican Owned and Operated") buddies on the cocktail weenie circuit say about your rush to Cut and Run and Let the Terrorists Win?  Did you mention this to your BFF Joe Lieberman before he went over to Iraq with St. John of Arc to swan around the Green Zone and call for more troops? 

I guess we should give credit where credit is due and celebrate Mr. Klein's arrival at the Reality Based table on the issue of Iraq, but I'm not sitting next to him.  We should probably just set aside a group of chairs for Klein, Wonkette, and Andrew Sullivan.  The three of them can get tanked on appletinis and talk Time shop while they congratulate themselves on being so much better and smarter than everyone else that their magazine would completely shut down without them, and then what would all of us hapless peons do without these fine, estimable opinionati to tell us what to think?

Actually, come to think of it, if those three are coming to the table, I think I'm just going to stay home and order in.  I had crap for lunch, thanks.