"This is William Kristol’s last column." What a shock! Is January over already?

Conservative nepotism beneficiary Bill Kristol became the resident Times Op-Ed conservative in January of 2008, with a one-year "tryout" contract. This provided all the time he needed to get the entire Obama election story wrong, every week. Kristol reliably and consistently wrote whatever the opposite of truth and reality was, in every column, and his disconnect from reality was so great and so embarrassing that he was considered a dead columnist walking from about June onwards. That is before the Sarah Palin debacle! Kristol was almost as responsible as John McCain's staff for foisting that woman on us, cheerleading her brief rise and happily ignoring her descent into ridicule.

Soon Kristol was using his column to call on John McCain to fire his entire staff and let Sarah Palin be Sarah Palin, which may have made the last month of the campaign even more entertaining, probably, but it wasn't anything approaching realistic or useful advice for anyone but Fox News bookers.

And so, today, his last column for the Times, completely without fanfare. It is about how the conservative era is dead and how Obama will bring back the Fightin' Liberals of the FDR era, back before liberals were all big vaginas like Jimmy Carter, who the vigorous and manly Ronald Reagan once personally slapped in the face. (In the classic 1964 film The Killers.)

"All good things must come to an end. Jan. 20, 2009, marked the end of a conservative era."

There is a bit about how Obama quoted Thomas Paine but didn't say he was quoting Thomas Paine, because as we all know, Thomas Paine is a controversial conservative, unlike cuddly liberal teddy bear George Washington, but FDR, who had balls, quoted Thomas Paine and told everyone he was quoting Thomas Paine, and then he beat the Nazis!

Also there are some bits about how Conservatives have been right about everything since 1980, up until now, and all their policies and things worked, and fixed America, which is why the Conservative Era is now over. And also Obama will save liberalism, or bring on the new liberal era, even though he is secretly pro-American, which means Conservative, obv.

Way to go out on a high note, Bill.

But who will be the next conservative Times columnist? Is it supposed to be Bono?