William Kristol is apparently ambivalent about his future at the New York Times (according to Jeff Bercovici he was obviously embarrassed to be introduced at yesterday's IFC panel as a Times columnist). Kristol, whose hiring by the Times earlier this year was met with great criticism, had this to say regarding his Times contract, which is up for renewal in January: "I'm ambivalent. It's been fun. It's a lot of work. I have a lot of things going on. But I haven't really focused on it." Uh huh, we are skeptical that anyone could truly be that ambivalent about giving up the most coveted op-ed real estate in newspapers, but maybe Kristol is trying to make a graceful-ish exit. That said, the New Yorker's George Packer thinks Kristol's ambivalence is exactly why the Times should give him the boot:

The real grounds for firing Kristol are that he didn't take his column seriously. In his year on the Op-Ed page, not one memorable sentence, not one provocative thought, not one valuable piece of information appeared under his name.