In less than six months since his column began, the New York Times had already issued at least three corrections for factual errors in Bill Kristol columns.

Today, he's given his editors another reason to keep their red pens close at hand.

Kristol's assertion that the 9/11 attacks "did not result in a much-feared (by intellectuals) wave of popular Islamophobia or xenophobia" in this country will surely come a surprise to the millions of Mulisms and immigrants in this country.

This goes against plentiful data and the lived experience of Muslims, Arab Americans and immigrants in our country.

Many Muslim Americans reported increased hostility toward them after 9/11. Shockingly, Kristol's "non-existent" Islamophobia and xenophobia have also proved deadly for a number of Americans who became victims of hate crimes after 9/11. (See Divided We Fall for a moving account of this painful reality. Disclosure: a friend of mine worked on the film).

On its surface, Kristol's column reads as a populist critique of out-of-touch "elites" who don't trust the people they claim to speak for (unpacking the irony of making that charge from the opinion page of the New York Times would need a blog post of its own). His obliviousness to the post-9/11 reality in this country, however, has shown him to be just as out of touch and elitist as the public figures he rails against.

For Kristol, "the people" seem to be the people who look, think and act like him. No wonder he trusts their judgment.