Forbes magazine’s version of America’s 25 most influential liberal commentators cracked the guffaw meter last week. Bill Kristol’s move to Fred Hiatt’s house (h/t Think Progress), is a good reason to laugh at it again. Putting Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman as No. 1 seems accurate. Others, Bill Moyers, James Fallows, Josh Marshall, Ezra Klein deserved mention, too. Naming Fred Hiatt, Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman as liberals was what broke the guffaw meter.

Awarding Hiatt third place and Friedman fourth seems part of a continuing campaign to move the terms of reference as far right as possible. It’s a routine bit of propaganda from a magazine that trumpets free market economics and clean coal as if they exist, and which assumes that top management’s wealth is a function of business acumen, as opposed to the ability to game the system through somnolent boards of directors and lobbyists’ influence.

As for Hiatt, a guy who thinks Deborah Howell performed well as his readers’ ombudspeson is a laugh. Hiatt never met a Bush policy he wouldn’t date and his editorials praised them all. He is about as progressive and factually accurate as Bill Kristol. Unsurprisingly, he found Kristol so entrancing — or owes his neocon mentors so many favors — that he hired him away from the NY Times, which proves that in this economy, even the wealthy and powerful need garage sales to make ends meet.

The Times should have taken a hint from the Yankees, and done us all a favor, by trading Kristol to Hiatt for Dan Froomkin, three first round draft picks, and two of Hiatt’s grandchildren. That would have been close to an even trade.