I always knew David Brooks was an asshole ....

that's from the wacky REAL ECONOMICS book (I totally forget the real name and author, he makes a bunch of broad assumptions from economic data), isn't it? The link is specious, certainly not causal and has some severely troubling overtones (ie ignore the link between poverty and crime, instead cheer on poor folks aborting their criminal progeny, etc.)

Yes, he has a point there, but his argument is no different than arguing against Blacks & Women getting the right to vote. We could very well be having the same contention over many other subjects. (“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.” -Lott)

But as near as I can tell they are basically a couple of big fat neocons with some gee-whiz mathematical gizmos.

The very little I've read makes your view look spot on to me with a little PJ O'Rourke BS mixed in for color.

uhhhh

old idea

I think it would be a lot more interesting to have a thread on Steven Levitt, FWIW.

David Brooks is way way too harmless and bumbling to ever seem like much of an "asshole." I mean, this is a guy who spent the fall getting regularly PWNED by Mark Shields, of all people. On PBS. Every now and then he dredges up a sentence that can almost pretend to be incendiary, but for the most part he's a total softy, a socially-"bobo" centrist who seems almost geezery and apologetic about his actual geek-conservatism. He's like if Richard Roeper grew up Bush.

all of whom are criminals, obv. one factor may be sufficient, but the combination seems to increase the likelihood.

Whereas the red states - coincidentally restricted in abortion - have more rural poverty. The rural poor didn't have as many alleviating social changes over the past decade or two. So is it any shock, say, that their rates of drug abuse (crime) stayed steady or rose?

Then there's also have the other, more disturbing facet of the reasoning (as nabisco alluded to) - lower crime is good, crime rates are highest among the poor, abortion lowers crime rates - aborting the poor lowers crime and is therefore good. It makes it easier, even unconsciously, to dehumanize and criminalize the poor.

My big problem problem with Levitt (maybe his academic research is better, but his pop-cult economics is what I've seen) is that it extrapolates a great deal from very little and then makes broad, ill-informed pronouncements from the data. ie it's the type of shit that belongs in a humor book or PJ O'Rourke column.

Everyone loves to quote the "abortion lowers crime" blurb but no one seems bothered to actually read what the man wrote in his book.

Fuck David Brooks, why are we talking about him? Also yeah can people start reposting NYT articles? I refuse to BUY a David Goddamn Brooks article.

Because you are president, you are briefed each day on terrorist threats to this country. These briefings are as psychologically intense as an episode of "24," with descriptions of specific bad guys and their activities.

This has had a cumulative effect on your psychology. While many of your fellow citizens have relaxed as 9/11 has faded into history, you don't have that luxury. Your briefings, and some terrifying false alarms that haven't been made public, keep you in a perpetual state of high alert.

You know that one of the few advantages we have over the terrorists is technological superiority. You are damned sure you are going to use every geek, every computer program and every surveillance technique at your disposal to prevent a future attack. You have inherited the FISA process to regulate this intelligence gathering. It's a pretty good process. FISA judges usually issue warrants quickly and, when appropriate, retroactively.

But the FISA process has shortcomings. First, it's predicated on a division between foreign and domestic activity that has been rendered obsolete by today's mobile communications methods. Second, the process still involves some cumbersome paperwork and bureaucratic foot-dragging. Finally, the case-by-case FISA method is ill suited to the new information-gathering technologies, which include things like automated systems that troll through vast amounts of data looking for patterns, voices and chains of contacts.

Over time you've become convinced that these new technologies, which are run by National Security Agency professionals and shielded from political influence, help save lives. You've seen that these new surveillance techniques helped foil an attack on the Brooklyn Bridge and bombing assaults in Britain. The question is, How do you regulate the new procedures to protect liberties?

Your aides present you with three options. First, you can ask Congress to rewrite the FISA law to keep pace with the new technologies. This has some drawbacks. How exactly do you write a law to cope with this fast-changing information war? Even if you could set up a procedure to get warrant requests to a judge, how would that judge be able to tell which of the thousands of possible information nodes is worth looking into, or which belongs to a U.S. citizen? Swamped in the data-fog, the courts would just become meaningless rubber-stamps. Finally, it's likely that some member of Congress would leak details of the program during the legislative process, thus destroying it.

Your second option is to avoid Congress and set up a self-policing mechanism using the Justice Department and the N.S.A.'s inspector general. This option, too, has drawbacks. First, it's legally dubious. Second, it's quite possible that some intelligence bureaucrat will leak information about the programs, especially if he or she hopes to swing a presidential election against you. Third, if details do come out and Congressional leaders learn you went around them, there will be blowback that will not only destroy the program, but will also lead to more restrictions on executive power.

Your third option is informal Congressional oversight. You could pull a few senior members of Congress into your office and you could say: "Look, given the fast-moving nature of this conflict, there is no way we can codify rules about what is permissible and impermissible. Instead we will create a social contract. I'll trust you by telling you everything we are doing to combat terror. You'll trust me enough to give me the flexibility I need to keep the country safe. If we have disagreements, we will work them out in private."

These are your three options, Mr. President, and these are essentially the three options George Bush faced a few years ago. (He chose Option 2.) But before you decide, let me tell you one more thing: Options 1 and 2 won't work, and Option 3 is impossible.

Options 1 and 2 won't work because they lead to legalistic rigidities and leaks that will destroy the program. Option 3 is impossible because it requires trust. It requires that the president and the Congressional leaders trust one another. It requires Democrats and Republicans to trust one another. We don't have that kind of trust in America today.

That leaves you with Option 4: Face the fact that we will not be using our best technology to monitor the communications of known terrorists. Face the fact that the odds of an attack on America just went up.

these "cellular" "telephones" represent a paradigm shift that our founders never intended

Sorry everyone else asked for it. :(

m.

this reminds me of the one bloom county strip where steve dallas cries when he finds out "knight rider" is a children's show.

“One of the things I’ve found in life is that politicians are a lot more sincere than us journalists and we are more sincere than the people that read and watch us.µ

vid here

On "Meet the Press," challenged on an assertion that 10,000 Iraqis will die every month if the U.S. pulls out, The New York Times columnist admits he just picked the number "out of the air."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003615101

I saw the broadcast. He also implied that it's worth losing a few hundred Americans a month if it keeps 10,00,00o,00,000,000 Iraqis from dying. For once Bob Woodward acted like a journalist and went after him.

As much as I hate to defend Brooks, I think this is an unfair "gotcha" slam - he was obviously using the number 10,000 rhetorically to begin with. He's just trying to argue that even more Iraqis will die if we pull out, which may or may not be true but is not exactly an assertion "out of the air."

Given that so many generals, Bushies, neocons, and "experts" have offered their own out-of-the-air assertions since 2002, I'm prepared to slap the shit out of Brooks, especially after that slavish Bush column he wrote last week.

xpost

But Hurting, he's inserting an exact number to make a hypothetical scenario seem like a concrete actuality. Far from the worst of his crimes, but it highlights how slippery his support for his arguments typically is.

In other words, I'd let this go in many other cases, but Brooks deserves to be called out on this.

Ok, but advocates of withdrawal say stuff like "It can't get worse than it already is" all the time, which is just as hypothetical.

Besides, how literal-minded do you have to be to think that David Brooks is claiming to know exactly how many Iraqis will die per month?

Well, he claims to know a lot of stuff that he doesn't!

But regardless, this sort of rhetoric gets those numbers out there as talking points. Soon enough, 10K and 125 become the accepted estimations that you have to argue against.

Should we just keep a running tally of his clueless Obama/"class warfare"/"lakefront liberal" columns that he dribbles out like so much Olean?

F'instance

Perhaps he'll finally reach the point of just doing a find/replace of "Kerry" with "Obama" on his shit from 4 years ago. It would certainly save him effort.

Methinks that lean times at the Times call for a cutback:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/opinion/03brooks.html

actually i kind of liked that column--he's right, all Ward 3'rs hate everyone in Bethesda and Potomac.

I grew up in Ward 3. Maybe the dynamics have changed since I lived there (due to 8 years of republican rule?) but at the time I didn't sense that there was a huge distinction seen between that and Bethesda. Also Ward 3 was full of incredibly intelligent, interesting people who could have made much more money in the private sector and felt some kind of calling to government.

"Nyah, they're just jealous" -- this passes for biting social commentary?

yeah i was kind of kidding--like everything else he writes about he's way over simplified everything. dude is such a goober

ah ok, I think I see the sarcasm now

as far as i can tell brooks never knows if he's kidding or not.

its funny how in their search for a palatable republican the times found the most inane guy in the wrold

http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/images/2007/05/15/david_brooks.jpg

"OK, fine. Let's talk about inanity."

David Brooks is the name of:
David Allen Brooks (born 1947), American film and television actor who played archaeologist Max Eilerson on the science-fiction television series Crusade
David Brooks (author) (born 1953), Australian author of short stories and co-editor for Southerly
David "Bubba" Brooks, American jazz musician
David Brooks (inventor), inventor who patented an innovative insulator for telegraph lines in 1867 while working for the Central Pacific Railroad
David Brooks (journalist) (born 1961), commentator for The New York Times and other publications
David "Mavado" Brooks (musician), Jamaican dancehall artist
David Brooks (murderer) (born 1955), teenaged accomplice of serial killer Dean Corll
David Brooks (politician) (1756–1838), United States representative in the Fifth United States Congress
David Brooks (rugby league), Australian rugby league footballer
David Brooks (rugby union), British rugby union footballer

No results found for "gayvid brooks".

http://www.suepatrick.com/images_home_special/david_brooks.jpg

Maybe this is the David Brooks thread I'm looking for.

Taibbi dissects what has got to be one of the worst things Brooks has written in recent memory.

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/01/27/populism-just-like-racism/

There he was on PBS last night talking about the State of the Union and all I could think about at the time was his error-filled hateful post on Haiti.

Taibbi needs to challenge him to a public debate.

MT really on fire there

It's hard to believe that the same columnist today wrote a piece that channels some sort of "saner Ross Perot" populist that Obama should either become or lose to in 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/opinion/29brooks.html?ref=opinion

in private he wanks to military coups tho

it is a source of amazement in my daily life that this guy is allowed to write anywhere, much less for the nyt

And appear on PBS and NPR.

So he wants a 'Perot' to turn Obama into a Clinton to get rid of the deficit and not do any of those liberal things he thinks are predictable. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

On a minor note, it's A HUGE pet peeve when a writer, usually a columnist, tries to avoid using a cliché by modifying it. Like:

There is a specter haunting America: the specter of a saner, updated version of Ross Perot.

"there is a parrot haunting america: an avian, updated version of phil spector"

he reads like a columnist you'd find in an airplane magazine

it's not even a matter of disagreeing with him--i just don't think he's very bright.

lol or what bnw said!

He's swayed by power and the kind of self-mocking assurance that he wishes he had.

aren't we all

i kind of agree with that column?

i think Obama could use a little crazy Perot/crazy chart stuff right about now

A spectre is haunting Mr. Que.

but i mean Brooks usually drives me crazy with his bullshit

I am so pro-crazy charts

He is slick. He sets up strawmen on the left and right and puts himself in the middle. The problem is his descriptions of the left, right, and middle are never accurate even if he claims to be quoting an informed neutral source.

If you get a deficit-reduction deal, you break through the polarized rigidities that encrust everything else.

Yea like the lobbyists just disappeared and both parties got what their constituents wanted after Clinton reduced the deficit.

He may be an asshole, but he is now the NYT OpEd Page's most fervent Obama supporter! (The company you keep...) And he hit truth here:

To the consternation of many on the left, Obama has continued about 80 percent of the policies of the second Bush term.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/opinion/12brooks.html

Context, bro:

"Take foreign policy. To the consternation of many on the left, Obama has continued about 80 percent of the policies of the second Bush term."

Also, Brooks is an idiot, so "company you keep" applies to people agreeing with his thought process i.e. you.

oic

Democratfascists

eh i actually agreed with that last brooks column

really its Brooks discovering something a year after the rest of the planet again.

Usually a few days after writing a column like that (which he does periodically) he follows up with some knee-jerk neo-con stuff. Its the columns like this one that keep getting him invited back on NPR and PBS, not his ones blaming poor Haitians for their troubles, etc.

He is slick. He sets up strawmen on the left and right and puts himself in the middle.

otm. He's the last bobo in paradise.

David Brooks is back to forecasting election results based on his analysis of suburban voters and his skewed analysis of values--

Moderate suburban voters do not see the world as liberals do, even in the most propitious circumstances, and never will.

Bitterly and too late, Dr. Faustus recognized that economic policies are about values. If your policies undermine personal responsibility by separating the link between effort and reward, voters will punish you for it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/opinion/22brooks.html?src=me&ref=general

why does this guy still have a job

clearly you don't understand moderate suburban voters

those damn bobos in paradise

His literary perspective has made him a more fully rounded person than most of the people one finds in this business. Unlike many Americans, he seems to completely trust his desire for pleasure, and has been open about his delight in sex, drink, friendship and wordplay.

Brooks on Christopher Hitchens. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/opinion/02brooks.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage

Many Americans do not delight in friendship?

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency

Dean Baker versus David Brooks(who attacks those "high-IQ" types who want more government stimulus now)

Full profile in New York, by the way.

Politically, it’s clear why the White House likes Brooks—he’s the persuadable opposition. “David represents to them the sensible Republican,” says Collins. “If David is convinced, they regard that as a real bi-partisan triumph.” But the special relationship is as much about style as politics. Temperamentally, Brooks and Obama could be twins. They address crises with an almost inhuman calm—an asset at times, but also a liability when the only proper response is emotional. On this, Brooks defends Obama. “You know, people fault President Obama for being passionless sometimes, for being a little too cold,” Brooks said on PBS NewsHour in May. “But when you have a week like this, where you’ve got the Greek situation, the oil spill, you’ve got Times Square, you’ve got floods in Nashville, I think they responded with reasonable speed, but basically with a level of calmness, which is in his nature … This is a good time to have a president like Obama, who’s just steady.”

Working on the new book has strained his easygoing exterior. “It’s like the worst period of my life,” he says. He’s been getting by on four hours of sleep a night. He’s been writing in the basement a lot. Only there can he find solitude. He listens to movie soundtracks to help him concentrate. (Sense and Sensibility is good; he’s sick of Braveheart.)

After nearly three decades of writing, he’d expected the turmoil of churning out prose to fade away. It’s been the opposite. “I think gradually as I go through life I feel it more and more,” he says. “The failures hurt more. The anxiety ratchets up.” It’s not the material anxiety he writes about in magazines and books—kitchens, cars, grills. It’s a writerly anxiety. “The thirst for admiration is like the thirst for money—it’s never-ending,” he says. “You never get to the point where you say, I’ve had enough.”

Who admires him?

Dean Brooks does not quench Brooks' "thirst for admiration":

Demand siders did not believe that $150 billion in annual stimulus from the government could offset the contractionary impact of a reduction in annual spending by the private scctor of $1.2 trillion ($1.2 trillion > $150 billion). That is how demand siders explained the failure of the stimulus to have much impact in reducing the unemployment rate. Perhaps this explanation is too complicated for Mr. Brooks (he repeatedly complains about the high IQs of the demand siders), but it actually seems fairly straightforward. If he wants to be honest, he could at least say that he doesn't understand the demand siders' explanation, rather than asserting that demand siders do not have an explanation.

Dean Baker that is

This guy.

So I sit there in my green jacket, happily chewing on a Twizzler

He arrogantly thinks his watered-down conservative vision for the future is a 3rd path Democratic vision.

god he sucks

Rewriting history-- no mentions of Native Americans, slavery and robber barron excess

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/opinion/07brooks.html?th&emc=th

Next, Platt takes aim at the American dream. When Europeans first settled this continent, they saw the natural abundance and came to two conclusions: that God’s plan for humanity could be realized here, and that they could get really rich while helping Him do it. This perception evolved into the notion that we have two interdependent callings: to build in this world and prepare for the next.

...

The United States once had a Gospel of Wealth: a code of restraint shaped by everybody from Jonathan Edwards to Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Carnegie. The code was designed to help the nation cope with its own affluence. It eroded, and over the next few years, it will be redefined.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12brooks.html?src=me&ref=general

Shocking. He attacks public sector unions and their alleged growth since the '50s without any facts supporting his charges. He also offers no facts re his fantasy '50s government.

OK, on second reading he offers a few facts, but they seem to be carefully chosen so as to ignore other ones.

Many of us would be happy to live with a bigger version of 1950s government: one that ran surpluses and was dexterous enough to tackle long-term problems as they arose. But we don’t have that government. We have an immobile government that is desperately overcommitted in all the wrong ways.

This situation, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, has been the Democratic Party’s epic failure.

This is stupid because Little Bush chose tax cuts rather than surpluses, so even Brooks' own party does the same thing.

You can see a paragon of the Composure Class having an al-fresco lunch at some bistro in Aspen or Jackson Hole. He’s just back from China and stopping by for a corporate board meeting on his way to a five-hundred-mile bike-a-thon to support the fight against lactose intolerance. He is asexually handsome, with a little less body fat than Michelangelo’s David. As he crosses his legs, you observe that they are immeasurably long and slender. He doesn’t really have thighs. Each leg is just one elegant calf on top of another. His voice is so calm and measured that he makes Barack Obama sound like Sam Kinison. He met his wife at the Clinton Global Initiative, where they happened to be wearing the same Doctors Without Borders support bracelets. They are a wonderfully matched pair; the only tension between them involves their workout routines. For some reason, today’s high-status men do a lot of running and biking and so only really work on the muscles in the lower half of their bodies. High-status women, on the other hand, pay ferocious attention to their torsos, biceps, and forearms so they can wear sleeveless dresses all summer and crush rocks with their bare hands

From his New Yorker article.

was he furiously jacking off as he wrote that?

That shocking expose took a lot of courage! Next up: a hard-hitting look at why Texas barbecue is better than Vermont barbecue.

When I saw the table of contents, my first thought was, nah, this must be some other David Brooks, right? Then I recalled he wrote that one book that people once talked about before he became an OpEd hack, and wondered: would the New Yorker really give this joker (benign though he may be) a platform for his latest branding exercise? (Answer: alas, yes.)

High-status women, on the other hand, pay ferocious attention to their torsos, biceps, and forearms so they can wear sleeveless dresses all summer and crush rocks with their bare hands

Steely Dan lyric circa Gaucho.

That's actually the better part of the article.

David Brooks obsessively writes about this supposed "class" that I suspect encompasses maybe 1000-10,000 people in the US?

I wonder if he could name 10. I mean he's a journalist so he should be able to, right?

Like how many couples have actually met at the Clinton Global Initiative?

I like the obvious moves to make sure you know this a LIBERAL rich person, so class warfare is a-okay.

This part, otoh, is some of the worst garbage I've ever read in the New Yorker. It's like sub-sub-Gladwell bullshit:

-----

Harold and Erica got their first glimpse of each other in front of a Barnes & Noble. They smiled broadly as they approached, and a deep, primeval process kicked in. Harold liked what he saw, from the waist-to-hip ratio to the clear skin, all indicative of health and fertility. He enjoyed the smile that spread across Erica’s face, and unconsciously noted that the end of her eyebrows dipped down. The orbicularis-oculi muscle, which controls this part of the eyebrow, cannot be consciously controlled, so, when the tip of the eyebrow dips, that means the smile is genuine, not fake.

Erica was impressed by him: women everywhere tend to prefer men who have symmetrical features and are slightly older, taller, and stronger than they are. But she was more guarded and slower to trust than Harold was. That’s in part because, while Pleistocene men could pick their mates on the basis of fertility cues discernible at a glance, Pleistocene women faced a more vexing problem. Human babies require years to become self-sufficient, and a single woman in that environment could not gather enough calories to provide for a family. She was compelled to choose a man not only for insemination but for continued support. That’s why men leap into bed more quickly than women. Various research teams have conducted a simple study. They hire a woman to go up to college men and ask them to sleep with her. More than half the men say yes. Then they have a man approach college women with the same offer. Virtually zero per cent say yes.

So Erica was subconsciously looking for signs of trustworthiness. Marion Eals and Irwin Silverman, of York University, have conducted research suggesting that women are sixty to seventy per cent more proficient than men at remembering details from a scene. In the previous few years, Erica had used her powers of observation to discard entire categories of men as potential partners, and some of her choices were idiosyncratic. She rejected men who wore Burberry, because she couldn’t see herself looking at the same pattern on scarves and raincoats for the rest of her life. She viewed fragranced men the way Churchill viewed the Germans—they were either at your feet or at your throat. She would have nothing to do with men who wore sports-related jewelry, because her boyfriend should not love Derek Jeter more than her.

She looked furtively at Harold as he approached. Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov, of Princeton, have found that we make judgments about a person’s trustworthiness, competence, aggressiveness, and likability within the first tenth of a second. These sorts of first glimpses are astonishingly reliable in predicting how people will feel about each other months later. Erica noticed that Harold was good-looking but not one of those men who are so good-looking that they don’t need to be interesting. He was tall, which tends to inspire confidence; one study estimated that each inch of height corresponds to six thousand dollars of annual salary in contemporary America. Then he walked up and said hello.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brooks#ixzz1B2d0bDkr

this guy, he is the definition of vacuous ambition

David Brooks obsessively writes about this supposed "class" that I suspect encompasses maybe 1000-10,000 people in the US

Responding to the above quote I butchered:

Brooks probably knows all 10,000 of these people because of the douchey pundit circles he runs in whilst the rest of america wonders what the fuck he is talking about.

I'm going to write a takedown of Brooks called Bobophobia

creepy detached observation and thinly veiled resentment for being found unattractive by the opposite sex

he want to get it on a higher level than everyone else to explain away his punchablity via envy

love how he backs this piece up with SCIENCE

Various research teams have conducted a simple study. They hire a woman to go up to college men and ask them to sleep with her. More than half the men say yes. Then they have a man approach college women with the same offer. Virtually zero per cent say yes.

hold the phone what

oh god i can't wait to sit down with a cozy drink and read this

i want to see the script for that interaction, when the girl has to fess up that it's so not gonna happen

xp

hel-lo, ladies

http://exiledonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/david-brooks1.jpg

for a minute I thought he was branching out into short stories

not very symmetrical there David

smile is fake, just look at that orbicularis-oculi

He was tall, which tends to inspire confidence; one study estimated that each inch of height corresponds to six thousand dollars of annual salary in contemporary America.

this is true, and certainly applies to me, as I am 70 inches tall and make about $420,000 each year.

shit i am underpaid

I pity the poor New Yorker fact-checker who had to handle that article.

author of the study:

http://i51.tinypic.com/2enw8hs.jpg

yeah half the sources for this new yorker article are the sorts of things that other new yorker article http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all was talking about.

As I type, I'm listening to Brooks and that other unctuous bowl of Quaker Oats, E.J. Dionne.

couldn't bring myself to read this and now I know that was the right decision - thanks for saving me the headache, guys.

I basically stopped reading Brooks column in the Times cause he's been doing a lot of ersatz Gladwell-style social psychology & now here he is in the NYer itself.

funny how that works.

I can't wait for the mail on this

"Mr. Brooks argument fails to account for the fact that several studies have indicated, with confidence, that he is a diseased, prolapsed asshole"

"Occasionally, you meet a young, rising member of this class at the gelato store, as he hovers indecisively over the cloudberry and ginger-pomegranate selections, and you notice that his superhuman equilibrium is marred by an anxiety."

Stopped reading after this....

Stopped reading and started stabbing.

No no I stopped and went to the gelato store.

young, rising member

The intro was like a Burt Stanton post.

I probably already know the answer to this, but why are consumer items on sale the same store or supermarket still coded by class? And usually always by a rich media commentator/pundit/talking head douchebag (i.e. elite) who wants to attack "elites", since as mentioned upthread, class warfare is a-ok when aimed at left-leaning folks. The success of distribution networks from railworks & the Sears & Roebuck catalog to Walmart/Kroeger/insert your supermarket chain here onward.

Bobo does it here, too, with the exaggerated gelato remarks. Two other signposts/dogwhistles: "arugala", "latte." You've been able to get all three of these things in any American grocery store for over a decade. Mcdonalds has used that kind of lettuce in their salads for years. But somehow, if I choose _this_ head of lettuce over _that_ one sitting next to it on the same shelf and costing cents more per pound, _I'm_ somehow now a clueless elitist liberal toff? do these assholes even have _any_ idea how much Walmart rakes in on "organic"-labelled foods?!

He made the Buffalo Beast's 50 Most Loathsome People of 2010:

25) David Brooks
Charges: The Bernie Madoff of American letters, every tortured construct and inaccurate assumption ever set to print by this annoyingly self-described “Bourgeoisie Bohemian” is a fraudulent attempt to justify why his house is more expensive than yours. Brooks couldn’t even wait for the bodies to cool after the Haiti earthquake before writing about how useless it is to send money because those voodoo-lovin’ savages simply can’t be helped.
Aggravating factor: “It’s time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people—maybe just in a neighborhood or a school—with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.”
Sentence: Buried under rubble; cholera.

I can't stop laughing at this:

Haley Barbour: Looks like William Shatner if William Shatner ate a racist butter sculpture of William Shatner.

Ha -- Brooks also made Salon's list of worst journalists.

"Occasionally, you meet a young, rising member of this class at the gelato store, as he hovers indecisively over the cloudberry and ginger-pomegranate selections,
and you notice that his superhuman equilibrium is marred by an anxiety."

Old man yells at cloudberry.

Why is Brooks occasionally meeting these guys at the gelato store anyway is that some sort of code?

wide stance, double scoop etc

Creamy taste, throat-soothing texture, free samples

Various research teams have conducted a simple study. They hire a woman to go up to college men and ask them to sleep with her. More than half the men say yes. Then they have a man approach college women with the same offer. Virtually zero per cent say yes.

hold the phone what

― goole, Friday, 14 January 2011 20:38 (5 days ago)

this is actually true. Unlike 99% of Brooks' facts/"experiences."

Driftglass--who does the Professional Left podcast--has a blog http://driftglass.blogspot.com/ that seems about 60% devoted to critiquing David Brooks' columns.

Then they have a man approach college women with the same offer. Virtually zero per cent say yes.

That man was David Brooks

and now you know...

the rest

of the story

"Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls."

wise words, no doubt based on painful experience, from his latest column about amy chua

read way too much of the stupid article before looking at the author's name

i tried to finish this. i really did.

Can't we start a Kickstarter fund to round up David Brooks and Caitlin Flanagan, lock them in a shipping container and drop it into the Marianas trench?

*donates ten dollars*

timoreilly Tim O'Reilly
David Brooks wants to be a comedian at #TED2011. Audience is laughing, but I'd have preferred some substance.
4 minutes ago

hodgman hodgman
Brooks describes Park Slope and thinks he's describing america. #TED
5 minutes ago

Bill_Gross Bill Gross
"Ben and Jerry's should make a pacifist's toothpaste. Doesn't kill germs, just asks them to leave." David Brooks @ #TED
5 minutes ago

Why would Ben and Jerry make toothpaste in the first place.

cause you can eat more ice cream if you brush your teeth

Damn corporations are always a step ahead of me. :(

i get conservatives' fascination and disgust with well-off liberals but i'll never get their blind inability to comprehend them in the slightest. it's like they're staring at the sun. they're not that hard to figure out, guys! you don't need david damn brooks interpreting for you.

well even accepting their existence requires breaking w/ their core beliefs - "why would any rich/successful person advocate for higher taxes / bigger government / anything that might work against their immediate interests? that's just not human nature." the only explanation is that they must be literally insane.

Bill_Gross Bill Gross
After Chris apologizes for inviting right-of-center David Brooks, he gets a mild standing ovation in the first session of #TED.
2 minutes ago

Bill_Gross Bill Gross
Now Chris is trying to define what a #Stnading #Ovation is supposed to be for. #TED Also tells us not to stand if we don't want. #NoDuh?
1 minute ago

david brooks broke #TED

well tbf 'we' get similarly weird about poor right-wingers... but the explanation is basically the same. beliefs r funny.

xps

I don't get weird about them, I just think they're venal and hard-of-thinking.

sorta...but I mean, it's lol/sad that most of america votes against their economic interests, but that doesn't destroy my basic economic logic cause I don't believe in a world where people are acting completely on self-interest. there is something of a difference there.

People who act in complete self-interest are generally great big sociopathic drains on the rest of society.

to turn it around, i guess i mean more than just voting behavior. conservatives looking at rich liberals suffer from some kind of total incomprehension. the jokes don't even make sense. the logic of what's 'hypocritical' doesn't make sense. the resentment doesn't make sense, considering their own leaders. the whole thing is bizarre.

you just want to say, no really, believing in civil rights, gay rights, a fair shot for everyone, full bodily right for women, a decent regulatory state, religious ideas kept to the private sphere, a frank and adult culture... people just believe this stuff! even some rich people! it's pretty simple!

tom scocca goes hard http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/archive/2011/03/01/the-politics-of-entitlement-david-brooks-will-decide-when-it-s-time-for-you-to-die.aspx

Words designed to chill the heart:

David Brooks introduces a new blog in which he hopes to publicize, discuss and evaluate new work in the study of human nature

http://grab.by/9kJ1

why do humans keep punching me

The secret to good writing is to write about things you're passionate about imo

http://brooks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/the-thrill-of-victory/

I just discovered this old article via a Tom Scocca link. A great point-by-point takedown of the Brooks method. Includes Brooks's whiny rebuttal.

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/booboos_in_paradise/

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/05/03/christopher-tayler/yo-douche-bag/

Jeez

^^^deserves a poll imo

David Aaronovitch performs a great hatchet job on Brooks in the Times today. Final paragraphs:

The result is that the book explains everything and absolutely nothing. What makes the person that is you, as opposed to the person that is your brother or sister or your neighbour, is missing. Do we really pick our partners because of facial symmetry as Brooks avers, or is there something deeper at work? But what can you expect from a book supposedly about the unconscious, but whose index doesn’t even include the words hate, envy, guilt or dreams?

And “murder” appears only once, on page 8. After ploughing through 400 pages of superficial scientism masquerading as wisdom, I felt that was not enough.

god, what a treasure trove of display names

Link?

Like most women, she got lubricated even while looking at nature shows of animals copulating

I mean, what

I feel like this book could be a career-ender for David Brooks. I mean a man can hope, right?

I’m writing this story, first, because while researchers in a wide variety of fields have shone their flashlights into different parts of the cave of the unconscious, much of their work is done in academic silos.

we need someone out there livin' the life to tell us how shit is really going down.

http://i.imgur.com/lHiZ2.jpg

Like most women, she got lubricated even while looking at nature shows of animals copulating
I mean, what

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Friday, May 6, 2011 4:58 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

studies have shown

^^^ a Reagan quote

much of their work is done in academic silos.

As opposed to the real world of upper class Washington DC suburb Bethesda

I'll admit this made me want to read at least part of the book:

Imagine a man who buys a chicken from the grocery store, manages to bring himself to orgasm by penetrating it, then cooks and eats the chicken.

I didn't link the Times review kingfish, because it's behind a paywall.

the next sentence: "Just imagine it for a second. Isn't that shit fucked up? Damn!"

Oh, NYT, that Times. Ok.

No, London Times is behind a paywall too. Shame, because it's a great review that deserves to be passed around and around the web until it makes David Brooks cry.

can somebody copy/paste here?

My colleague Rachel Sylvester revealed, in The Times this week, that Tory politicians have been reading David Brooks’ new book with avidity. One minister thinks it informs the reader what the Big Society really is. Another believes that it sets the framework for 21st-century Conservatism. A Cabinet minister told Rachel that The New York Times columnist’s effort was “the best description of Cameron-style Conservatism I’ve read”.

My bad self hopes it is true that the book is made compulsory reading for ministers. I can then imagine them attempting to live their lives according to its blizzard of banal insights, such as this one: “Marriage expert John Gottman argues that in a healthy relationship the partners make five positive comments to each other for every negative one.” If you spot George Osborne out and about with Mrs Osborne and he appears to be counting under his breath, you’ll know that it isn’t the deficit he’s calculating, but whether he’s managed to hit the “healthy relationship” comment ratio.

There are no bigger, fatter, more straw-filled Aunt Sallies these days than the idea that most of us somehow believe that Man lives by bread alone. We are supposedly in thrall to the notion of pure homo economicus, so that we require Lord Layard of Happiness or the odd American columnist to tell us, forcefully, that the latest research suggests that there is more to human beings than Gross Domestic Product. Because, of course, bringing up our kids, falling in and out of love, suffering loss and celebrating birth, we didn’t know all this.

Of course we did. If politicians stopped to read a novel every once in a while, or had time to watch the television, they’d realise that their fellow citizens are fully aware of how complicated it is to be human.

This book, written by a celebrated columnist who has a gift for epithet and catchphrase (I liked “sanctimommies” for a certain kind of competitive parent), works by citing some aspect of almost every psychological and neuroscientific study you’ve seen in newspapers for the past 30 years over the course of 400 pages. Perhaps that is the attraction to busy ministers.

Aware that such mass citation would make for an arid, example-strewn waste of a book, Brooks had the idea of creating two characters, Harold and Erica, on to whose conjoined lives the facts and speculations could be stuck, like a forest of Post-it Notes. So two deeply unsympathetic, professional middle-class Americans become the spattered vehicles for a mass of what I can only call semi-scientific stuff.

Some of it seems robust, some obvious, some intriguing, some utterly speculative, some absurd, some nothing more than anecdotal. Some of it leads somewhere, much of it doesn’t.

Surveys, studies, experiments in evolutionary psychology, behavioural psychology and neuroscience do service alongside stories of what Benjamin Franklin did to become a great writer (a celebrity — that’s news to me) and riffs on such revolutionary themes as practice makes perfect.

Although the ostensible theme is the human unconscious mind, what characterises the book is a sunny determinism. If we can only isolate and understand the chemical workings of the body (unconscious because we are not conscious of them) then we have the trick of it.

The result of this approach can only be described as grisly. Take this, from when Erica and Harold’s childless marriage goes through a tough time. Brooks sends himself off on a journey through the mind of a middle-aged woman. He quotes at length from a neuropsychiatrist called Louann Brizendine, who theorises that a middle-aged woman becomes difficult because she starts wanting to please herself. Why? “With her estrogen down, her oxytocin is down too . . . and she’s getting less of a dopamine rush from the things she did before, even talking with her friends. She’s not getting the calming oxytocin reward of tending and caring for her little children . . .” Fortunately, short of offering oxytocin supplements, we already know the answer on how husbands should deal with this. Make sure your positive comment ratio doesn’t fall below 5:1.

The result is that the book explains everything and absolutely nothing. What makes the person that is you, as opposed to the person that is your brother or sister or your neighbour, is missing. Do we really pick our partners because of facial symmetry as Brooks avers, or is there something deeper at work? But what can you expect from a book supposedly about the unconscious, but whose index doesn’t even include the words hate, envy, guilt or dreams?

And “murder” appears only once, on page 8. After ploughing through 400 pages of superficial scientism masquerading as wisdom, I felt that was not enough.

http://dailydish.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e201538e84b1cc970b-550wi

http://dailydish.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e201538e84b1cc970b-550wi

When I first saw that picture I was sure it was Photoshopped. Too fucking funny.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/19/david-brooks-big-idea-society

Ha ha...ha.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/05/david-brooks-responds-to-brooksmeme/239256/

Ned, you and I read Sully at the same time.

This thread title is really one of those evergreen phrases, applicable to the end of time.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/05/24/brooks/index.html

Greenwald discusses how Brooks just visited the UK and wrote this:

Britain is also blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous. But the plusses outweigh the minuses

Needless to say Greenwald does not agree and he also dissects some older David Brooks quotes

Ned, you and I read Sully at the same time.

Well, yeah.

Imagine a man who buys a chicken from the grocery store, manages to bring himself to orgasm by penetrating it, then cooks and eats the chicken.

In my head it's Dave Chappelle saying this

"Do you know how hard it is to cum inside a chicken?"

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielknowles/100089174/david-brooks-of-the-new-york-times-thinks-he-understands-great-britain-he-doesnt/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielknowles/100089174/david-brooks-of-the-new-york-times-thinks-he-understands-great-britain-and-he-so-does/

Shortly after the midterm elections, the New York Times’ David Brooks insisted that Republicans were feeling “modest and cautious.” They’re “sober,” Brooks said, adding that the GOP wouldn’t “overreach.” Republican leaders, Brooks assured readers, were “prepared to take what they can get, even if it’s not always what they would like.”

Which is exactly why Dems shouldn't be rushing to praise his judgement now that he's singing their tune

He shouldn't be even given legitimacy, but since he's on NPR and PBS and in the NY Times and book stores, some Dems jumped favorably on his recent comments attacking Republicans so they can say "look even David Brooks says they're crazy"

when you praise the judgement of someone you have always lambasted for having terrible judgement, what does that say about your judgement?

I agree with you if people are praising him. But I also think that some people on the Rolling US politics thread who may have referred to his more recent comments realize that Brooks is an idiot, even while they quote him. Some people may be quoting him but not praising him.

I think Obama should refer to Reagan raising taxes as part of a debt deal as a debate strategy in the current mess, even if I despise Reagan.

http://matthias.tanaya.net/Images/2009/090303-brooks.jpg

When he tries to be a high-brow Tom Friedman he also can be so annoying:

"These three groups — bankers, Democratic Keynesians and staunch Republicans — have one thing in common: They all believe they have identified the magic lever.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/87035/why-do-paul-krugman-and-david-brooks-hate-each-other

I'd be surprised if krugman didn't hate brooks but you don't need to imagine some silly grudge about a magazine cover to understand why.

Shortly after the midterm elections, the New York Times’ David Brooks insisted that Republicans were feeling “modest and cautious.” They’re “sober,” Brooks said, adding that the GOP wouldn’t “overreach.” Republican leaders, Brooks assured readers, were “prepared to take what they can get, even if it’s not always what they would like.”

― curmudgeon, Tuesday, July 12, 2011 10:42 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha

they need to make a slapstick comedy based on david brooks life where this random mr. bean type falls his way up to prestigious journalist positions

http://i54.tinypic.com/2rrmjnq.jpg

haha

probably not going to watch this, but http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/war-of-the-rose/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/opinion/brooks-obama-rejects-obamaism.html

We’re not going to simplify the tax code, but by God Obama’s going to raise taxes on rich people who give to charity! We’ve got to do something to reduce the awful philanthropy surplus plaguing this country!

Oh, pleeez.

Pareene:

Brooks goes on to write that Obama is "sounding like the Al Gore for president campaign, but without the earth tones" and that his Monday address was "the kind of speech that sounded better when Ted Kennedy was delivering it."

This suggests that Obama is now embracing the ideologically polarizing rhetoric of losing national candidates -- which is very deceptive. He conveniently doesn't note that Obama is also sounding like ... candidate Obama, who (as Brooks' colleague John Harwood explained on Monday) addressed the issue of income inequality head-on while running for president. That the highest-earning 20 percent of Americans had seen their share of pretax income balloon by more than 50 percent between 1979 and 2007, Harwood wrote, "drove (Obama's) campaign platform on taxes and still drives his policy in the White House."

not pareene, the other dude

By Steve Kornacki

parnee by steve kornacki, available at finer blogs everywhere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_charitable_countries

The world's most charitable countries, for the purposes of this page, give the most money to help the needy of their societies and others through public (government) donations . . . the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development also lists countries by the amount of money they give as a percentage of their gross national income. The list includes international giving through official channels that qualify as Official Development Assistance, and national charitable giving. This list is as follows:

1. Sweden – 1.12%
2. Norway – 1.06%
3. Luxembourg – 1.04%
4. Pakistan – 1.00%
5. Denmark – 0.88%
6. Netherlands – 0.82%
7. Belgium – 0.55%
8. Finland – 0.54%
9. Ireland – 0.54%
10. United Kingdom – 0.52%
11. France- 0.47%
12. Spain – 0.46%
13. Switzerland – 0.45%
14. Germany – 0.35%
15. Canada – 0.30%
16. Austria – 0.30%
17. Australia – 0.29%
18. New Zealand – 0.28%
19. Portugal – 0.23%
20. United States – 0.21%
21. Greece – 0.19%
22. Japan – 0.18%
23. Italy – 0.16%
24. South Korea – 0.10%

Fuck David Brooks.

http://i.imgur.com/ScFv6.jpg

wont you give to help fuck david brooks today

Nothing makes David Brooks angrier than attacks on the top 1%. He wants you to believe that the mushy-headed DLC-like proposal by Matt Miller for a centrist 3rd party(that offers a bunch of conservative ideas and a few moderate Liberal ones) is better than OWS

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/opinion/the-milquetoast-radicals.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

Don’t be fooled by the clichés of protest movements past. The most radical people today are the ones that look the most boring. It’s not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It’s about changing behavior from top to bottom. Let’s occupy ourselves.

A group that divides the world between the pure 99 percent and the evil 1 percent will have nothing to say about education reform, Medicare reform, tax reform, wage stagnation or polarization.

UH

Notice the revolting way in which he drops a smear and moves on:

Take the Occupy Wall Street movement. This uprising was sparked by the magazine Adbusters, previously best known for the 2004 essay, “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?” — an investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy.

Both of those quotes make little sense. Plus he says:

The policy proposals that have been floating around the Occupy Wall Street movement — a financial transfer tax, forgiveness for student loans — are marginal.

But he strongly endorses Miller's call to "raise capital requirements for banks"

"Let’s occupy ourselves" <--- stirring

lol

"The most radical people today are the ones that look the most boring."

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/09/16/opinion/Brooks_New/Brooks_New-articleInline.jpg

tbf, Adbusters did publish a pretty anti-semitic article from the EIC of the magazine and then defended it the next issue. i don't know what that has to do with OWS except to try and delegitimize it, but I think being wary of Adbuster activity is appropriate reaction

adbusters and david brooks deserve each other

Krugman -

I read David Brooks citing the Tax Foundation this morning, and I thought he must have misread them. They couldn’t possibly have compared one year’s take from higher taxes on the rich with the total stock of debt, could they? They can’t possibly be that stupid, or think that their readers are that stupid, can they?

Yes they did. They actually find that their version of the “Buffett rule” would collect $120 billion a year, which is a seriously significant sum. But they try to make it look small by comparing one year’s revenue with the total debt outstanding.

lol what dicks

david brooks can you speak at my teach in why because you look boring

Foreign tourists are coming up to me on the streets and asking, “David, you have so many different kinds of inequality in your country. How can I tell which are socially acceptable and which are not?”

This is an excellent question. I will provide you with a guide to the American inequality map to help you avoid embarrassment.

he's got the Nordlinger-esque faux-naif bit down pat.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/david_brooks_vs_david_brooks033360.php

Because we were all waiting for David Brooks to weigh in on Paterno

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/opinion/brooks-lets-all-feel-superior.html?src=recg

We live in a society oriented around our inner wonderfulness.

a sentence like this could only have been written by someone who thinks of himself as utterly not wonderful inside.

which would be uncharacteristically perceptive of him.

guys why did i just start arguing on facebook with somebody who endorsed this column? why?

back away slowly

haha this column is such a mess

Over the course of history — during the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide or the street beatings that happen in American neighborhoods — the same pattern has emerged. Many people do not intervene. Very often they see but they don’t see.

lol none of these things are at all like what happened

Even in cases where people consciously register some offense, they still often don’t intervene. In research done at Penn State and published in 1999, students were asked if they would make a stink if someone made a sexist remark in their presence. Half said yes. When researchers arranged for that to happen, only 16 percent protested.

In another experiment at a different school, 68 percent of students insisted they would refuse to answer if they were asked offensive questions during a job interview. But none actually objected when asked questions like, “Do you think it is appropriate for women to wear bras to work?”

because when someone makes a sexist comment a child gets raped

i wouldve stopped genocides and hypothetical generic events that threaten my own physical well being but i didnt want to harsh the good vibes

The Kitty Genovese case from the ’60s is mostly apocryphal, but hundreds of other cases are not.

there is a famously untrue story, dont u feel guilty now

In centuries past, people built moral systems that acknowledged this weakness. These systems emphasized our sinfulness. They reminded people of the evil within themselves. Life was seen as an inner struggle against the selfish forces inside. These vocabularies made people aware of how their weaknesses manifested themselves and how to exercise discipline over them. These systems gave people categories with which to process savagery and scripts to follow when they confronted it. They helped people make moral judgments and hold people responsible amidst our frailties.

a time when nothing bad ever happened surely, like... THE HOLOCAUST

That was the proper question after Abu Ghraib, Madoff, the Wall Street follies and a thousand other scandals. But it’s a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature.

dood all these things were allowed to happen because people in power had a vested interest in having them happen, not because some guy thought he was wonderful

These systems emphasized our sinfulness. They reminded people of the evil within themselves. Life was seen as an inner struggle against the selfish forces inside.

yeah this was really awesome everyone felt frightened guilty and miserable all the time! if only we could bring that back!

His analogies don't clarify the context, and while a few of the examples he mentions are true, they don't justify his larger point. Maybe he should go back to his defense of protecting the 1 %, and justifying entitlement cuts. Oy.

but people brimming terrified self loathing never do anything bad!

guys why did i just start arguing on facebook with somebody who endorsed this column? why?

― horseshoe, Wednesday, November 16, 2011 1:06 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

naw i fully support calling people on such obvs bullshit, otherwise youre as bad as hitler

You're endorsing your inner wonderfulness.

he has a point though. if i saw david brooks being beaten on a street in an american neighborhood i would do nothing to intervene.

tbf that is something that happens nearly every day in our post moral society

if he was being genocided i would try to talk them down to a street beating.

lol berto

my facebook argument turned out to be quite civil, but i don't understand conservatives, basically.

Oh hs I nearly bopped a couple of people yesterday, and it wasn't even about David Brooks. I just don't understand how people can be the way they are at all.

i guess i don't even understand why she's still a conservative. she's a smart woman! she does have this very individual-oriented understanding of everything, though. her response to the Penn State scandal is despair at everyone's moral turpitude, basically. it just seems like a weird and off-base reaction to me.

conservatives! weirdos!

not believing theres such thing as society!

this just in: DAVID BROOKS IS STILL AN ASSHOLE.

right? or power? i suspect she also really liked brooks's ows parody whatever the shit that was but i don't even want to get into that with her.

xp scott otm fuck that dude

Foreign tourists are coming up to me on the streets and asking, “David, you have so many different kinds of inequality in your country. How can I tell which are socially acceptable and which are not?”

if foreign tourists are seeking out david brooks for social guidance, our country is in worse condition that i could have ever feared

but really i am just laughing at how bad and unwieldy and ridiculous the set-up is

this guy is supposed to be a writer

i say this every time david brooks comes up but the amazing thing about him imo is that he is clearly not very bright! and not just in a "i never agree with this guy" way--he is a shallow and lousy critical thinker!

i know i always feel like his entire career is trolling America. this guy has a column in the nyt?

lol @ the concept of foreign tourists approaching david brooks and asking “David, you have so many different kinds of inequality in your country. How can I tell which are socially acceptable and which are not?”

i mean obvs this never happened, guy should be fired for making stupid things up

it's kind of some sad self-fanfic where he imagines he is known enough to be instantly recognized by "foreign tourists"

it fits w/ my image of him as thomas friedman's little brother

In centuries past, people built moral systems that acknowledged this weakness. These systems emphasized our sinfulness. They reminded people of the evil within themselves. Life was seen as an inner struggle against the selfish forces inside. These vocabularies made people aware of how their weaknesses manifested themselves and how to exercise discipline over them. These systems gave people categories with which to process savagery and scripts to follow when they confronted it. They helped people make moral judgments and hold people responsible amidst our frailties.

http://www.corwith-wesley.k12.ia.us/WebPage09/Scott/ArchieEdith.jpg

that sentiment is so stupid i cannot even stand it

the insidious thing about him is that bland geniality. especially on t.v. you can be lulled (to sleep) into thinking that he is being really reasonable and commonsensical until you wake up and actually listen and realize that he's a complete idiot. its easier to see in print obviously. i'm sure there are plenty of non-repubs who watch him on pbs and think that he's the kindler gentler conservative thst they kinda agree with sometimes. cuz in their heart of hearts they do think that people should just work harder and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and all that. he's still on pbs right? #nocablejustnetflix

"kinder"

Yeah, Brooks is right, you'd never see that kind of white-washing and looking the other way in an organization based on traditional religious values.

xxp

moral systems that emphasize our sinfulness like, for example, catholicism

he typically softens his conservatism using the shittiest of fluff psychology out there which makes it even more unappealing to me.

he has a point though. if i saw david brooks being beaten on a street in an american neighborhood i would do nothing to intervene.

^^^

You guys aren't being honest with yourselves. Everyone knows that if they saw David Brooks being beaten they'd join in.

how has mark shields never once just slapped the hell out of david brooks on air

all thats enough from you for now son

this is something i would like to see

would pay $$ to watch brooks grab mark shield's monstrous jowls and swing from them like a pundit monkey

hey now

what happens when pundits stop being polite and GET REAL

Online you can find videos of savage beatings, with dozens of people watching blandly.

mark shield's monstrous jowls

i can't watch this guy anymore which is all for the best anyway

david brooks is so dumb he misuses simple adverbs.

I wonder what other kinds of videos david brooks can find online

No results found for "David Brooks beaten" youtube.

:(

pretty sure david brooks is our nation's highest authority on giving bland assent to horrible moral outrages

why can't people just be NICE? why can't football just be football like it was in my day with the sadie hawkins day dance right around the corner and the gang playing grabass on the quad and the frat brothers wielding their paddles with a gentle urgency...

god he looks like an unholy combination of pedant and pedo

https://www.nytexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/David-Brooks.jpeg

This fucking guy:

America is creative because of its moral materialism — when social values and economic ambitions get down in the mosh pit and dance. Santorum is in the fray.

Ew

"But having said all that, I’m delighted that Santorum is making a splash"

http://images.pictureshunt.com/pics/t/the_fray-4545.jpg

David Brooks in a mosh pit: clutching his glasses close to his chest in a loose fist, being knocked around, cursing with frustration, and on the verge of tears

Main Street Republicans like Romney usually beat social conservatives like Santorum because there are just so many more of them in the Republican electorate.

hmmm.

i mean, surely Romney will beat Santorum, but *are* they more "Main Street" dudes (what the fuck ever that means at this point) than there are "social conservatives" in the GOP?

Vaguely pithy line:

I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.

Vaguely disturbing note:

I brought my 12-year-old son on this latest trip. My rule is that if a candidate can’t relate well to a 12-year-old, they’ll never win a general election. He approached all the candidates, and they were all wonderful except Gingrich. But that wasn’t Gingrich’s fault. My son, whose heroes include John Boehner and Tupac Shakur, picked an argument about gay marriage.

I can't understand ANYONE naming John Frickin' Boehner as a hero. I don't care how old you are.

I can't understand anyone naming a politician as a hero, and my comment isn't just snark.

Eh, hero worship is where you find it, and why not politics. I would have thought one of the most singularly uncharismatic and barely-in-control-of-events Speakers of recent years would not rank with that status, though.

Is Boehner appropriate for 12 year olds?!?

well, santorum is appropriate for consenting adults

I don't even understand what "moral materialism" is?

other heroes of David Brooks, Jr: Haley Barbour and Nas

David Brooks's own heroes as a child: James Watt and Bootsy Collins

"Haley Barbour and Nas"

Hearing this to the rhythm of the "Jay, Biggie and Nas" line in "Where I'm From"

I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.

oh noes

"sometimes" he "wonders" IF ? hello

tbf it's only in his darkest moments of abject terror

Democrats, meanwhile, have shifted their emphasis from lifting up the poor to pounding down the rich. Democratic candidates no longer emphasize early childhood education and community-building. Instead they embrace the pseudo-populist Occupy Wall Street hokum — the opiate of the educated classes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/opinion/brooks-free-market-socialism-.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

Oy veh

Dear NYT I will subscribe for life if you fire this fuck.

the prob is if they fire him they'd hire someone even worse

i was just talking with some democrats the other day about early childhood education, and they were like pshh fuck that

Pretty sure nytimes keeps David Brooks around as a real-life straw man conservative

the prob is if they fire him they'd hire someone even worse

Yes.

i'm not so sure. they hired william kristol, who demonstrated his contempt for the times by being a shitty columnist even by his own standards and taking its money for a year. i wonder if another marquee conservative wouldn't do basically the same.

The subtext of that column seems to be that our economy is failing because not enough men are like David Brooks

Pareene's regular excoriations of Brooks are always a highlight of Salon

Democratic candidates no longer emphasize early childhood education and community-building. Instead they embrace the pseudo-populist Occupy Wall Street hokum — the opiate of the educated classes.

But this very much sums up the view of a certain segment of the moneyed right -- the idea that progressive taxation has nothing to do with the traditional goals of the Democratic party, but is in fact a means of "punishing" successful people -- as if the idea were to take away half their money and then set it on fire!

Hey, life is zero sum. If you don't believe me, ask a conservative.

Pareene's regular excoriations of Brooks are always a highlight of Salon

― Put another Juggle in, in the Juggalodeon (kingfish), Tuesday, January 24, 2012 2:30 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Links plz!

I can think of some much more inventive punishments for "successful" people than just burning their money

Do you want to be an extremely "successful" person (as in you have a shit-ton of money) or do you want to live in a successful society where the actual success of those who do well in business reflect in the quality of the world you live in and enrich the communities responsible for generating that wealth and create a fertile environment for more successes?

People who think success is measured only in dollars they get paid are like kids who think about goal completion only in terms of how many cookies or toys they get

Two of Pareene's bits:

http://www.salon.com/2010/11/22/hack_list_30/

Repeat offenses: armchair sociology, easy generalizations in lieu of research or analysis, boringness.

Representative quote:

“The magic is not felt by a lot of people. It’s not felt, obviously, by a lot of less educated people, downscale people. They just look at Obama, and they don’t see anything. And so, Obama’s problem is he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who could go into an Applebee’s salad bar, and people think he fits in naturally there.”

(Note: Applebee’s does not have salad bars.)

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/15/12_david_brooks/

He can make a defense of racist demagoguing sound benign. He obfuscates and misleads on income inequality, while, as always, accusing those damned coastal liberal elites of disrespecting Real Americans. Accusing liberals of disrespecting Real Americans is one of Brooks’ go-to lines, even though there’s absolutely no evidence that he has any clue whatsoever how the middle and working classes live in America in 2011.

Everything, with Brooks, comes down to “values.” Bad things happen because of a lack of the correct “values,” and the correct “values” are essentially white upper-middle-class mid-20th-century bourgeois values. Poverty happens because the poor don’t have those values. Earthquakes happen because of a lack of those values. The sexual abuse of children happens because — you guessed it — America lost those important pre-’60s values. The abuses at Penn State, in Brooks’ worldview, went unreported because America has become “a society oriented around our inner wonderfulness.”

HACKIEST 2011 MOMENT:
That linked column on the abuses at Penn State was the sanitized version of Brooks’ comments on “Meet the Press,” in which he blamed both the failure to report the sexual abuses to the police and the riots following the firing of Joe Paterno more explicitly on “30 or 40 years” of “muddying the moral waters.” If it weren’t for women’s lib and the self-esteem movement, those kids could’ve been protected!

I blame Applebee's for not having salad bars.

"Applebees doesn't have salad bars" seems like an excellent one-line response to partisan hackery in itself

if applebee's had salad bars america would be a much healthier country

I didn't know until recently that Applebees has a full bar!

It is your neighborhood bar and grill, especially if your neighborhood is a shopping mall.

I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.

This sentence is truly fucked up. I'm white, btw.

I just watched the episode of 30 Rock where Donaghy and Lemon go to Stone Mountain Georgia to find a new cast member and it reminded me of David Brooks a bit

It’s always interesting to read the quotations of people who knew a mass murderer before he killed. They usually express complete bafflement that a person who seemed so kind and normal could do something so horrific.

FUCK. You beat me to it.

this is a really choice column. prime brooks facepalm.

haha every time this thread is bumped I think "christ, what is it now, David Brooks?"

He had a stupid one earlier in the week again imploring Obama to cut entitlements and debt and balance the budget now in a right-wing conservative manner, but which he redefines as moderate and sensible. It was formula David Brooks.

According to this view, most people are naturally good, because nature is good.

Yawn. V tired of this conservative cliche about the materialist moral perspective.

d brooks would like to disabuse you of the idea that people are naturally good, remember that we are all shameful pots of shit and sin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luobOzreRq4

I thought the conservative cliché concerned how BAD people were.

well, when it comes to the free market, people are naturally good
when it comes to what you do with your genitals, you simply can't be trusted

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/you-cant-cut-spending-without-cutting-spending/2012/04/06/gIQAUYYJ0S_blog.html?hpid=z1

Ezra Klein versus David Brooks and Paul Ryan.

Some people view politics like war. Others prefer to see it as a wooing dance. Which prism will win votes in 2012?

no, it's been a "flashpoint" for a major reduction in crime in America, studies suggest

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 21 April 2005 14:19 (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

, studies suggest

life is good for this knucklehead(moving from Md suburb to DC):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/post/surreal-estate-david-brooks-moves-from-bethesda-to-cleveland-park/2012/05/06/gIQAs27Q6T_blog.html

Price: $3.95 million

Details: The New York Times op-ed columnist and wife Sarah are trading up — from their longtime home near Bethesda’s Burning Tree Club to a century-old (exquisitely renovated) five bedroom, four-and-a-half bath house in Cleveland Park. It includes a two-car garage, iron and stone fence, generous-sized porch and balcony, and what appear to be vast spaces for entertaining. The timing seems to have been right: After only a few days on the market, their old place (which also boasts five bedrooms) is under contract for $1.6 million.

By The Reliable Source

Something seems especially unfair about some asshole being able to afford a $4 million house just because he happens to have lucked into being that asshole.

And he is able to do so despite Obama not taking all of his advice on the deficit and such, and the NY Times cutting back on free views of their website.

TBF I feel similarly about most major op-ed columnists. Unremarkable people who somehow managed to land and keep for themselves a gilded seat.

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/08/david_brooks_says_welfare_state_is_unsustainable_buys_new_3_6_million_house/singleton/?mobile.html

^^^gets the respeck knuckles

Brooks columns are a cyclical problem.

took me 7 years to respond, b/c i react to any mention of David Brooks the way that an epileptic would react to a light show, but wtf:

no, it's been a "flashpoint" for a major reduction in crime in America, studies suggest

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 21 April 2005 14:19 (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol gabbneb using his own specious logic and uncited "authorities" to contest David Brooks's specious logic and uncited authorities.

don't miss that guy a bit

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/david-brooks-structural-revolution-column-8682328

Another discussion of Brooks' new mansion and his recent attack on entitlement/welfare state spending

Apparently Krugman's been tearing apart Brooks' horseshit without ever actually mentioning the dude by name

TBF, while Brooks' horseshit is indeed horseshit, that Pierce takedown kind of misapprehends some key points about our economy. The finance industry didn't really wreck a perfectly good economy, they bubbled us out of a bad one by creating fake wealth, skimming the profits and then peacing out as it burst. There really are structural problems in our economy beyond the aftermath of mortgage securitization -- I don't think even Krugman would completely discount that.

In fact whaddya know:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/structural-problems-not-structural-unemployment/

I dream of him being dropped by the NY Times, NPR and PBS and seeing if it would give him a new perspective. But that's not gonna happen so I similarly just dream of someone telling him how absurd he is on some tv or radio talk show. But that also is not gonna happen.

This paragraph at the end of Ezra Klein's response to Brooks' recent column gets it (emphasis mine):

It happens to be the case that Brooks likes Obama’s “hypercompetitive, restrained, not given to self-doubt, rarely self-indulgent” temperament, which is fine. But here he’s presented readers with a mystery that isn’t actually a mystery, and then told them, without evidence, that “most of the cause is personal” and “the key is [Obama’s] post-boomer leadership style.” Not that Brooks thinks that, or sees a case for it, but that that’s how it is. But it isn’t! Or, at the least, we have no evidence for it.

This is the feeling that I get listening to him on All Things Considered on Fridays. I think I get where he's trying to go but the logic is so convoluted and a lot of what he states as fact is really just incredibly misguided analysis. That plus his arrogance can be enraging.

I'm actually surprised he can afford a $4m house. How much can the Times possibly pay his columnists? His most recent book was a #1 bestseller, but at this point in history how much actual cash money does that translate into?

he's been around forever. dude is loaded.

He's been around forever but as far as I can tell he's only written three books. A book every 4 years just can't translate into that much income, can it? And surely even a plummy job writing a column once a week for the New York Times can't pay more than, I dunno, $200K. I'm still not seeing how it turns into $4m house money.

TV appearances over the last 30 years

Atlantic Monthly, WSJ, NPR, Weekly Standard - that shit adds up

Speaker fees?

I always imagine dudes like him get "grants" from shady "think tanks" but that's basically something I made up so

Dude is moving to my hood and I will run him down with my car if I get the chance.

it's also not super far from where I grew up. My synagogue was in Cleveland Park.

holy crap, I think quincie is right. According to this:

http://speakermix.com/david-brooks

brooks gets $20-40K every time he shows up to give an hour talk and eat banquet chicken.

Bobos in Paradise was a huge hit in 2000 and 2001; I worked in a bookstore then.

He can still use it as a memoir title.

Adas Israel or Washington Hebrew?

Wonder which (if any) 'gogue the family Brooks attends.

AI

Oh sweet. I have studied with rabbiAvIs MILL3r. Have also been in classes with some of the other AI rabbis. Too big/too conservative for me; also their mikveh reminds me of my high school locker room; wanna find something more "atmospheric" if I convert.

This is the story of a failed rescue, not vampire capitalism

Predictable column from him today defending venture capitalism with cherry-picked anecdotes and admissions that do not tell the whole story

so my local college alumni has a book club (which I've never participated in) and the book for June is bobos in paradise. I'm tempted to read it and go just for the horror.

Didn't read but I get the impression that maybe wrt that book he was sort of onto something for once. Athough it does sound like it has a touch of his trademark stealthy conservative spin.

Yeah it's not so bad from what I recall (read many years ago before I actually became a bobo).

i detest Brooks, but Bobos in Paradise was not terrible

DAVID BROOKS: Okay, so our act starts with us inflating a giant internet bubble. Then that collapses, taking the country's economy with it, just as we massively cut taxes on millionaires because, we say, if we don't the government will have too much money. Right after that we blow off warnings about terrorism and let 3,000 Americans get slaughtered. We use that as a chance to lie the U.S. into invading a country that had nothing to do with the attack, killing hundreds of thousands of people and turning millions into refugees. In the middle of all that we borrow torture techniques from the Inquisition and use them on people in secret sites around the planet. Then we make billions off another financial bubble, the biggest in human history, and do nothing as it collapses, plunging the world into the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression. To fix that we open up the national bank vault and shovel out money as fast as possible to all the criminals who made it happen in the first place. Then—as the amazing finale—we refuse to prosecute anyone for that, for the war, or for torture, and we start killing U.S. citizens with flying death robots.

[LONG PAUSE]

AGENT: ...That's a hell of an act. What do you call it?

DAVID BROOKS: The Aristocrats!

Ha. I see that was prepared in response to an actual Brooks column that was cartoon-like:

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-calls-for-dissolving-the-people

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5kkxbJXho1qd96hso1_1280.jpg

I liked atrios' post on this, http://www.eschatonblog.com/2012/06/authoritah.html

Pierce and others did much more elaborate takedowns of The Follower Problem column, but this is the shorter version of everybody. And I've finally been coming around to Black's incredibly venomous style in the past few months (maybe it was too much to bear when the US was the primary home of all grand fuckups and incompetent, unaccountable villainy, and now I can get into it because ~50% of his sniping is about Europe? I dunno) but the way he drops the last sentence in this particular post is just wonderful.

bullets

1. Brooks remains exceptionally good at providing labels. I suspect "follower problem" might have more legs than Bobo in the long run.

2. What would it take to get him fired? I live in DC. I feel a need to crash these cocktail parties where this motherfucker is something other than a bad joke. I know the village exists - I'm sure I've spent lots of time on the metro and in traffic, mere inches away from no-shit villagers - but what is this construct? how is the vacuum maintained?

Plant a tracker on Maureen Dowd perhaps.

planting things on modo? am I a roomba? who would not be disgusted by this option?

I should just nab some addresses from these overpaid shitbirds' public property tax whatevers and show up with a shaker full of straight shitty whiskey and goat eyes for garnishes and see how far I get before they notice my suit is made of vegetables and not poor people

Brooks remains exceptionally good at providing labels. I suspect "follower problem" might have more legs than Bobo in the long run.

yeah i dunno, been reading him lately and wondering if people are still "following" him. like he's trying too hard with the conceptual term-coining

x-post to El Tomboto

I thought Brooks' new DC digs were close to you? Maybe you will run into him somewhere

Here's a criticism of Brooks re his thoughts on the Gehry design for the Eisenhower memorial

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/david-brookss-criticism-of-eisenhower-memorial-design-falls-short/2012/06/13/gJQAtUurZV_blog.html

His new digs are close to ME. Brooks is not cool enough to have digs close to tombot.

david brooks, opinion leader

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/20/e-mails-show-uva-board-wanted-big-online-push

Another article -- this one forwarded from Kington to Dragas -- was the "The Campus Tsunami," by the New York Times columnist David Brooks, predicting massive change from the MOOCs, and also predicting that the new model will involve much more learning from professors who are not at the college or university a student attends.

(re the university of virginia board members' push for online courses, in connection with their firing the president of uva)

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/david-brooks-strange-preoccupation-single-parents

Bringing serious lols today. "(Elites) work much longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room."

can't read anything of Brooks' without imagining him in this pose:

http://jewishachievementblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/40-david_brooks.jpg

he's giving Christopher Hayes book some attention at least-

I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined....

feel like he really had trouble with that one, a lot of straining to reach the liberal boogeyman.

Man, I hope Elites carry towels with them to wipe off after those grueling fucking conference calls.

Like, has David Brooks ever worked a graveyard shift or lifted anything weighing more than 10 pounds in his entire life? Does he know anyone who does?

http://amcatholic.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/photoshopped-david-brooks.jpg

motherfuckers don't understand i'm doing work emails while in line at starbucks

when people talk about corruption and rigging the game they mean Kaplan test prep courses. i'm surprised the occupy kaplan movement hasn't taken off.

Like, has David Brooks ever worked a graveyard shift or lifted anything weighing more than 10 pounds in his entire life?

His butt?

in today's column, he also uses the word "scrupulosity," which is defined as "a psychological disorder characterized by pathological guilt about moral or religious issues. It is personally distressing, objectively dysfunctional, and often accompanied by significant impairment in social functioning. It is typically conceptualized as a moral or religious form of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), although this categorization is empirically disputable."

he meant "scrupulousness."

but you know, that's just my elite education showing.

Scruples are such tiny things that even the scrupulous overlook most of them.

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/booboos-in-paradise/

Kevin Drum re latest Brooks column on Romney/Ryan medicare plan:

As near as I can tell, the truth is almost exactly the opposite of what Brooks has written. He may not be impressed with Obama's plan, but that's not a good excuse for so badly misrepresenting what Romney and Ryan would do.

x-post--great piece.

his defense is that his writing is a joke. impenetrable.

today's brooks' op-ed begins with "Let’s say you’re generally a moderate voter." and peaks with "The priority in this election is to get a leader who can get Medicare costs under control. Then we can argue about everything else."

The purpose of the Republican convention is to introduce America to the real Mitt Romney. Fortunately, I have spent hours researching this subject. I can provide you with the definitive biography and a unique look into the Byronic soul of the Republican nominee:

I actually found this column moderately funny (ducks):

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/opinion/brooks-the-real-romney.html?_r=1&hp

It is (ducks also). But is Brooks mocking us as well as Romney?

I don't know what to make of that tbh

Yeah that's the problem with Brooks. It should have a name, Brooksism or something -- that gutless, hide-the-ball kind of writing that makes you feel a little like you're talking to a narc.

seriously today's column is weird. i thought it was a media put-down - "see this is how the liberal media portrays poor mitt" - until the last line.

there are funny jokes in there - which is alarming enough - but yeah his motives for writing them is sort of inscrutable

http://www.mockpaperscissors.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/bobo-tongues-the-world-surreal-247x300.jpg

"heh heh heh"

motives = are

stupid verbs

I think it's all in the spirit of good-natured ribbing. These are pretty gentle zings - stuff that I'm sure Romney could chuckle over at a comedy roast. I think it fits pretty well with Brooks's attitude that Romney is a good candidate dogged by bad PR.

He's no Dave Barry, thank Heaven.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/opinion/brooks-thurston-howell-romney.html

what a tool...he didn't know this before the secret video? and he says at the end that he really thinks Willard is a good guy deep down? FU, Brooks

He was doing ok until this:

"Sure, there are some government programs that cultivate patterns of dependency in some people. I’d put federal disability payments and unemployment insurance in this category."

The vast, vast majority of people on unemployment do not want to be. They want a job.

It's interesting to see Brooks reach the point where he stops trying to bend over backwards to be the compassionate, moderate, open-minded conservative while still playing for team Republican and when he finally decides he has to cut Mitt loose.

those damn disabled people, always wanting a handout

Disability insurance is a source of moral hazard, dissuading the lame from healing thyselves.

It's interesting to see Brooks reach the point where he stops trying to bend over backwards to be the compassionate, moderate, open-minded conservative while still playing for team Republican and when he finally decides he has to cut Mitt loose.

― o. nate, Tuesday, September 18, 2012 4:32 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hes allowed one of these heterodox columns every so often but really compassionate, moderate, open-minded conservative while still playing for team Republican or the more succinct republican apologist is his job he knows this and will carry on starting next column

I can't tell him and E.J. Dionne apart anymore :(

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/opinion/brooks-the-conservative-mind.html?hp

Where do these fantasies come from?

x-post--In print E.J. is much more liberal while on NPR he and Brooks try to make nice.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-on-drugs-and-medicare

Dean Baker vs Brooks with a link to Brooks' piece yesterday on how the Romney Medicare proposal is better than the Dems because the Romney plan relies on the free market

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/11/todays-war-on-nate-silver-quiet-flows-the-don-edition.html

delong quoting someone else:

Brooks’ journalistic way of knowing

Ha.

I thought you were going to be mentioning Brooks' absurd reasoning behind his endorsement of Romney.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/opinion/brooks-the-upside-of-opportunism.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

if Romney wins, we’re more likely to get bipartisan reform. Romney is more of a flexible flip-flopper than Obama. He has more influence over the most intransigent element in the Washington equation House Republicans. He’s more likely to get big stuff done.

get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done

if anything needs getting done, it's big stuff

America: who do you think u r?
Romney: mr. big stuff B-)

'I certainly wasn't wrong about it provoking smart ass jibes.'

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/02/your-use-of-data-for-any-purpose-but-validating-david-brookss-lazy-intuitions-infuriates-david-brooks

On Brooks' attempt to argue with Nate Silver over baseball stats

Spectacular column.

its incomprehensible.

why isn't this guy recognized as the Murray Kempton of his generation

i think the nyt is just keeping him around now because it's rumored his head is filled with nougat and they're just waiting for the right moment to crack him open.

beautiful!

Was waiting for this to be posted. I don't remember if Taibbi made the point that marriage necessarily implies few of the constraints Brooks presumes it does.

incomprehensible yes and prematurely senile like kempton you bet and yet recognizable in the fog is a married-too-long middle age guy wondering about the "freedom" he was undoubtedly (in brooks case) too uptight to exercise/enjoy when he was single

haha m@rk: I was being sarcastic (I love Kempton).

me too and i shouldnt have been disrespectful but those last few years in the ny post he was the oracular rambler

and yet recognizable in the fog is a married-too-long middle age guy wondering about the "freedom" he was undoubtedly (in brooks case) too uptight to exercise/enjoy when he was single

This. If I was Mrs Brooks I would be making a bed for David on the sofa after reading his column.

I'd be strapping one on.

A decaying social fabric, especially among the less fortunate.

Taibbi rightly picked up on the stupidity and uselessness of this statement

"lack even the basic mental ingredients"

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/05/david_brooks_bigoted_rant/

Another blog re "mental equipment" phrase used twice by Brooks

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/david-brooks-is-racist-creep-by.html

Islamists might be determined enough to run effective opposition movements and committed enough to provide street-level social services. But they lack the mental equipment to govern.

A review of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age:

As someone who tries to report on the world of ideas, I’m going to try to summarize Taylor’s description of what it feels like to live in an age like ours, without, I hope, totally butchering it.

it gets better from there

i'll admit it, i look forward to David Brooks columns more than Krugman these days. i'm pretty sure he's some kind-of conceptual comedian like neil hamburger, and it just takes a while to get the joke.

I don't want to give David Brooks any credit, but when I read "seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients," I thought he was criticizing the Egyptian people's mentality, not their brainpower. Which is obviously still ignorant as hell but it's not on the level of saying Egyptians are cognitively inferior to Americans.

i initially thought that was up for intepretation, but you never know with him. he's sung the praises of Charles Murray so he's thrown his hat in with pop-sociology racists, but considering it's Brooks it could've been some ditzy, superficial make-u-think kinda shit.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/brooks-and-marcus-on-pbs-news-getting-just-about-everything-wrong-on-the-economy

if only alex rodriguez hadn't sullied the noble sport of baseball with his unseemly lust for money:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/opinion/brooks-the-a-rod-problem.html?smid=tw-nytsports&seid=auto&_r=1&

In response to which

http://deadspin.com/the-david-brooks-problem-1039691285

When he writes a column, he doesn’t seem like a man writing a column. He seems like a man giving a performance of writing a column.

O WOW

I thought it was good!

what are you talking about?

how everyone is a TED lecturer now when it used to be they aspired to be philosophers in Athens

Give me two minutes and forty seconds and I'll explain it to you. Give me four minutes and thirty seconds and you'll be in tears.

brooks read scocca while he was on vacation

http://media.mlive.com/grpress/news_impact/photo/david-brooksjpg-b2b8fa7c71cbd9dc_large.jpg

"Give me two minutes and forty seconds and I'll explain it to you. Give me four minutes and thirty seconds and you'll be in tears."

this is some andy rooney old man hates world because he senses his own mortality shit going on here.

I glanced at this thread right before bed and then dreamed about it. Brooks was speaking to a class, had long hair, vaguely Euro accent, and kicked a guy out for playing a marching sousaphone while he spoke.

bizzaro brooks