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

^^^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.