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

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