RIP David Brooks

that must be an excruciatingly long and slow process for him

wicked subtweet

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/when-values-disappear/?_r=1

That posting is a nice rebuttal to Kristoff's misinterpretation of WJW as well as to Brook's absurd let's punish non-college going Dads for their lack of morals and values thing in a recnet column of his(based on Brooks misinterpretation of Putnam's new Our Kids book)

every time i open this thread

http://stack-dog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/0571AE26-7118-4B22-9810-B37B1C100BAE_zpszc2oknoh.png

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/for-david-brooks-the-rich-are-people-the-poor-are-numbers-20150311#ixzz3UG7EQzeE

Matt Taibi v. Brooks

Brooks is EXCITED about Marco Rubio! He has *ideas*!

On his first day in office, he handed each legislator a book with the cover “100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future.” The pages were blank. He was inviting his members to fill them in — a nice collaborative touch.

well, I guess that's one way to look at it...

my dad has a blank book titled everything i know about sailing; where's his bobodorsement

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

Easy target but couldn't resist.

"Despite all these efforts, there are too many young men leading lives like the one Gray led. He was apparently a kind-hearted, respectful, popular man, but he was not on the path to upward mobility. He won a settlement for lead paint poisoning. According to The Washington Post, his mother was a heroin addict who, in a deposition, said she couldn’t read. In one court filing, it was reported that Gray was four grade levels behind in reading. He was arrested more than a dozen times."

this is a more fucked up way to frame the situation than just saying something outright racist.

dude was beaten to death for no reason and brooks feels the need to scrutinize his academic record

Without connecting it to the fact that he was sufficiently exposed to lead paint at a young age to merit a large settlement. And connecting that to our failures in cities generally.

Like, the connection between lead exposure, brain damage and antisocial behavior is sufficiently well-established that not taking the next step in THAT little mental journey is beyond irresponsible. If you feel like that's the nut of this story, tell the whole damned story.

I mean, Brooks does address that stuff but he says the failure has to do with the culture of poverty -- avoiding that specific buzz phrase of course because it is rightly derided now. He sees Gray as a "victim" but doesn't point his finger at the institutional racism that is enshrined in policy on the federal, state, and local level. That's what's so insidious about him.

He's not crude enough to say "Freddie Gray was a thug and it's his own fault." He blames "systems" just not ones he could be seen as complicit in upholding.

and also freddie gray as far as we know didn't engage in much antisocial behavior -- brooks admits as much. and even if he did, that is immaterial. the penalty for whatever it is he might have done over the course of his life isn't supposed to be death.

last one: i wouldn't be too quick to make the lead paint-brain damage connection without more evidence. for most people who read below grade level, the problem isn't their capability. usually it's a problem in their educational background, a learning difference that wasn't addressed or something like that

In a fantastic interview that David Simon of “The Wire” gave to Bill Keller for The Marshall Project, he describes that, even in poorest Baltimore, there once were informal rules of behavior governing how cops interacted with citizens — when they’d drag them in and when they wouldn’t, what curse words you could say to a cop and what you couldn’t. But then the code dissolved. The informal guardrails of life were gone, and all was arbitrary harshness.

That’s happened across many social spheres — in schools, families and among neighbors. Individuals are left without the norms that middle-class people take for granted. It is phenomenally hard for young people in such circumstances to guide themselves.

Holy shit.

"Cops are on a rampage. Hey, that reminds me of how poor people have no morality."

how I would love to stuff David Brooks into a woodchipper

you should be able to say any and all curse words to cops without fear of anything more than a cold stare.

unless they're off-duty, in which case they might smack you like anyone else.

higher standard

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/opinion/david-brooks-what-is-your-purpose.html?ref=opinion

where is your porpoise?

"These days we live in a culture that is more diverse, decentralized, interactive and democratized. The old days when gray-haired sages had all the answers about the ultimate issues of life are over."

r.i.p. gray-haired dude...

he is for TPP in case ya missed it

(so he and T Friedman can clink glasses over that one)

Correction: May 5, 2015

An earlier version of this column misspelled the given name of a French philosopher. He was Jean-Paul Sartre, not John-Paul.

An even earlier version misspelled it as Ringo.

I think he was actually referring to Pope John-Paul Sartre. A gray-haired sage of the middle ages.

http://images.politico.com/global/news/110705_brooks_bloggers_nbc_328.jpg

Being Nothingness

As I travel on a book tour, I find there is an amazing hunger to shift the conversation.

lol

"can we talk about something else besides your stupid book plz"

oh shit more conversation

i heard Brooks being interviewed for 15 mins on WNYC last week before realizing it wasn't James Woods on downers.

Brooks and Woods comparison making my day

the voices are closer than you might think!

My disdain for Woods is earned since I usually made it halfway through a New Yorker article and then went uh, who is this jerk again? Oh, him.

James Woods, the David Brooks of literary criticism. Book him, Dan-O.

he means James Woods the actor, not James Wood the critic.

Ah hell. I was thinking "authorial" voice. Not unreasonably.

Except of course that there is no James Woods the critic. I see that now.

A joke about stopping by Wood on a snowy evening takes on a totally different meaning, doesn't it?

I don't care much for his recs these days but James Wood was often a great critic although he looks like I imagine a New Yorker critic looks.

I've heard that & figure there must be some reason for his reputation. As I hadn't paid attention, I can only go by what I've read in the New Yorker for the last ten years or so. It's sanctimony, it's unimaginative. He takes up the most boring issues one could have with books.

If you have answers to these questions, go the website for my book, “The Road to Character,” click on First Steps and send in your response.

David Brooks, click-baiter.

I vaguely remember The Road to Character.

http://media.nola.com/tpphotos/photo/2014/11/10/16305462-standard.jpg

(l-r: gray-haired sages)

Also I just noticed he was so excited about linking to his website that he left out a preposition. We really are without moral authorities these days, aren't we?

i believe the oldest sage in that photo is the only one not wearing a very obvious rug.

http://the-toast.net/2015/05/05/david-brooks-writes-a-sestina-about-poverty/

Krugman wrote a nice response

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/opinion/paul-krugman-race-class-and-neglect.html?_r=0

Every time you’re tempted to say that America is moving forward on race — that prejudice is no longer as important as it used to be — along comes an atrocity to puncture your complacency.

was surprised this turned out to not be a reference to Brooks' column tbh

lol