RIP David Brooks

But his FB page says ex-columnist for NY Times

Oh god david brooks wrote a column about how no one wants to hang out with him anymore pic.twitter.com/428umTxgui

— eve peyser (@evepeyser) July 7, 2017

rough divorce eh

he remarried a much younger woman, yes?

oh did he? I have no idea.

awaiting his new book The Ghosting of America

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2017/04/30/new-york-times-columnist-david-brooks-weds-his-former-researcher-anne-snyder/

I keep opening this thread hoping the title is true

you are "mean" as the Yam would say

one day, Alfred, one day...

shakey he married a younger woman who was formerly his researcher.

his first wife, a gentile, also changed HER FIRST NAME to Sarah when they married.

what the fuck

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DEdC8ngXkAAyQ8J.jpg

You know, I had JUST decided not to click on that column.

lol

today's David Brooks column is worth reading pic.twitter.com/6UbURCmVAc

— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) July 11, 2017

I think this friend of his just hated Italians but Brooks's larger point still stands: inequality creates culture fissures and resentments

'instinctively, i led her into a gourmet sandwich shop / i don't know why but I had to start it somewhere'

Typical Brooks nonsense, but I'm surprised there are so many presumably sensible people in the twitterverse who are equally baffled by Italian cold cuts.

I think this friend of his just hated Italians but Brooks's larger point still stands: inequality creates culture fissures and resentments

Sure, but this idea that "cultural" inequality is the true source of these issues and not the cost and access issues he passingly cites is back-asswards. (That seems to be the implication in the excerpts I've seen, anyway, not giving that shit a click)

Totally.

so many presumably sensible people in the twitterverse who are equally baffled by Italian cold cuts.

really?!

i don't know what any of those things are (except pomodoro). that's not what's bad about the column.

at least he did some shoe leather reporting on this one. He could have just written about the scene in the Wire where the kids go to a fancy restaurant.

u guys keep getting my hopes up

David Brooks: This sandwich has lettuce. It's leaves you can eat.
Idiot friend (went to non-Ivy League college): ME NO EAT LEAF! NO LETTRUS!

— Pixelated Boat (@pixelatedboat) July 11, 2017

Typical Brooks nonsense, but I'm surprised there are so many presumably sensible people in the twitterverse who are equally baffled by Italian cold cuts.

― Moodles, Tuesday, July 11, 2017 10:33 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm... confused... then again this is why they keep him on, he's eminently hateable

Ime if you don't live somewhere with a heritage of Italian immigration you won't know what those things are. Maybe salami. Maybe not.

exactly^^ brooks conflates regional differences w/class distinctions

but he assumes a lot, i mean tastes change. my non-elite midwestern relatives eat sushi now.

Any actual Italian neighborhood would blow his mind apparently. Which is insane.

xp yes of course. Same here. :)

hey i never ate anything other than iceberg lettuce until college where was this funky GREEN STUFF (romaine) on the salad bar, google caesar chavez/lettuce boycott for details

also it's obvious that this "friend" does not exist

composite of the many people who didn't attend college he's lunched with over the years

then why wasn't the meat bologna

When yours truly, the urbane, worldly Alabamian, and my buddy from the Detroit burbs who was fluent in Japanese, took our no-college-degree having asses to the Okonomiyaki joint in San Francisco that was called Okonomiyaki, and we had a bunch of our no-college-degree having fellow enlisted folks with us, we would help explain the menu items to them, so that nobody got any jump scares from the bonito flakes or the tempura veggies. The point being if you are "friends" with a person then they should trust you to explain stuff to them without being a condescending shit, regardless of your class backgrounds or height or hairstyle or what ever the fuck, and you should be happy to help explain to them what the words in the foreign language are. Also, if you are "friends," then you might have an inkling of what they like to eat and which menu items would be good analogs to their favorite foods.

David Brooks has no friends, which is why his last column was about bailing, and this one is about taking his gardener out for lunch.

i do have a university degree but it's not in gabagool. like many people i have eaten in an italian deli, which is not a sign of class - italian deli sandwiches are often hearty and affordable. though I'm sure not in the bougie place brooks frequents.

but like also all those things are just fucking ham

David Brooks has no friends, which is why his last column was about bailing, and this one is about taking his gardener out for lunch.

Tooth bomb.

'instinctively, i led her into a gourmet sandwich shop / i don't know why but I had to start it somewhere'

Haha

lost Morrissey lyric

I want to eat with the common people

Trump: This Russia thing is busting wide open. What can possibly distract from it?
Bannon: (Pause) I have an idea. Get me David Brooks....

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 11, 2017

If I did a Patreon campaign to raise money for David Brooks fan fiction, would you support?

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 11, 2017

loathe to credit matty glesias but this does look like the place brooks was talking about

I think the infamous sandwich summit took place at Radici on Capitol Hill. pic.twitter.com/fhlYs1YGaV

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 11, 2017

it's also a really bad menu and having to untangle what different sandwiches are, when the descriptions are _bad_, when you're already having to deal with eating lunch with david brooks is a bit much. don't think that has anything to do with education level

It’s not really the prices that ensure 80 percent of your co-shoppers at Whole Foods are, comfortingly, also college grads; it’s the cultural codes.

For real tho, it's the prices.

prices + locations imo

No kidding. My sister-in-law recommended some random bullshit chicken salad at Whole Foods to us because she was trying to seduce us into the paleo lifestyle; it was bland as fuck and cost $18/lb. I have refused to set foot in one in the intervening 2.5 years.

(Here you can glimpse the Brooks imagination at work, visualizing people without college degrees wandering scared and confused through the aisles of Whole Foods, gaping at exotic items like peanut butter and apple butter and butter.)

I'm sure I'm biased because I'm Italian, but that Yglesias post is exactly what I was talking about. That menu just reads like a bunch standard Italian sandwich stuff and it describes the sandwiches fairly clearly, but I guess people freeze in terror when confronted with scary Italian words? Did the Mexican restaurant they went to use words like tacos, tortillas, queso, etc.? Is there a difference I'm missing? Both cuisines have been a part of US culture for a long time.

parentheticals on menus should be a strict no-no, that's practically the blink tag of menu UX

My own personal bias is that you should shop at Whole Foods because my sis works at an SF location, so please give her money, even if indirectly. (That said, I don't shop at one myself; I am a horrible person.)