RIP David Brooks

Brooks rose into prominence as a moderate Republican and has enjoyed immense success and prestige as a result. Psychologically, he could hurl himself from a moving car more easily than he could reject Republicanism, no matter how batshit crazy the party becomes.

same with Frum at this point, imo. i realize he can't begin to approach the loathsomeness of Brooks, but his blog basically serves to titillate liberals (who the fuck else pays attention to him?) and provoke a chorus of 'i-told-you-so's'

except for his recent weird preoccupation with the evils of zomg marihuana and the fact that he can't get his mouth off Israel's dick for 5 seconds, i really don't understand how he's still able to call himself a Republican with a straight face.

i suppose renouncing Republicanism would damage his brand, his blog traffic would suffer and he wouldn't be one of cable news' 4 go-to guys who are "trying to save the party"

(re Frum on pot and Israel: i realize that neither of these positions would preclude one from being a card-carrying Dem)

I mind Frum far less than Brooks. At least Frum gives the impression that he has groggily awakened from a nightmare.

lol at "the chinese have no word for nerd"

clean hit:

David Brooks has an unparalleled ability to shape an intellectually interesting idea into the rhetorical arc of an 800-word op-ed piece. The trouble is, a central part of his genius is choosing the little factoids that perfectly illustrate his points. No doubt he's happy enough to use a true fact if the right one comes to hand, but whenever I've checked, the details have turned out to be somewhere between mischaracterized and invented.

Is it just me or is there a kind of critical mass of media/internet people piling on him now? I find the timing strange -- I didn't think his latest column was particularly more noteworthy than a lot of his other drivel.

I was a little bemused too when he was EVERYWHERE in my twitter feed night before last. I checked the brooks threads on here and saw only vague lol refs-- I'l be god damned if I'm giving that little psycho a click so I actually still haven't read the column in q.

h8 him so much

I think he may have struck a nerve with a lot of bloggers with that "thought leader" piece, since it seems to be satirizing a certain kind of aspiring intellectual not too dissimilar to many bloggers themselves. Yglesias was particularly harsh:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/17/david_brooks_scant_self_awareness_divorced_pundit_suddenly_not_so_worried.html

Basically accuses him of hypocrisy for his recent divorce.

Pareene: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/18/hack_list_no_4_david_brooks/

He's overdue for a flogging, I just don't know why it's happening now.

i wouldn't flog him with my little brother's lash

o nate otm

have remained blissfully ignorant of this whole kerfuffle so a little disappointed at the reasons for this thread revive

Don't worry guys, with any luck Iraq will turn out like Rwanda!

too late to neglect it into genocide

Equating sunnis/shiites w hutsis/tutus is next level idiocy

Next level idiocy is just what we've come to expect from Mr. Brooks. The NYT demands nothing but the best from their columnists.

"America was governed best when it was governed by a porous, self-conscious and responsible elite."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/opinion/david-brooks-snap-out-of-it.html?_r=0

http://www.civil-twilight.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/gal_sweat_president_bush.jpg

someone put an icepick in this jackass

is it bad that when I saw this thread in the new answers page my first thought was "oh thank god"?

fucking thread title gets me EVERY TIME, I perk right up

fuck he didn't die :(

must resist urge to deconstruct this odious "porous elite" concept, not worth the effort

i for one welcome our new sponge overlords

i guess i'd hafta read the column to find out if his point is that we're now governed by a sealed-off, unconscious and irresponsible elite.

not gonna

love the equating of Ted Cruz with Karl Marx.

I’ve been living in and visiting New York for almost a half-century now. One thought occurs as I walk around these days: The city has never been better.

"There has never been a time when there were so many interesting places to visit, shop and eat, when the rivers and the parks were so beautiful, when there were so many vibrant neighborhoods across all boroughs"

What's the over on how many times in the past year Brooks has set foot in Staten Island, the Bronx, or Queens? (Airport, Yankees, and Mets don't count.)

"Second, the elite we do have has to acknowledge that privilege imposes duties. Wealthy people have an obligation to try to follow a code of seemliness."

This guy...

"After you shit on the poor, be sure to give them a towel to wipe your ass"

a code of seemliness!

Don't buy luxury cars for your kids? What else ya got for us, Comrade?!

"when there were so many people paying 40-60% of their income in rent"

a code of seemliness a little too close to a code of socialism amirite

did you know: rivers have "never" been so beautiful as they are today.

One thought occurs as I walk around these days: The city has never been better. I have never been wealthier or more pampered.

or more seemly

How does it seem to seem

Frankly agape that he actually wrote A CODE OF SEEMLINESS

ghosted for him by intern frank lee agape iiuc

let brooks be finale of seem

The main problem with plutocracy is its unseemliness, this is true.

xpost lololol

Yes it's quite fortunate that we're not up against any civilization-threatening crises in these contemporary times.

I remember a few days after 9/11 when he called on males of NYC to look to the example of Nero Wolfe's factotum Archie for the good-humored, undemonstratively ass-kicking attitude the coming times would demand.

oh here: from his October 2011 column:

Sixty-five miles from where I am writing this sentence is a place with no Starbucks, no Pottery Barn, no Borders or Barnes & Noble. No blue New York Times delivery bags dot the driveways on Sunday mornings. In this place people don't complain that Woody Allen isn't as funny as he used to be, because they never thought he was funny. In this place you can go to a year's worth of dinner parties without hearing anyone quote an aperçu he first heard on Charlie Rose. The people here don't buy those little rear-window stickers when they go to a summer-vacation spot so that they can drive around with "MV" decals the rest of the year; for the most part they don't even go to Martha's Vineyard.

The place I'm talking about goes by different names. Some call it America. Others call it Middle America. It has also come to be known as Red America, in reference to the maps that were produced on the night of the 2000 presidential election. People in Blue America, which is my part of America, tend to live around big cities on the coasts. People in Red America tend to live on farms or in small towns or small cities far away from the coasts. Things are different there.

Everything that people in my neighborhood do without motors, the people in Red America do with motors. We sail; they powerboat. We cross-country ski; they snowmobile. We hike; they drive ATVs. We have vineyard tours; they have tractor pulls. When it comes to yard work, they have rider mowers; we have illegal aliens.

they have rider mowers, we have illegal aliens