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

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

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5kkxbJXho1qd96hso1_1280.jpg

I liked atrios' post on this, http://www.eschatonblog.com/2012/06/authoritah.html

Pierce and others did much more elaborate takedowns of The Follower Problem column, but this is the shorter version of everybody. And I've finally been coming around to Black's incredibly venomous style in the past few months (maybe it was too much to bear when the US was the primary home of all grand fuckups and incompetent, unaccountable villainy, and now I can get into it because ~50% of his sniping is about Europe? I dunno) but the way he drops the last sentence in this particular post is just wonderful.

bullets

1. Brooks remains exceptionally good at providing labels. I suspect "follower problem" might have more legs than Bobo in the long run.

2. What would it take to get him fired? I live in DC. I feel a need to crash these cocktail parties where this motherfucker is something other than a bad joke. I know the village exists - I'm sure I've spent lots of time on the metro and in traffic, mere inches away from no-shit villagers - but what is this construct? how is the vacuum maintained?

Plant a tracker on Maureen Dowd perhaps.

planting things on modo? am I a roomba? who would not be disgusted by this option?

I should just nab some addresses from these overpaid shitbirds' public property tax whatevers and show up with a shaker full of straight shitty whiskey and goat eyes for garnishes and see how far I get before they notice my suit is made of vegetables and not poor people

Brooks remains exceptionally good at providing labels. I suspect "follower problem" might have more legs than Bobo in the long run.

yeah i dunno, been reading him lately and wondering if people are still "following" him. like he's trying too hard with the conceptual term-coining

x-post to El Tomboto

I thought Brooks' new DC digs were close to you? Maybe you will run into him somewhere

Here's a criticism of Brooks re his thoughts on the Gehry design for the Eisenhower memorial

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/david-brookss-criticism-of-eisenhower-memorial-design-falls-short/2012/06/13/gJQAtUurZV_blog.html

His new digs are close to ME. Brooks is not cool enough to have digs close to tombot.

david brooks, opinion leader

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/20/e-mails-show-uva-board-wanted-big-online-push

Another article -- this one forwarded from Kington to Dragas -- was the "The Campus Tsunami," by the New York Times columnist David Brooks, predicting massive change from the MOOCs, and also predicting that the new model will involve much more learning from professors who are not at the college or university a student attends.

(re the university of virginia board members' push for online courses, in connection with their firing the president of uva)

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/david-brooks-strange-preoccupation-single-parents

Bringing serious lols today. "(Elites) work much longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room."

can't read anything of Brooks' without imagining him in this pose:

http://jewishachievementblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/40-david_brooks.jpg

he's giving Christopher Hayes book some attention at least-

I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined....

feel like he really had trouble with that one, a lot of straining to reach the liberal boogeyman.

Man, I hope Elites carry towels with them to wipe off after those grueling fucking conference calls.

Like, has David Brooks ever worked a graveyard shift or lifted anything weighing more than 10 pounds in his entire life? Does he know anyone who does?

http://amcatholic.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/photoshopped-david-brooks.jpg

motherfuckers don't understand i'm doing work emails while in line at starbucks

when people talk about corruption and rigging the game they mean Kaplan test prep courses. i'm surprised the occupy kaplan movement hasn't taken off.

Like, has David Brooks ever worked a graveyard shift or lifted anything weighing more than 10 pounds in his entire life?

His butt?

in today's column, he also uses the word "scrupulosity," which is defined as "a psychological disorder characterized by pathological guilt about moral or religious issues. It is personally distressing, objectively dysfunctional, and often accompanied by significant impairment in social functioning. It is typically conceptualized as a moral or religious form of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), although this categorization is empirically disputable."

he meant "scrupulousness."

but you know, that's just my elite education showing.

Scruples are such tiny things that even the scrupulous overlook most of them.

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/booboos-in-paradise/

Kevin Drum re latest Brooks column on Romney/Ryan medicare plan:

As near as I can tell, the truth is almost exactly the opposite of what Brooks has written. He may not be impressed with Obama's plan, but that's not a good excuse for so badly misrepresenting what Romney and Ryan would do.

x-post--great piece.

his defense is that his writing is a joke. impenetrable.

today's brooks' op-ed begins with "Let’s say you’re generally a moderate voter." and peaks with "The priority in this election is to get a leader who can get Medicare costs under control. Then we can argue about everything else."

The purpose of the Republican convention is to introduce America to the real Mitt Romney. Fortunately, I have spent hours researching this subject. I can provide you with the definitive biography and a unique look into the Byronic soul of the Republican nominee:

I actually found this column moderately funny (ducks):

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/opinion/brooks-the-real-romney.html?_r=1&hp

It is (ducks also). But is Brooks mocking us as well as Romney?

I don't know what to make of that tbh

Yeah that's the problem with Brooks. It should have a name, Brooksism or something -- that gutless, hide-the-ball kind of writing that makes you feel a little like you're talking to a narc.

seriously today's column is weird. i thought it was a media put-down - "see this is how the liberal media portrays poor mitt" - until the last line.