RIP David Brooks

again

rod dreher has had enough of these scurrilous scurrilisms

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5ZvFI3X4AE6cQs.jpg:small

wait...what's going on?

he published a book

yes. I and everyone I know can't get enough of gossiping about David Brooks and his wife. it's an all-consuming passion.

It's pretty ridiculous to presume evangelical religiosity is relevant on the subject of premarital sex, except insofar as there's more hypocrisy and guilt.

incandescent, sounds hot

Nothing could be more typical of the contempo evangelical approach to sex morality than "he dumped the mother of his children, the woman who helped him build his career for decades, by the side of the road and took up with a young hottie, but he didn't actually pull his pants down until he was legally divorced, so how dare you impugn, you monstrous scolds, oh and plus, I too think she's hot"

Do we really know he “dumped her by the side of the road” and it wasn’t a mutual divorce? It’s not unthinkable to me that his former wife got sick of him.

To get sick of David Brooks is to be sick of life itself.

Lol good samuel johnson paraphrase. Something you won’t see in the youtube comments!

Do we really know he “dumped her by the side of the road” and it wasn’t a mutual divorce? It’s not unthinkable to me that his former wife got sick of him.

I concede this is a reasonable question.

His ex wife should have dumped him by the side of the road and run over him with a car full of remaindered copies of Bobos in Paradise.

lmao old dudes are gross

I did enjoy reading his piece in the NYT yesterday about living in an era defined by fear

omfg The New Yorker has a profile about Brooks, can I die

Did you guys know that the term “bobo” actually caught on in france?

The real heart of the Socialist Party turned out to be its progressive urban rich—les bobos, as they are called, after a coinage of David Brooks’s. Macron managed to woo them all away.

https://newrepublic.com/article/153507/france-yellow-vests-uprising-emmanuel-macron-technocratic-insiders

This appeared in an excellent magazine:

For Brooks, this is a turn in both subtle and obvious ways: his point of view from early in his career was that of an affectionate theorist of social behavior, and that position depended upon the studied suppression of himself as a character. Although he came of age writing for The Weekly Standard, and has long held the amiable conservative’s chairs on “PBS NewsHour” and the Times opinion page, Brooks has never been an especially opinionated voice; in his best work, the details he notices seem to add up to a critique. “

both subtle and obvious

he came of age writing for The Weekly Standard,

can I poll these sentences

I take a pretty laissez fair and bobo approach to polls myself so yeah go for it

being there: the david brooks story

“In my experience,” he writes, “a telos crisis comes in two forms, walking and sleeping.” Couples experience eight stages of intimacy. “There are four kinds of unkindness that drive couples apart."

(1) Turns both subtle and obvious
(2) Coming of age writing for The Weekly Standard
(3) Detailing trowels or grills
(4) “Jesus is the person who shows us what giving yourself away looks like.”

It’s so wild to me when people say they’re absolutely certain someone they know didn’t do x y or z. I wouldn’t say that about my best friend or my sibling, man. You don’t know what people are capable of!

but god told him so

There are four kinds of unkindness

this stuff makes you long for the hard-edged realpolitik of a thomas friedman

each unkindness can be turbocharged to an even lower kindness level by any one of nine cruelties

i swear now I see Brooks stuff or stuff about him and the only logical conclusion is that there is a high level media conspiracy to troll Alfred

Did you guys know that the term “bobo” actually caught on in france?

It comes from Bourgeois Bohème, and Brooks most definitely didn't make it up, it's been around for ages in France (Paris).

Trivia: It caught on in the Netherlands from 1988 on when Ruud Gullit called annoying sports directors, who are too prominent, 'bobo's', from Bondsbons.

lbi otm

The late Tony Judt’s short passage here is all you will ever need to know about David Brooks and his “research” pic.twitter.com/AgNGqB5r9r

— Moshik Temkin (@moshik_temkin) May 3, 2019

I have made fun of and/or rolled my eyes at most of his columns over the past however many years, but I listened to him on the Ezra Klein Show this week, and I have to admit that a lot of it resonated with me. Maybe I am just in the right place for it, feeling weary and cynical about the value systems I have accepted for most of my adult life.

My one criticism is that he seems to think that "politics" is something that can just be waved away as not essential to one's identity, and I think he doesn't recognize the privilege in that statement.

I mean, you’re talking about a guy whose business card says “fatuous oaf”

xp jaymc we're glad you're finally here, sit down, we need to talk

I mean, you’re talking about a guy whose business card says “fatuous oaf”

If this was true I would like Brooks so much.

I listened to him on the Ezra Klein Show this week, and I have to admit that a lot of it resonated with me.

He is successful in part for the same reason Jordan Peterson is successful -- there's some core to the message that's reasonable and even admirable (Brooks: individualism and success-worship is overrated and a sense of communal fellow-feeling is probably good for both you and society; Peterson: clean your damn room, nobody's stopping you) but that basic reasonable core is always predominantly deployed in the service of unpleasant score-settling (Brooks: the real problem with society is filthy rich Harvard liberals who worship success, individualism, and atheism and don't get that salt-of-the-earth small-town Nebraska is Real and Where It's At; Peterson: when your room is messy it looks like the nasty inside of a lady and you have to clean it up to be a Real Self-Respecting Man and by dint of that status get to explore the nasty inside of a lady)

To be clear, I think Brooks is infinitely better than Peterson

Brooks seems like someone who simultaneously can't envision meaning without a concept of God, and wishes he could believe in religion without doubts like those good folks in the flyover states.

https://www.theonion.com/david-brooks-decries-incivility-of-modern-plumbing-afte-1834954527

go fuck yourself

https://i.imgur.com/DNE5bf5.jpg

drive yourself into a river of fire

he’s still alive huh

― grim-n-gritty hooty reboot (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 19 January 2018 21:25 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

C'mon Dems. If you want David Brooks to leave the party he's been married to for decades, you have to put something on the table and be a little more centrist, willing to please, nubile, and sensuous.

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) June 28, 2019

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2804/0854/products/Mace_Brand_KeyGuard_Mini_Black_1_1024x1024.jpg?v=1530807023

the fact that obama and biden take this fucking goon seriously is a real indictment of their worldview

Yes. We should all cater specifically to the needs and desires of David Brooks, because he is America's Everyman, perfectly typifying the lives we all lead as grossly overpaid NYT columnists and B-List media celebrities.

Cory Booker is a fan too, he loves The Second Wife.

I only wear New Balance because Nike was a goddess in a Greek culture that practiced slavery.

— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) July 2, 2019