Obey Road

David Brooks regurgitated another 800 words of Establishmentarian Centrist boilerplate to meet his New York Times contractual obligation.

Honestly, why any rational carbon-based life form would still be reading this creakingly awful stuff is beyond me.

It is journalistic Osmolite: pre-digested Centrist homily paste for those so intellectually enfeebled that they can no longer be bothered with chewing or swallowing stupid opinions themselves, but instead pay Mr. Brooks to shunt Beltway idiocy directly into their ancient, delicate, Villager digestive systems.

There is the obligatory nod to everything going straight to the Dickens over the last 30 years, consarn it --

The number of business start-ups per capita has been falling steadily for the past three decades. Workers’ share of national income has been declining since 1983. Male wages have been stagnant for about 40 years. The American working class — those without a college degree — is being decimated, economically and socially. In 1960, for example, 83 percent of those in the working class were married. Now only 48 percent are.

-- without any mention whatsoever of a certain Reagan Revolution which – with the enthusiastic assistance of Conservative grovelers like Our Mr. Brooks -- got all those shit-boulders rocketing down all those hills.

There is the obligatory shot at the actual craziness the GOP now openly leaves in its wake like a slime trail every time they lurch another few miles into Crazytown.

The Republican growth agenda — tax cuts and nothing else — is stupefyingly boring, fiscally irresponsible and politically impossible.

Which is immediately neutered by an obligatory lie about the Imaginary Counterpoising Evils of those darn Democrats:

As for the Democrats, they offer practically nothing. They acknowledge huge problems like wage stagnation and then offer... light rail! Solar panels…

Democrats dream New Deal dreams, propose nothing and try to win elections by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare.

Oh if only there were a third Party, full of Sensible, Reasonable beltway sphincter
Handi-Wipes like David Fucking Brooks!

Like the grimly generic strip-mall grab-bag of Taco-Fried-Chicken-Baskin-Donut-White-Pullet-S'leven-Gulp-n-Flees that pockmark the American landscape like capitalism's own lesions, Mr. Brooks remain a seemingly inexplicably ubiquitous cultural blight despite the fact that what he is selling - week after week after week -- is basically poo on a stick.

However, unlike the lotto-ticket-and-cigarette dispensaries of the American Heartland, Mr. Brooks does not exist because he fills an actual demand for, say, five-dollar-a-dozen suspect eggs, or the 2:00 AM combo platter of pint-bottle vodka, Red Bull, Newports and condoms.

No, Mr. Brooks exists because a tiny, wealthy faction of the New York Times' readership requires that he exist.

Like a high-end, concierge version of the sewage that Fox and hate Radio pump into the amygdalae of the Pig People, Bobo provides his clients with a form of specialized fetish fulfillment.

For a fee...

His clients are rich political perverts who have lost the capacity to get it up except in one very specific way, using very specific words and symbols. Their kink isn't rubber or cheerleader costumes or dressing up like mice and having the "Farmer's Wife" chase them around with a carving knife. Instead, these decadent lifestyle perverts obviously need to hear the same hoary, empty, clichéd "Both Sides Do It" rot ritually repeated in the same way over and over again.

And once, long ago, Bobo was their sprightly Belle de Jour. And oh, how they laughed! How the music played and how the wine flowed when the world was sparkly and new, and the Glorious Conservative Vanguard was energetically dismantling America and invading Iraq, all while cutting taxes and calling on all liberty-loving citizens to cope with it all by shopping like mad.

Because it was all for Freedom, don'tcha know! Freedom and Democracy and Capitalism and all kindsa other good woody-sounding nouns that make the cranky children over at NRO just cream their Ronnie Reagan Underoos,

And right smack in the middle of it all was Our Mr. Brooks, taking it in every hole and begging for more.

New York Times Lap Dances for Everyone!

Now, however, the years of pulling that old wingnut train coupled with Massive Daily Reminders of what an utter, bottomless failure Conservatism turned out to be have take their toll: Bobo is now just another tired old hooker with no marketable skills other than servicing wealthy Right-wing deviants -- dead inside and ass-dragging his way through another "yeah-baby-yeah-baby-ooh-baby-you'reastudbaby" session for money.

And yet as robotically automatic and absurd as his bullshit has become, for slopping this tepid, hoary bilge into the NYT trough twice a week Our Mr. Brooks is treated as well or better than the younger, limberer doxy-on-the-make he was back in the day: today he is still paid an assload of money, still appears at-will on any camera, microphone or publication he chooses, and is flown at great expense by his employer anywhere he wants in order to facilitate ticking off the very last item on his personal Bucket List -- licking the balls of every living rich and powerful human being in Christendom.

Funny old world.