Sloths of Glory

Rather than let it finally pitch quietly and unmourned into its long-overdue grave, today the New York Times has inexplicably resumed the long-running weekly experiment in stilted, tone-deaf puppet theater they call "The Conversation".

In this nails-scratching-on-the-chalkboard-of-life exercise, New York Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins gamely plays the role of the genteel, matronly hostess whose schtick is to nervously laugh off the fact that, between bouts of butt scooting its bleeding sphincter all over her lovely duvets, a very large mad dog is running amok at her soiree and tearing the throats out of her other guests.

More canapes?

Across the table at the excruciatarium sits Our Mr. Brooks -- the mad dog's owner who (sort-of-but-not-really-see-it's-very-complicated-and-involves-Niehbur) disowned the dog once it dragged the third mutilated corpse into the conversation area (where he was incorrectly explaining something about The 60s), and tossed it at Mr. Brook's feet -- joking weakly that cleaning up after house pets can sometimes be a nuisance, and Tom Friedman told him once that lemon juice and a little seltzer can get all kinds of household stains out of one's duvets, and have you ever noticed how Liberals are generally very naughty.

My, aren't we having a lot of weather this year?

This all peppered with Lockhorns-grade unfunny jokes about big, wide, slow-moving targets like, say, Ron Paul.

The result comes across as feverishly hollow and forced as a family that has made a pact never to speak of The Bad Thing That Happens When Daddy Drinks, trying to navigate across the mine-laden surface of another morning-after of splintered furniture and angry bruises.

Fake example, made up by me:

David Brooks: Ha ha! I heard once of a man whose jaw broke for no apparent reason!

Gail Collins: Ha ha! You know what would taste great? Waffles!

David Brooks: Ha ha! On that we can agree!

Real example:

David Brooks: They fear the country is going down the toilet and they want some big fundamental change but they are not quite sure what it is. Obama promised change but in office he has tried to be Mr. Long Term and also Mr. Short Term, Mr. Liberal but also Mr. Hamiltonian Centrist. Mr. Post-Partisan Transcendence and Mr. Partisan Streetfighter. There are only so many divides any leader can fudge.

Gail Collins: A lot of people — especially people on the left — are unhappy with Obama for not yelling at the Republicans more, flinging down more gauntlets, drawing more lines in the sand, and doing all the other stuff you’re supposed to do when you’re really determined to show you’re not a political wimp. I don’t think he’s a wimp — he’s been pretty steely when it comes to foreign affairs. But I do think he’s a person who was specifically elected not to play hyper-partisan politics. How can we expect him to be good at something we picked him to avoid?

David Brooks: This has been one of those periods when I’m so glad I’m no longer on the left. For 50 years liberals have dominated Hollywood, the media, the universities, publishing and every mode of communication with the possible exception of talk radio and Ted Nugent concerts. In all this time they have tried to get the country to think more like them. They have failed. The country has swung to the right. Distrust of government is at an all-time high. And now they want Barack Obama to come in and promulgate the Great Society II on a center-right country.

That’s crazy. Liberals who wish Obama were more forthright should look in the mirror and ask: Why have we been unable to win more converts to our side?

Gail Collins: It’s true that Americans don’t like government. Until they need it. Or until they get used to it and then somebody comes along and tries to take away their Social Security. Obama’s speech to Congress was good. Maybe he can remake himself into a different kind of politician. Although we did elect him because we thought he was genuine.

David Brooks: The speech was good. Like our colleague Ross Douthat, I wish this had been the first stimulus package, although maybe double in size.
...

Gail Collins: Bold and serious didn’t get him very far then. Although it might be a good title for a politics-based soap opera.

David Brooks: As always, I hover between the hope that Obama will emerge as a great leader, who will break through the logjam, and the despair that somehow it’s just not going to work out and we’ll all revert to the trenches.

First, I don't exactly remember when it was that the Right climbed out of its trenches in the first place, so maybe next time the New York Times offers David Brooks a few column inches

he can specify the precise day and date when the Pig People agreed to this invisible cease-fire.

Second -- and I'm sure this is just me -- but I seem to remember a column from a year ago when this Other David Brooks was pontificating to this Other Gail Collins about economic stimuli, and that Other David Brooks said stuff like this (from "David Brooks Doesn't Understand Economics"):

Besides, I’m hung up on my lack of faith in the idea that stimulus actually works. My impression is that before the crash most economists thought monetary policy was the way to counter economic cycles and that fiscal stimulus tends to be mistimed or ineffective. This was the conclusion I took from a long history of stimulus attempts by Christina Romer, now the Obama economic adviser.

Now, suddenly faith in stimulus is back, not because of new evidence but simply because monetary policy alone hasn’t produced job growth. This, of course, still doesn’t mean than stimulus works in the short term.

I believe I personally caught sight of this Other David Brooks last October, when he appeared at the Hammerschmidt Chapel in Elmhurst, IL.

Here is some video ("All the Lies That Are His Life") of that Other David Brooks lying about his amply-documented opinions about the Iraq War, after which he also lied about the complete failure of the stimulus as part of his extended, overarching Big Lie about Both Sides Doing It.

Here are some of my observations from that evening:

It was a fine night out, except for the bits where David Brooks utterly betrayed Niebuhr's most basic teachings by manifestly lying about his own horribly inconvenient past statements and beliefs (I never said what I said) and repeatedly drawing manifestly false equivalences between Left and Right positions and policies (asserting, for example, that while the invasion of Iraq may have been problematic, it was a largely a noble and well-intentioned effort that was poorly executed. Just like the Stimulus Package! Which, Bobo asserted, had also proven to be a failure because it was based on a similarly false model of human nature.)

Man, that Other David Brooks sure is a douche.

I wonder whatever became of him?

What's that you say?

Waffles?

Well why didn't you say so!

Of course I'd love some!

After all, who doesn't love waffles?