#RichWhiteLivesMatterToo -- Update

Mr. Brooks has written a column today.

It is entitled:

Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates While White

And it is quite possible that the word "entitled" has never more comprehensively encompassed both of its definitions:

en·ti·tled

inˈtīdld,enˈtīdld/

transitive verb

to give a title to : designate

adjective

believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.

As The Twitter has already noted, Mr. Brooks is in for a very long day.  And as a wee Liberal blogger operating at the extreme outer exurbs of American letters already, the better part of valor would be for me to step aside and let others expend a million angry, bewildered words to discover that Mr. Brooks is an impregnable fortress of Beltway authority who is beyond caring about facts or about what his critics think.

However, as America's leading Brooksologist who has spent years carefully and fruitlessly documenting the daily progress of Mr. Brooks' vast and so-far highly successful project to completely rewrite the history of Modern Conservatism and take out all the icky stuff --

University of Chicago history baccalaureate David "Even David Brooks" Brooks has written a genuinely remarkable and revealing column about the rise and fall of American Conservatism.

What makes it remarkable and revealing it is not its scholarly depth or historical breadth or scathing, confessional honesty, but rather that it is a work of almost pure fiction being passed off as fact in America's Newspaper of Record

In his fairy tale, Mr. Brooks describes and eulogizes a fictional Conservatism built from a tense but harmonious fusion between what Mr. Brooks refers to as "economic conservatives" and "traditional conservatives" -- 

The economic conservatives were in charge of the daring ventures that produced economic growth. The traditionalists were in charge of establishing the secure base — a society in which families are intact, self-discipline is the rule, children are secure and government provides a subtle hand.

-- that never existed in the real world...

...whereas the real American Conservatism that has blighted this land for +30 years -- the Conservatism  of Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schlafly, Newt Gingrich, Lee Atwater and the Southern Strategy -- is to be found nowhere at all in Mr. Brooks' telling.

Remarkable.

Remarkable that the Neoconservative and the fundamentalist Christian conservative and the bigot conservative have all been completely unpersoned from David Brooks' imaginary history of a movement to which he has devoted his life.  Instead...well...do you remember that political party which spent the last three years obsessively obstructing the Obama Administration?  And fetishizing Barack Obama's birth certificate, ACORN, Saul Ailinsky and the Kenyan Usurper's secret plans to turn the country over to an army of welfare cheats? And wrecking the nation's bond rating?  And passing more meaningless, brutal anti-woman , anti-choice legislation than any other nine Congresses in history?  And cooking up laws requiring plastic punishment probes be shoved up women's vaginae?  And loudly declaiming their medieval ideas about rape and birth control very loudly?

Remember them?

In Mr. Brooks' "1001 Burkean Nights" those people simply do not exist...

-- I feel compelled to say that this one sentence from Mr. Brooks' column today --

I think you distort American history.

-- is the single funniest fucking thing I have read all month.

You see. after the collapse of his George W. Bush Dream Palace, Mr. Brooks was compelled to cobble together a brand new fake American history in which to live.  He now fully inhabits that fake history, and collects rent from every Both Siderist Beltway hack, Aspen Institute pseudo-intellectual and Centrist-humping politician in America who dove in there for shelter after Bushworld burned to the ground and now call Mr. Brooks' fake history "home".

So it should come as no surprise that, for America's self-appointed Moralizer-in-Chief, there is nothing more unnerving than a confrontation with the actual history of the actual country which has bestowed power and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice upon a grifting Conservative mediocrity like Mr. Brooks:

...

In your anger at the tone of innocence some people adopt to describe the American dream, you reject the dream itself as flimflam. But a dream sullied is not a lie. The American dream of equal opportunity, social mobility and ever more perfect democracy cherishes the future more than the past. It abandons old wrongs and transcends old sins for the sake of a better tomorrow.

This dream is a secular faith that has unified people across every known divide. It has unleashed ennobling energies and mobilized heroic social reform movements. By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future.

...

Scolding people for their bad manners -- "[i]n your anger at the tone..." -- has always been the Atlantic Wall of Conservative defenders of privilege and fake history like Mr. Brooks (See: "Table, Kiddie").   Ever since the collapse of the Bush Dream Palaces exposed the flagrancy and scale of their malfeasance and price in blood and treasure we have all paid as a result, they have successfully conspired to shove the entire Liberal blogosphere and million words brilliant, insightful critiques of their lies and disasters right out of the public square and back into Coventry for saying "fuck" and other high crimes against their delicate sensibilities. 

For you see, it is good manners uber alles for Mr. Brooks' cosseted coven of Serious People.   Except, of course, if you're slandering the shit out of the Dirty Hippies or the Kenyan Usurper, in which case please feel free to put your keyboard on full-auto and have at those Liberal fuckers.  On that mission, Mr. Brooks will be only too happy to hold your coat.

Update:  Yep,  A very long day.  The usual suspects are weighing in.

First, here are sources you will find if you Google "News" about David Brooks' column...

Salon:  

David Brooks scolds Ta-Nehisi Coates: “I think you distort history”

The Times columnist displays more white privilege in one column than some white people experience in a lifetime

Jezebel:

Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates Whilst Snuggled Deep Within My Butthole

Esquire:

Here's Some Stupid for Lunch: David Brooks' American Dream

TPM:

NYT's David Brooks Has Complaints After Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates 'While White'

Yahoo News:

New York Times Columnist David Brooks Blasted for White Privilege Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates

Then come the wee digital shire folk who never show up on The Google as being "News" worthy:

The Mahablog:

  Stop David Brooks Before He Expresses Himself Again

Alternet:

David Brooks White Whines Over Ta-Nehisi Coates' New Book While Appearing Not to Have Read It

The Rectification of Names:

Brooks on Coates