Friday, March 03, 2017

Welcome to Pundit Hell


David Brooks and Gretchen Carlson...

...sharing a TED Talk...

...about America's poor, misunderstood, bitter White nougat center...

...and how Both Sides need to listen more dammit!

But that's impossible, right?  I mean, the fabric of spacetime would Ouroboros itself into nonexistence rather than allow such an event to occur, right?

Sadly, no.

From the TED Blog
Can we heal the fractured political conversation? A talk with Gretchen Carlson and David Brooks
OMG, make it stop!

Sorry.
Trump voters were angry and felt like Washington wasn’t listening to them. A native of Minnesota, Carlson has seen the anger in middle America firsthand, and it started long before 2016. “A huge swath of the population feels like Washington never listens to them,” she says. Brooks also traveled around the country during the elections, through what pundits have called “flyover country” — a term, he says, that he heard nearly every hour during the election cycle. It speaks to an impression of middle Americans as less important than people who live on the coasts, namely California and New York.


For many people in middle America, economic mobility is stunted and jobs have disappeared, Brooks says. “In this country, we only have one success story: you go to college, you get a degree and a white-collar job, and that’s success,” he says. “If you’re not rich or famous, you feel invisible.”
Seriously, stop.  Let me off this ride.

Not quite yet.
Political correctness has soured conservatives. The conservative media has pounded this issue for the past ten years: Political correctness keeps people from saying what they think, Carlson says. “There’s been a narrowing of what’s permissible to say,” Brooks adds, pointing to his experiences on elite campuses. So it’s refreshing to Trump voters that he says what he thinks, regardless of who he may offend. “There are a lot of people who agree with Steve Bannon but won’t say so publicly,” Carlson says. “Voting for Trump was a way for them to do it silently.”
That's it.  One more of these and I swear by Gugalanna the Bull of Heaven that I will shart everything  I've eaten since the second grade straight onto your fucking sweater!

Oh, c'mon.  Just one more.  With emphasis added so pay attention to the emphasis.
Be a little more self-suspicious. “You need to come out of the bubble if you’re ever going to have a conversation,” Carlson says. Brooks adds that we need to be wary of censorship and not hearing from people we disagree with, citing and commending the example of the University of Chicago’s rejection of safe spaces on campus. “If you get your feelings hurt, welcome to education,” he says.

Engage with media you usually disagree with. Carlson recommends occasionally watching a news show or reading an article from an outlet you normally wouldn’t. “We have to be accepting of all points of view — that’s how we start to bridge this massive divide.”
You lied!  That was two more, not one more.  That's it.  Here comes the Fun Cooker!

No, no, wait.  I teed this up to show you this one thing.  Just this one thing, and then I'm out. 
I promise.

From Crooks & Liars:
David Brooks Calls Internet Comments 'Too Psychologically Damaging' - Pays The Help To Read Them


Now I am done.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

And people keep saying domestic drone strikes are a bad idea. Here's conclusive proof to the contrary.

trgahan said...

Stalin must be jealous.

Brooks and Carlson (and their media enablers, including TED) just made 68 million people disappear without having to spend hours going lists of names or building prisons in the far reaches of Siberia. By their own conceptualization of the state of things, you'd think the November election was decided by 2 votes to 1.

As I've said before Brooks et al. not only exist to give Crazy Uncle Liberty an out when cornered, but they give college educated working professionals an out because they could never cite Fox or Rush in a conversation and maintain credibility in their peer group.

Dr.BDH said...

“There are a lot of people who agree with Steve Bannon but won’t say so publicly,” Carlson says. “Voting for Trump was a way for them to do it silently.”

Money shot. That's why it's ok to hate Trump voters.

dinthebeast said...

OK, Gretchin, I'll watch an hour of Fox News just as soon as you ride an AC Transit bus from the Eastmont Mall to West Oakland BART station without a cell phone or bodyguards...

-Doug in Oakland

proverbialleadballoon said...

David Brooks can't read comments on his articles, because the resulting overwhelming existential dread would cause him to hurl himself off the nearest building. The banality of evil, my God what have I done. He is good at delineating the issue, laying out the different parts, and then completely omitting the nugget of information that is to be gleaned from it. Or, he pretends that he just awoke from a fifteen-year coma, and what's with all this current events, why it seems as though the republican party has gone insane, I wonder what happened there. If he just dropped in from the sky, why do we have to explain to him what is going on? Isn't he the guy with the newspaper column, why does the audience know more than him? 'By golly, I know nothing about any of this.' ..why is he in the newspaper writing about it, then?! How has this weak ruse been allowed to continue, this long, NYT? anyway, I agree with trgahan, Brooks writes to give his audience an out. In conversation, 'no, no, it isn't all that terrible, this new terrible thing that republicans are doing this time, what really is going on, is [insert David Brooks latest piffle]'.