Friday, March 23, 2018

David Brooks Will Fix Everything

Thank God David Fucking Brooks is finally on the case!

A fitting rewards for the quintessential Beltway hack who has a job for life at The New York Times sharting out tiny variatons of Beltway's most cherished fairy tale.  A column which amounts to literally nothing more than a twice-weekly and utterly predictable, ritual incantation of the Beltway's most sacred lie for which every headline might as well be this:
Speaking as a White Male

David Brooks MARCH 22, 2018
Which is inevitably lathered up with some ludicrous revisionist claptrap like this:
When I started, it was very important for opinion writers to never think of themselves as a Republican or a Democrat. We were individual inquirers, not polemicists for some political team. Over the years, many people stopped making that distinction.
And is always built around a Both Siderist poison-pill like this --
But the notion that group membership determines opinion undermines all that. If it’s just group against group, deliberation is a sham, beliefs are just masks groups use to preserve power structures, and democracy is a fraud. The epistemological foundation of our system is in surprisingly radical flux.
-- in which any critical distinctions of any kind about anything are systematically annihilated in favor the Both Siderist lie which The New York Times pays Mr. Brooks a fortune to repeat over and over and over again.

After writing about Mr. Brooks for 13 years, I can tell you with complete confidence that there is no "reputable" columnist in America who has inflicted more long-term damage to our nation's political discourse than Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times.

None.




Behold, a Tip Jar!

8 comments:

Andrew Johnston said...

From Aspen:

The scope of the new initiative won’t come as a surprise to those who have seen Brooks speak at past Institute events. During the Aspen Ideas Festival last year he joined a panel on reclaiming the values of moderation, civility, and compromise, where he discussed the important democratic virtues that both the left and the right have moved away from in American politics.

Of course he was on that panel. I'm sure it was a delightful panel, too, with discussion on how Trump and the Republican congress may be destroying the country but college liberals are mean. But you were saying, Dave?

When I started, it was very important for opinion writers to never think of themselves as a Republican or a Democrat. We were individual inquirers, not polemicists for some political team. Over the years, many people stopped making that distinction.

How cute, he's pretending that he was always a Bothsiderist. Ever since he started whining about "identity politics" and college students, I've suspected that the golden age of politics to which Brooks wishes to return is sometime around 2002. It fits his description - everyone thought of themselves as Americans first and only and no one was arguing because there was only one acceptable idea. Brooks didn't become all angsty and introspective until the fall of Dubya, and I think he misses that period when he could be a full-bore conservative crank because that was the "center."

Honestly? If Brooks had been a Bothsiderist back then, I'd give him a little credit, as even a position as mealy and spineless as that one still would have required some guts.

Pagan in repose said...

Gives new meaning to the old sayings: adds insult to injury, rubbing salt in the wound, twisting the knife, making matters worse, grave dancing. I suppose this is Brooks idea of crop dusting, as in farting as you walk by cubicles at work in order to stink up the place while avoiding responsibility.

DFB: the shart that wouldn't stop.

So, I say to DFB, I fart in your general direction, sir.

trgahan said...

Bringing the DFBs of the world into organizations like the Aspen Institute/Davos/etc just shows the real purposed of these Manufactured Social Elite Jerkoff Organizations is for the DFB's to figure out how to keep things EXACTLY how they are for another year in service to the plutocrats and oligarchs who paid for the open bar at the Welcome Reception.

And the oligarchs send reporters from the media outlets they own to legitimize it all with the tacit promise that, some day, that reporter may also get to be a seven figure earning Thought Leader if their reporting shows they are 'on board'.

RUKidding said...

Good gawd! Just what we need more than ever now... NOT!!

Bobo found hisself some other criminal filthy richy-rich patron to pay him to shit out his usual bullshit craptastic nonsense from his shithole. And don't he look fucking puh-leeeeezed with hisself in that photo?

PTOUI!!

La la la la laaaaaaaaaaaa.... can't heeeeaaar you!

bowtiejack said...

As you have so amply documented, Brooks is simply the Babbit for our time.
H.L. Mencken observed in his review of that novel: "There is no plot whatever... Babbitt simply grows two years older as the tale unfolds." Brooks has, of course, stretched that out to much more than two years, alas. But like the nostalgic mother's meals of childhood, there are never any surprises, just a repeated ladling out of reassuring comfort food.

dinthebeast said...

Well, David, if you don't want it to be "group against group", do you think you could maybe get your fucking group to stop trying to kill mine?
I'd be a lot less militant and shrill sounding about the Republican party if their stated goal was not taking away my fucking health insurance.
I'd still be militant and shrill sounding though, because they would still be goddamn monsters, but a little less so, and that would be progress, no?

-Doug in Oakland

joejimtree said...

Speaking as a White Male is supposed to be about demographic identity, and Brooks pretends that white and male are his defining traits. Left out rich.

Yastreblyansky said...

David, David, somehow we all guessed whether you were a Democrat or not. Isn't that weird?