David Brooks Wonders How David Brooks Ever Came To Be

From Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times yesterday:

How did we in our business get in the spot where we spend 90 percent of our coverage on the 10 percent of our lives influenced by politics and 10 percent of our coverage on the 90 percent of our lives influenced by relationship, community and the places we live in every day?

To begin to understand how truly hilarious this paragraph is, you must first understand that Mr. David Brooks has spent his entire professional life snugly wrapped in a cocoon of privilege. comfort and willful blindness.

You must further understand that Mr. Brooks has spun this cocoon by assiduously courting the favor of the wealthy and the powerful.  

And you must finally understand that Mr. Brooks has done this by first listening carefully to what his wealthy and powerful benefactors wish the world to be and then using the elite position at the apex of American punditry his wealthy and powerful benefactors have given him to spin them fairy tales in which he speaks with sweeping confidence about the nation and its problems in language that his his wealthy and powerful benefactors want the hear.

When it came to pass over and over and over again that Mr. Brooks' fairy tales did not align with the real world at all -- that his ex cathedra pronouncements were, in fact, spectacularly and often bloodily wrong -- he would use his elite position at the apex of American punditry to deflect.  To deny.  To change the subject.  

Here's one of literally thousands of examples:

"Since Nov. 6, the G.O.P. has experienced an epidemic of open-mindedness..."  -- David Brooks, November 20, 2012

At the time Mr. Brooks wrote this, one of the greatest existential threats facing this country was the accelerating and terrifying devolution of his Republican into an out-and-proud dungheap of rage, bigotry and ignorance.  It was a threat which was having long-term and catastrophic effects on the "90 percent of our lives influenced by relationship, community and the places we live in every day", but it was also a threat which  Mr.  Brooks' wealthy and powerful benefactors absolutely refused to believe was real and absolutely did not want to hear about.

And so Mr. Brooks went right on doing what had always worked.  What had always maintained his cocoon of of privilege and comfort.  

He and every other Beltway pundit just like him used their elite positions at the apex of American punditry to spin the lies their benefactors wanted to hear.  

In this respect, Mr. Brooks has been an absolutely reliable Republican lieutenant, working for a different branch of the same wingnut army as Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.   As I wrote back in 2012 ("Conservative Avengers Assemble!")

And what happens on those uncomfortable occasions when shredding the complex tapestry of the actual past and replacing it with pro-Conservative fiction leaves all sorts of the untidy loose ends?

Well, Mr. Brooks usually solves that little problem by simply lying about it.  And why not?  I mean, it's not like there any professional downsides to Conservative pundits lying anymore.

There are no sanctions for lying Conservatives.

No one shuns you.

In fact, just the opposite is the case:  in mainstream America political media, the only people who are routinely and rigorously sanctioned and shunned are people who persist in blabbing uncomfortable truths, which is why Mr. Brooks will almost certainly get away with his whitewash of history.

Because as we saw with the Tea Party (There. Is. No Tea. Party.) and Fox News, this nation is packed to the rafters with Conservatives who are so desperate to wish away what they have said and done for the last 30 years -- so frantic to pretend it never happened or that they were never a part of it -- that they will pay people to whisper that sweet, sweet lie to them over and over again.

Conservatism's foot-soldiers and cannon fodder will handsomely remunerate people like Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Hannity and Beck and Coulter and Gingrich and on an on and on to tell them that their paranoia is patriotic, that their bigotry is heroic,and that all the Very Bad Things that have ever happened were caused by gays, women, scary brown people and Evil Liberals.

And to the meet the more refined tastes of Conservatism's think-tankers and moneyed  middle-management, they have bullshit purveyors like David Brooks:  oak-aged, well-marbled, top shelf lying at top shelf prices.

This is where the modern Both Sides Do It lie was born.  Both Siderism became the adamantium shield behind which Mr. Brooks and his many imitators and underwriters could hide in comfort and safety every time they fucked up.

Or to put it another way, lying about American culture and politics on behalf of his powerful benefactors from the myopic safety of his Beltway holdfast has been David Brooks' career-armor for 30 years.  Lying about American culture and politics has put several very expensive roofs over Mr. Brooks', put food on his table, put his kids through college, a helped fund his wife's divorce attorney's vacation home. Lying about American culture and politics has put Mr. Brooks' face on Meet the Press and PBS and his voice on NPR.   Lying about American culture and politics has landed him hundreds of Aspen Institute and lecture gigs, several insanely lucrative books deals, and a job at Yale teaching kids about humility.

So when Mr. Brooks stands atop his mountain of unearned privilege, gazing sagely into the distance, stroking an imaginary beard and musing --

How did we in our business get in the spot where we spend 90 percent of our coverage on the 10 percent of our lives influenced by politics and 10 percent of our coverage on the 90 percent of our lives influenced by relationship, community and the places we live in every day?

-- I have no idea what the fuck he is talking about.

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