tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11363027.post6448419046111550729..comments2024-03-28T21:32:41.763-05:00Comments on driftglass: David Brooks Discovers The Republican Partydriftglasshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09379167083253389153noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11363027.post-34625312416494250072016-01-13T12:36:47.465-06:002016-01-13T12:36:47.465-06:00Just curios,
Where does the other well paid mouth ...Just curios,<br />Where does the other well paid mouth pieces (ahem-writers) like Jonah Goldberg,Cal Thomas,<br />Thomas Sowell,Peggy Noonan Et Al rate in the on the Brooks scale of blather.<br />Do you have a rating scale of assorted Books-tarians? Are they in categories as White House speech spinners, the Frank Lutz blitzkrieg,, Does Tom Friedman have a category all to himself? <br />What about those Presidential SOTU republican response writers? <br />Just wondered if you did or were to categorize them, what it would look like?Robthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15736678459663803707noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11363027.post-6435963950044097232016-01-13T00:24:31.882-06:002016-01-13T00:24:31.882-06:00"....he remains dog-loyal to the trait which ..."....he remains dog-loyal to the trait which binds all Conservatives together: a deep and abiding dread of the past."<br /><br />Only if you define the past as post-Rosa Parks. Otherwise, they have been and still are terrified of the future, a demographic future in which their latent, implicit (and often explicit) racism and classism is toast.<br />Hell, I'm terrified of the future, but for different reasons. Global climate change, ever encroaching corporatism, extreme income equality, a whole lot of things. Brooks and his ilk feel the dread on the opposite end of the kaleidoscope - they're afraid the poors and the browns will come after their big monies and ask - perhaps even demand - their fair share.<br />He's a hack, and worse, he's a disloyal hack. When he starts in after his own - like Cruz - you' know he's having another panic attack. Just wait a week because of course as Blue Gal famously said, ignore what he wrote last week, it's no longer in his firmanent.<br /><br />And on our part, why the hippies never learned to punch back, and farking HARD at that, is beyond me.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16128460666564857113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11363027.post-23245320866291316522016-01-12T19:14:51.809-06:002016-01-12T19:14:51.809-06:00That woodchipper image is gonna stick.That woodchipper image is gonna stick.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09300961605043014522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11363027.post-53714136678795332832016-01-12T16:46:31.844-06:002016-01-12T16:46:31.844-06:00Great writing Driftglass.
Perhaps the most absur...Great writing Driftglass. <br /><br />Perhaps the most absurd and outrageous statement in the whole DFB piece was his comment about how the religious right possesses qualities of "humility, mercy, compassion and grace," when the polar opposite has been evident for decades.<br /><br />This column should be another colossal embarrassment to the NYT, but I'm long past the point of attributing any analytical ability or even sentience to their management.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08880308031096340258noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11363027.post-2025394146041262412016-01-12T15:53:32.532-06:002016-01-12T15:53:32.532-06:00I love these days when you and the Rude Pundit con...I love these days when you and the Rude Pundit converge upon the same atrocity from the right...<br /><br />http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2016/01/note-to-david-brooks-what-fucking.htmlSandmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00234681315035379874noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11363027.post-10245444926855520802016-01-12T13:43:18.732-06:002016-01-12T13:43:18.732-06:00Traditionally, candidates who have attracted stron...<i>Traditionally, candidates who have attracted strong evangelical support have in part emphasized the need to lend a helping hand to the economically stressed and the least fortunate among us.</i><br /><br />Amanda Marcotte, in the article you so graciously linked, gives us the punchline to that accidental joke, in the form of Our Mr. Brooks' very next sentence:<br /><br /><i>Such candidates include George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.</i><br /><br />And then she proceeds to (as some vituperative foul-mouthed blogtopian once put it) saw his ass off and serve it up on the fine china:<br /><br /><i>After you’re done wiping the tears of laughter, from your eyes, just go back and savor those sentences. Is David Brooks for real? Or has his entire career up until now been an Andy Kaufman-esque put-on, a dry satire highlighting the absurdity of condescending Beltway conservative romanticization of their Bible-thumping brethren? Can anyone actually believe that these three men share a single bone of actual human compassion between them?</i><br /><br />If I could dwell where Israfel hath dwelt, I would engrave her concluding paragraphs someplace where every codder and shiggy and sparewheel in This Great Land of Ours, and any appleofmyeye old enough to know what the thing is for, could see it, and have it follow them around until they understood it and did something about it:<br /><br /><i>Cruz doesn’t represent a shift in Christian right thinking. He just represents a shift in Christian right self-presentation. As with Trump supporters, conservatives of all stripes just seem to be done with pretending they are nicer than they are. They’re sick of pretending they have compassion. They’re exhausted with having to front like they’re less bigoted than they actually are. All that pretending to care is just “political correctness”, and the right is <b>done</b> with it all. They’re stripping off the costumes and the masks and letting their true selves hang out for all to see.<br /><br />And that true self is one that wants a man to go to prison for 16 years for stealing a calculator. And that’s why Ted Cruz’s star is rising right alongside Donald Trump’s.</i>Neo Tuxedohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15455041641080873400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11363027.post-56729168823344490292016-01-12T13:41:36.029-06:002016-01-12T13:41:36.029-06:00For my money, this was the most interesting part o...For my money, this was the most interesting part of the column:<br /><br /><i>Cruz manufactures an atmosphere of menace in which there is no room for compassion, for moderation, for anything but dismantling and counterattack. And that is what he offers. Cruz’s programmatic agenda, to the extent that it exists in his speeches, is to destroy things: destroy the I.R.S., crush the “jackals” of the E.P.A., end funding for Planned Parenthood, reverse Obama’s executive orders, make the desert glow in Syria, destroy the Iran nuclear accord.</i><br /><br /><i><b>Some of these positions I agree with</b>....</i><br /><br />Which of those positions do you agree with, Mr Brooks? You identified a list of policy positions and said you agree with "some" of them, which suggests more than one. EPA and Syria? Planned Parenthood and Iran?Jerkface McGeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15791017193087524266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11363027.post-83841908830855647582016-01-12T13:01:13.693-06:002016-01-12T13:01:13.693-06:00Beautiful writing. Just beautiful. Thank you.
And...Beautiful writing. Just beautiful. Thank you.<br /><br />And my definition of good writing is when the nouns and verbs dance gracefully together and express actual thoughts and ideas rather than "positions".<br />It is true that it's "positions" (and specifically heavily-subsidized RWNJ positions) that seem to be selling these days (or I should say "are being sold"). And the Third Reich lasted how long? Be of stout heart. Change may be tiptoeing up to the door.<br /><br />bowtiejackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03269786110593961195noreply@blogger.com