Once or twice over the history of this little blog in the middle of Middle
America I have irresponsibly speculated that the existence of David Brooks
could only be explained as some kind of sociology experiment gone wrong.
Something that was begun as a goof by a member of the Sulzberger family, who
then wandered off and forgot about it:
You would not know it from reading any of the +1,300 columns that Mr. David
Brooks he has written for The New York Time over the past
15 years (which are, for the most part, +1,300 slight variations of the same
column) but Mr. David Brooks is so much more than just
a man who has gotten wealthy repeating the same bullshit over and over again
long past the point where it stopped being funny and started being a cult.
Mr. Brooks is, in fact, a fascinating social experiment: a social
experiment that has gone drastically wrong. Specifically, an
experiment in just how far the Sulzberger family is willing to go and how
much they are willing to spend to prop up a mediocrity whose only job is to
repeat the same stupefying fairy tale, twice a week, every week, forever.
It should have lasted a year. Like when
the Times hired Mr. Brooks' former boss, Bloody Bill
Kristol, to immunize themselves against the angry emails and blog posts of
berserk, pro-Bush chicken-hawks. And then cashiered Kristol after a
year because he was a shitty writer and wrong about everything
A year, it should have lasted. Maybe two, for a goof, or to settle
some weird, rich-guy bet...
Sadly, the little experiment in letting Conservative mediocrities like
Mr. Brooks runs wild just to, y'know, see what happens has now run on, wild and uncontrolled, for decades which has resulted in rampant Conservative
pundit overpopulation and Conservative bullshit bursting out of the
lab and poisoning the entire ecosystem.
One of the more bizarre byproducts of this runamok experiment has been that
some of the original experimental Conservative lab rats like David Brooks have
begun to adapt by attempting to mutate into what can be charitably described as warped caricatures of the Liberals they used to mock as
alarmist crackpots.
So now, like the West Virginians of 2041 who will watch helplessly as their
coal mines fill and ash pits overflow with floodwater and think,
"Y'know, maybe taking climate change seriously would have been a good
idea"
David Brooks has begun to peek out from behind the shield walls and barbicans
of his Beltway media fastness to behold the toxic wasteland of the Deranged
Right that he worked so very hard to create
and think...
The Terrifying Future of the American Right
What I saw at the National Conservatism Conference
By David Brooks
Too late pal. 30 years too late.
And then, skipping lightly over to Mr. Brooks' day-job at
The New York Times
we find
--
Joe Biden Is Succeeding
By David Brooks
-- in which Mr. Brooks builds a column out of the simply reading his
own newspaper and pointing out the reality of what's happening outside of the Right's toxic wasteland. Such as this:
All of these [Democratic] bills were written to funnel money to the parts of the
country that were less educated, less affluent, left behind. Adam Hersh, a
visiting economist at the Economic Policy Institute, projects that more
than 80 percent of the new jobs created by the infrastructure plan will
not require a college degree.
And this:
The Biden $1.9 trillion stimulus package passed and has been tremendously
successful. It heated the overall economy. The Conference Board projects
that real G.D.P. growth will be about 5 percent this quarter. The
unemployment rate is falling. Retail sales are surging. About two-thirds
of Americans feel their household’s financial situation is good.
But the best part is that the benefits are flowing to those down the
educational and income ladder. In just the first month of payments, the
expanded Child Tax Credit piece of the stimulus bill kept three million
American children out of poverty. Pay for hourly workers in the leisure
and hospitality sector jumped 13 percent in August compared with the
previous year. By June, there were more nonfarm job openings than there
had been at any time in American history. Workers have tremendous power
these days.
And so forth.
However since David Brooks is David Brooks, it's impossible for any Times
column with his name attached to it to be written without a couple of
features.
First, there must be Brooks-brand razors in the apple buried somewhere
near the middle. And so, David Brooks, America's #1 unreconstructed Bush
War Pimp, must frame America's long overdue exit from the doomed Afghanistan
fiasco as
Sure, there have been failures — the shameful Afghanistan withdrawal,
And since David Brooks, remains America's #1 unreconstructed Both Siderist, he
is contractually obligated to scrounge up an Imaginary Dirty Hippie to punch...
...failing to renounce the excesses of the cultural left.
And second, both this column and his Atlantic article must be
written without any recognition whatsoever that the rising tide of toxic
Conservative sludge that's now lapping at Mr. Brooks' doorstep would have been
impossible without the willing assistance of Conservatives like David Brooks
who, for decades, used their enormous media presence to deflect, trivialize
and often simply lie about the escalating threat from the Right until it was
too late.
Far too late.
Burn The Lifeboats
