David Brooks: More Apples, More Razors

After the standard, 5th grade book-report style  of "America: A Land of Contrasts" that Brooks frequently uses to pad his columns out to the contractually-obligated 800 words -- 

American culture changes with astonishing speed. Nearly every decade, there are shifts in values, fashions and norms...

Trump emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. It was the tail end of the culture of narcissism, or what Tom Wolfe called...

In the ’80s, especially in Manhattan, there was an unabashed fascination with wealth, self-display, ego...

Trump was the cartoon epitome of all that decade’s extravagances...

Then came the 1990s, the end-of-history decade...

Then came the 2000s and the war on terror...

But then came the 2010s, the age of indignation...

-- came the inevitable Brooks razor-in-the-apple.

Two razors actually. 

Here's the first:

Trump was perfect for this moment. Disdained and scorned by the Manhattan elite, he’d built up a lifetime of anti-establishment resentments that dovetailed with the working class’s pervasive contempt. He began a hostile takeover of the Republican Party and then the federal government.

Hey dummy, when they throw you the keys to the car and beg you to drive, that's not a "hostile takeover".  When Trump effortlessly whipped 183 "establishment" Republicans and took your party's nomination at a walk, that's not a hostile takeover.  When virtually the entire party took direction from the leader of the party because he was the overwhelming choice of the overwhelming majority of the Republican base, that's not a hostile takeover. 

On the other hand, this is perfectly on-brand for David Brooks, who runs a very successful cottage industry telling his wealthy readership that there is some other Republican party out there somewhere and that Donald Trump used some kind of trickery to steal the brand but not the actual party.  Which is why, no matter how obvious it is to anyone with open eyes and a functional memory, Brooks has spent decades swearing by God and Emile Durkheim that a Bright Conservative Future was Just Around The Corner...

The Post-Trump Era  

As awful as Donald Trump is, it will be exciting to witness the coming re-creation of the Republican Party. 

Ordinary humans with only the standard five senses may not be able to see it, but Brooks can see beyond , as he explained in a very special, expanded New York Times op-ed.

Where Do Republicans Go From Here? 

The party looks brain-dead at every spot Trump touches. But off in the corners, there’s a lot of intellectual ferment.

Of course, sometimes the situation grows so dire that Brooks has to make people up out of whole cloth and shove his words into their imaginary mouths (all from the safety of the Acela Corridor quiet car) to explain why things do not appear to be remotely as he has told her readers they were.  Which is why I was completely unsurprised to see this is the headline staring back at me from America's Newspaper of Record today back in 2019:

Why Trump Voters Stick With Him 

An imagined conversation with Flyover Man. 

By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist

Which was, floor-to-ceiling, nothing but lazy Beltway Dry Heave fiction like this:

Urban Guy: I hope you read the rough transcript of that Trump phone call with the Ukrainian president. Trump clearly used public power to ask a foreign leader to dig up dirt on his political opponent. This is impeachable. I don’t see how you can deny the facts in front of your face.

Flyover Man: I haven’t really had time to look into it. There’s always some fight between Trump and the East Coast media. I guess I just try to stay focused on the big picture.

This was the sober judgement of veteran political journalist, brother Charlie Pierce:

I’m not linking to it but David Brooks has written the worst piece ever published in the NYT.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) October 4, 2019

It was a day when Donald Trump had boldly committed treason on live teevee twice, and yet Brooks' Hot Take on The Trump Voter was so godawful that it was the top trending item on Twitter.  Because when it comes to American politics, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times does not have the slightest fucking idea what he's talking about and never has.

That was five years ago.  A cherry on top of the mountain of shitty takes that Brooks had already extruded for the House of Sulzberger.  And yet five years later, Mr. Brooks is still the senior Conservative columnist for that tattered old rag.  

Anyway, that was the first razor in this week's apple.

Can you guess what the second razor might be?  Can there be any doubt?  That's right!  It's a fresh, steaming side-dish of the laziest, most discredited pundit lie of them all --

The key word in that sentence is “hostile.” Hostility was in vogue, on the left and the right...

-- Both Sides Do It.

I Am The Liberal Media

How to Create “Public Opinion” Out of Thin Air

On the subject of manufacturing audience perception by repetition, let us turn to Mr. Hugh Hewitt.  The Conservative cyborg sent from the future to destroy America (and MSNBC would very much appreciate it if you would forget that they gave this like you to forget that they gave this clinking clanking clattering collection of caliginous junk his own show on that network not so very long ago.)   

So, how does one go about turning the objective fact that Trump's ass got spit roasted and served up on the good china by Kamala Harris into "Trump's Unequivocal Victory!"

Well, it's a process. 

First, Hewitt went on the "Still Drunk With Larry Kudlow!" show on Fox, where the puppets and grifters there were desperately trying to make a smiley face out of Trump's epic bed-shitting.

Hewitt kept repeating that it was an ambush!  The worst debate in presidential history!

The weaponization of lawfare is well understood by most Americans, but the weaponization of the media has never been seen that nakedly before and it's having an impact!

But despite the despicable Liberal media plot against him, and making a few, small mistakes Trump actually emerged victorious!

He just went on and on like that.

Second, he recycled thet bullshit into his very own Fox News dot com column!

Morning Glory: The worst debate in the history of presidential debates.   ABC and Disney disgraced and exposed themselves. Republicans and fair-minded independents will never forget. 

Third, did you know Hugh Hewitt also has his own radio show?  Incredibles but true.  Called something like the Hugh-niverse I believe.  And on his very bad radio show Hewit read from his own column and ran clips of himself from  the "Still Drunk With Larry Kudlow!" show because it is through the magic of repetition, bullshit becomes true.

The fourth step is Tweeting his own radio bullshit with the subject line -- 

Upon Further Review, The Officials In The Booth Have Reversed The Call On The Field On The Debate.

-- because someone told this sad little cyborg that humans like the sportsgames and that using the sportsgames metaphors would make him seem credible to humans.

Fifth, Hewitt reappeared on a different Fox News shithole program to repeat this super awesome sportsgame metaphor that will definitely convince humans that Trump!Won!

Hewitt: I think Trump knows he's in the process of winning the debate on Tuesday. NFL fans are familiar with the phrase upon further review officials have reversed the call.. Upon further review, the American public has decided that debate was rigged pic.twitter.com/rO4ffsm0xt

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 12, 2024

Six, and most pathetically, Hewitt retweeted is own Tweet directly to Donald Trump with this heading  

This is happening.  Harris know it. Everyone knows it. Some won’t admit it. But it is happening.

Now, you might be asking yourself, is there a seventh step in this process?

Damn you're clever, because yes there is!

Stepp Seven is some Never Trumper inevitably wondering sadly whatever happened to good-old so-and-so.  He used to be awesome.

A once serious human reduced to posting tweets that he agrees with his tweets.

How does this happen? https://t.co/gkqneoGmIG

— Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens) September 12, 2024

C'mon Stuart.  You know how this happens.  In fact you wrote a whole book about how this happens.

We over here on the Left knew that Hewitt was never a serious human.  He just used to be more discreet about flashing his banal villainy in public and he masked his ideological perversity with big words.  

But the price of riding the Trump train is shedding all nuance and fig leafs and wallowing in the ugliness, which Hewitt has dropped trou and done so without a moment's hesitation.

I Am The Liberal Media

Professional Left Podcast Episode 837: Good Ol' Fashioned Beat Down

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face." --  Mike Tyson's

Links:  

• 
  

The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

I See Team Trump’s Meme Game Is Running Just as Smoothly...

...as the rest of his dumpster fire campaign.

Burn The Lifeboats

Professional Left Podcast Episode 836: Exiled Republican Aristocracy Endorse Harris

"Get on me Bert, I can't lose." -- Fast Eddie Felson, The Hustler

Links:  

• 
  

The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

That Which is Left Unspoken Often Shouts The Loudest: Another David Brooks Adventure

The blatant asymmetry with which legacy media companies like The New York Times are treating this election to try and make it into a horse race by sheer force of will is in evidence everywhere.  Big-name media contributors, former big city newspaper editors, and even the Times' own former public editor are to be found all over social media almost every day, all in a vast chorus of "WTF is going on?!?!" with their chosen profession.  

And, as always, the reply from the legacy media is a deafening silence, and a "fuck you all" doubling down of their daily fascist enabling.  

Hell, it's gotten so bad that even the PBS NewsHour noticed it.  Do you know how bad the endemic Big Media Fail had to get to force milquetoast, OK-team!-Let's-get-out-there-and-not-offend-anyone! PBS to start asking questions about it?  Yes.  That bad.

But the real story is how they covered it.  And to understand what was so very, very striking about their timid coverage, you need to first understand how PBS conducts their weekly {also "weakly") "conversation" between an inoffensive leftish person and an inoffensive rightish person.  

For decades, the inoffensive rightish person.has almost always been David Fucking Brooks of The New York Times, and, until he passed away, the inoffensive leftish person used to be Mark Shields.  Now it's a rotating groups of semi-regulars including the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart and, as was the case this last Friday, the Boston Globe's Kimberly Atkins Stohr.  

 And the ritual is virtually always the same.

After a few welcoming remarks, the host will ask series of questions -- usually using the passive Voice from Nowhere -- and then Brooks and whomever will take turns answering it.   This order of things is as as cadenced and routinized as a promenade or an Allemande left in square dancing: the host is the Caller, the two guests are the Couple, and everyone knows how the dance is done.

So, after 83,921 episodes, when they suddenly break protocol -- when the dog does not bark in the night -- well that caught my attention.  It made me wonder what happened and why they did it happen and all kindsa itchy, journalistic-y questions like that? 

First came PBS NewsHour host Geoff Bennett.  I will highlight for you where the passive voice is being used to make sure no specific media persons or institutions were in danger of being brought to book. 

Bennett:  And, Kimberly, back to your point about the asymmetry in this race, the double standard, where President Biden can mistakenly refer to the president of Egypt as he meant to say the president of Mexico, and that adds to this narrative that ultimately drove him from the race.

Donald Trump can rant at a rally or ramble through a statement like that, and it's largely ignored. What do you see as the practical effect of that?

Gosh, Geoff, largely ignored by whom?  It's not being ignored by me.  Or any other Liberal blogger or podcaster.  Or the aforementioned big-name media contributors, former big city newspaper editors, and the Times' own former public editor.  If the public is ignoring it, then perhaps it's because some very large and influential legacy media companies are, y'know, failing to inform the public about it.  And what would the name of those very large and influential legacy media companies be?

Kimberly Atkins Stohr reponds::

Atkins Stohr: Well, I think if — as people see it more and more, especially juxtapose Kamala Harris, which, whether you like her policies or not, she is laying out policies. She is speaking in complete sentences and paragraphs about her vision for the American future.

And you see Donald Trump asked a question, again, about childcare, something that impacts all of us, and he cannot seem to stay on track about that, thinking about leading a nation at a time, at this current time when we do want to keep the economy on track, when there are threats, both domestically and foreign

I think seeing this again — people sort of forgot about Trump for a while. I think seeing this again is a stark reminder that there is a clear, clear division, a clear difference in this area.

Not a great response.  No mention of where or how "people" are going to see any of this.  No mention of when exactly the supine legacy media organizations like The New York Times are actually going to ask Trump these sorts of questions.  Or if those supine legacy media organizations like The New York Times have any plans to stop propping Trump up by "sanewashing" his incoherent gibbering into what sounds like a coherent response.

Not a great response, but it was a response.

Next up, Mr. David Brooks who works for -- hey lookit that!  Brooks works for that very same New York Times I was referring to just forty words ago!. In fact, Brooks has been working for the New York Times for 22 years.    He is their senior Conservative op-ed writer on matters political and cultural. 

So, let us all hold our collective breath in anticipation of Mr. Brooks' sure-to-be-sublime answer to the question of legacy media's wildly asymmetrical coverage of this election.

Then let us all slowly let out our collective breath, because this is PBS people!  And Geoff Bennett is not about to embarrass Mr. David Brooks of  The New York Times by posing any question to him that might implicate The New York Times.  So good ol' Geoff breaks PBS protocol and saves the day -- yay! -- by instead asking Brooks a question about...

Can you guess?

Go ahead and guess.    

Bennett:   Well, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney this week said that she's voting for Kamala Harris, that, in her words, there's never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is.

Instead a question for Brooks about the grotesque, ongoing perversion of the legacy media in service of their Both Sides Do It fetish, what you are hearing hat is the sound of Bennett putting a large softball labeled "Say Nice Things About The Cheneys" on a tee and asking the Pope of the Both Sides Do It cult to take  swing at it.  

Bennett:   And then, today, speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival, she said that her father, the former Vice President Dick Cheney, is voting for Kamala Harris too. Take a listen.

They all listen.

Bennett:  So, Dick Cheney, stalwart conservative, no one can accuse him of being a RINO Republican in name only. He served, I think, four Republican presidents, if memory serves me correctly.  What do you see as the significance of their dual support for Kamala Harris?

Brooks:  Who knows. Maybe he's swinging left. He's going to move to Park Slope. He's going to come in hippie.

They all laugh, because it's all such jolly fun!

Brooks:  No.

Bennett:  That, I'd like to see.

They all laugh again.  Because it's still such jolly fun!

Then here come the lies.  Care to count them with me?

Brooks:  For a lot of Republicans, character comes before policy.

Bullshit.

Brooks: And I think the Cheneys are among those Republicans...

100%, unalloyed revisionist bullshit.

Brooks: ...and there were a lot of Bush Republicans for whom that was just an article of faith. 

If the "Republicans" he was referring to were "Eisenhower Republicans", I might allow it.  But those Republicans are all dead, so bullshit.  

Brooks: The other interesting thing is about how interesting a decade the 2010s was, when the Republicans had a total hostile takeover from outsiders, Trump and MAGA.

This is so far beyond mere bullshit that I am challenged to find the exact words to describe how bluntly Brooks is lying here.  

This is David Brooks unable to face the reality of his party being revealed as the hollow, amoral ghouls and grifters we crackpot alarmists on the Left have always said they were. 

This is David Brooks, formerly of the inner circle of smug, sanctimonious Conservative aristocracy trapped forever 2016 amber.  Trapped in the moment after he had sworn that everything was finejustfinerealgoodokgreatexcellent with his Republicans party... watching his party gratefully delivering  themselves into the flabby, fascist embrace of Donald Trump.  while he impotently declares "It's going to be Rubio!  I'm telling you, it's going to be Rubio!"

Forever.

This is not merely skirting the truth by an inch or two.  Not just shaving facts or transposing numbers.  

This is the profound, dissociative denialism of a broken man manifesting itself in pure anti-truth. 

And this is PBS enabling it.

I Am The Liberal Media

The Choice

No Half Measures

I Do Appreciate Fourth Generation Nepo Baby A.G. Sulzberger Coming Right Out and Saying That Fighting For Democracy is Beneath Him

 

Really clarifies things.

Writing about it happening in other countries?  Well that's just fine.  In fact, what Sulzberger has produced in this end-of-the-summer essay is a long and otherwise-admirable essay on the threats to democracy and the free press...in other countries.  

Like India. And Brazil.  And Turkey.  

And all of those high-minded sentiments leak away into the gutter through this very large hole near the top of his mountain of words:

As someone who strongly believes in the foundational importance of journalistic independence, I have no interest in wading into politics. I disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection. It is beyond shortsighted to give up journalistic independence out of fear that it might later be taken away. At The Times, we are committed to following the facts and presenting a full, fair and accurate picture of November’s election and the candidates and issues shaping it. Our democratic model asks different institutions to play different roles; this is ours.

You see, the actual fight for our democracy here and now is very grubby and déclassé.  Best left to others.

Also, before retiring to his Thinking Chamber to commune with the ghosts of his ancestors, Sulzberger could not resist taking one, final, petty swipe at the president who wouldn't give him what he'd stamped his feet and demanded:

Make no mistake, no American political leader likes the scrutiny of the media or has a perfect record on press freedom. Every president since the country’s founding has complained about the pesky questions of reporters who seek to keep the public informed. This includes President Joe Biden, who spoke glowingly about the importance of the free press but whose systematic avoidance of unscripted encounters with independent journalists has defied long-standing precedent and allowed him to evade questions about his age and fitness.

Alert readers all over social media have noted the massive drop in the Times' interest in the "age and fitness" of candidates once it became an issue for only one of the candidates.  Because the Times' is manifestly not interested in "journalistic independence" today, any more than they were 20 years ago when I started writing about the mainstream media's fetish for bending over backwards to appease the escalating derangement of the Right by Both Sidesing every goddamn thing.

Alert readers will also note that even as Sulzberger was whinging on about following facts and full, fair and accurate pictures, his loyal underlings were experienced enough to know a wink and a nudge from the executive suite when they see it.   So they went right on using what remains of the the Times' threadbare reputation to "sanewash" the ravings of a doddering madman into something resembling a policy brief. 

From The New Republic:

How the Media Sanitizes Trump’s Insanity

The political press’s efforts to rationalize Trump’s incoherent statements are eroding our shared reality and threatening informed democracy.

In its write-up of that portion of Trump’s speech, The New York Times omitted Trump’s mention of autism, simply writing that “Mr. Trump said that, if elected to a second term, a panel of experts ‘working with Bobby’ would investigate obesity rates and other chronic health  issues in the United States.” By removing the mention of autism, which should be a red flag whenever paired with a mention of Kennedy, the Times took an obvious nod to a conspiracy theory and turned it into a normal-sounding policy proposal.

While speaking at an event put on by the extremist group Moms for Liberty, Trump spread a baseless conspiracy theory that “your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation,” referring to transition-related surgeries for trans people. In their write-up of the event, a glowing piece about how Trump “charmed” this group of “conservative moms,” the Times didn’t even mention the moment where he blathered on and on about a crazy conspiracy that has and will never happen.

This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy...

Voters who rely solely on traditional news sources are presented with a version of Trump that bears little resemblance to reality. They see a former president who, while controversial, appears to operate within the bounds of normal political discourse—or at worst, is breaking with it in some kind of refreshing manner. You can see this folie à deux at work in a recent Times piece occasioned by Trump’s amplification of social media posts alleging that Harris owed her career to the provision of “blowjobs”: “Though he has a history of making crass insults about his opponents, the reposts signal Mr. Trump’s willingness to continue to shatter longstanding norms of political speech.” Meanwhile, those who seek out primary sources encounter a starkly different figure—one prone to conspiracy theories, personal attacks, and extreme rhetoric...

Over the weekend, the Times seemed intent on validating [Jeffrey] Goldberg’s words with a questionable “campaign notebook” article titled “Meandering? Off-Script? Trump Insists His ‘Weave’ Is Oratorical Genius.”

Writer Shawn McCreesh drew generous parallels between Trump’s speaking style and celebrated wordsmiths:

Certainly, in the history of narrative, there have been writers celebrated for their ability to be discursive only to cleverly tie together all their themes with a neat bow at the end—William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Larry David come to mind.

He then added, “But in the case of Mr. Trump, it is difficult to find the hermeneutic methods with which to parse the linguistic flights that take him from electrocuted sharks to Hannibal Lecter’s cannibalism, windmills and Rosie O’Donnell.”

McCreesh didn’t stop there. He went on to liken Trump to literary giants James Joyce and William Faulkner, and even psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud...

The chasm between what Sulzberger keeps touting as the Times' principles and the garbage the Times consistently produces cannot be bridged by chalking it up to his either not noticing what's going on at the Times or not caring.  This wild disparity can only be reconciled by understanding that Sulzberger's primary role in the legacy media is not as the steward of a newspaper, but as the patriarch of a cult.   

A cult every bit as smothering and addictive as the MAGA is a cult.   

The cult of Both Sides Do It.

A cult in which "fairness" means blaming Both Sides.  "Independence" means blaming Both Sides.  Journalism itself means blaming Both Sides.  

If Both Sides don't have age and fitness issues, then Trump's age and fitness is no longer an issue.  

If  Both Sides don't have candidates who are publicly decompensating into rambling incoherence, then Trump's rambling incoherence must be barbered into something that sounds like an intelligible policy position.  

If  Both Sides don't have candidates who are vomiting lies 24/7, then, well, why bother covering Trump's 24/7 lying?

I have no reason to doubt that, as the patriarch of the cult of Both Sides Do It, Sulzberger believes that he has  "no interest in wading into politics" even as the huge sweaty hand of The New York Times presses firmly down on the Right side of the political scale.  

And that should alarm the hell out of anyone who gives a damn about the future of democracy in America.

Burn The Lifeboats