Monday, July 11, 2011

The Greatest Fraud in American Journalism

QUEENBOBO_SM
Has now written his 3,327th identical column on the same subject.

Exciting!

It seems that there are these two crazy groups (in this case three: "banker, Democratic Keynesian or staunch Republican")...

...which are all somehow exactly equally and oppositely wrong in exactly the same way.

What planning!

"The tax cut brigades and the Medicare/Spending brigades are well organized."

In the middle of these crazy factions we once again find Our Mr. Brooks, shedding big, mayonnaise-y tears and pleading for Reasonableness.

"The people in my group (you might call us conservatives) are more likely to embrace a low and steady approach to fiscal policy. Control debt. Control entitlements. Keep tax levels reasonable and the tax code simple.
...

People in my camp form a silent majority. But we have been astonishingly passive during these budget negotiations. ...The people who believe in balance and the fundamentals sit piously on the sidelines. "

(Yes, Mr. Brooks really is a big enough fartknocker to call his Imaginary Army of Reasonableness by Nixon's vintage phrase, the "silent majority".)

Sadly, the bunny-snug happiness of the serene Reaganesque homeland of this long-suffering "silent majority" is once again being thwarted-- thwarted I tells ya! -- by reckless scumbags.

On.

Both.

Sides.
"But they are bracketed on all sides — by the tax cut and Medicare brigades, by the wonks hatching budget gimmicks that erode trust, by political hacks who don’t want to lose their precious campaign issues: tax cuts forever, Medicare spending without limit. "
Sigh.

I'm not going to bother to debunk the comically transparent lies Mr. Brooks embeds throughout his column. Lies about Democrats. Lies about this nonexistent Center he prats on endlessly about. Lies about Conservatism. Lies about health care reform. Lies about the stimulus.

Why bother? They're really nothing but the same lies Mr. Brooks robotically repeats in virtually every one of his columns, and by this point he surely knows they are lies.

He gets shredded, corrected, updated and upbraided in the comment section of every column he writes, and in a dozen blogs within hours of his column dropping twice a week (I no longer bother to submit comments as they get scrubbed more often than not.)

So far as I know (have unintentionally made myself into one of the blogosphere's resident experts on Mr. Brooks' habits, history and folkways) Mr. Brooks has never responded in any venue anywhere to any of the by-now thousands of thoughtful, factual critiques, emails, letters to the editor, comments and posts written about his terrible, terrible opinions.

So far as I know, outside of a few, snide remarks about the Cheetos-smeared denizens of the febrile swamp of the blogoshpere, Mr. Brooks has never once acknowledged that this vast and growing tide of comments and criticism even exists.

(The one, telling exception I know of being the time Mr. Brooks leaped to a mawkish, fact-free defense of the sacred memory of St. Ronald Reagan by going after one of his colleagues who had pointed out that Reagan had frequently and deliberately played an entire dog-whistle orchestra when courting the Southern White bigot vote during the 1980 Presidential election. Mr. Brooks was swiftly and completely gutted and humiliated by fact-toting mobs of human beings [including one of his NYT colleagues] who actually knew and lived American history instead of just majoring in it at the University of Chicago and apparently sleeping through most of the lectures on the 20th Century. Since that last foray into the joys and perils of life outside his Imperial Bubble, Mr. Brooks more-or-less permanently retreated behind the luxurious skirts of the Gray Lady, never again to venture into any of the dark and scary reality-based parts of town lest he once again find himself pansted and paddled by his betters.)

But as I said, despite the fact that Mr. Brooks obviously feels it is too risky to even acknowledge the vast array of data and logic that debunks him, it is by now simply impossible for him not to know that he is lying.

And that we on the Left obviously know he is lying.

And that he knows that we know that he knows.

And so on.

But clearly at the New York Times, it does not matter how inept, transparent and laughably predictable Mr. Brooks lies have become: Mr. Brooks has landed the greatest job in American "journalism" for life because Bill Keller and the Sulzberger family obviously need him there on the parapet of the American Empire touting the fuck out of the Villager Party Line. And because that is Mr. Brooks' real job, he has slowly stopped bothering to even pretend to write anything but exactly the same Centrist drivel over and over again.

And so, in that spirit, here is a reprint of my post "How To Write a David Brooks Column" from one year ago.

Because a year later, not a single word of it need to be changed.

How To Write a David Brooks Column

...you too can learn to write a New York Times Opinion Page Editorial just like America's Last Reasonable Conservative, David Brooks!

In just 10 Easy Steps you'll be punditting like a pro!

1) Pick a subject. Any subject. From Tasseled Loafers to Torture, it literally does not matter.

2) Quote extensively from one person or group on the subject. It's OK to just more-or-less copy and paste in big hunks of what whatever-you-happen-to-be-reading-at-the-moment to flesh out your 800-word column. Here at the Times we call that "research"!

3) Quote from some other person or group on the same subject who appears to hold a different opinion. If no actual opposition exists, just put on your Magic Green Jacket and invent an opposing opinion.

4) Although such is not the case with today's subject, as often as possible, try to impute these fictional distinctions to the different hemispheres of the political Universe. So no matter how bigoted, reckless or just bugfuck crazy the Right behaves, you just go right ahead and blandly assert with no supporting evidence whatsoever that the Left is equally and oppositely bad in exactly the same qualities and quantities. Here at the Times we call that "seriousness"!

5) Discover in your final paragraph or two that -- amazingly! -- the precise midpoint between those two completely artificial positions on an imaginary spectrum just happens to be exactly the Right and Reasonable answer!

Oh boy!

6) Rinse and repeat. No matter what the subject, no matter how false or bizarre the equivalence, just rinse and repeat. Twice a week.

7) Every week.

8) Year.

9) After year.

10) After year.

Long ago this stopped being a "style", and started being a fetish, Mr. Brooks

It's called "Asymmetriphobia": a horror of asymmetrical things.


Seek help.


UPDATE: Over at Reality Chex, Marie Burns does what she can,

...
To your claim that "The world economy is a complex, unknowable organism," you should add, "... to me." The world economy is not unknowable to economists who study it. But you have come late to the game & you can't expect to catch up.
...

You write, "Democrats argued that through gigantic deficit spending, they could bring unemployment rates down sharply and produce a 'summer of recovery.'" Guess what? They did not effect "giant" spending. Senators Lieberman, Snowe & Collins severely limited the size of the stimulus. (Forgot that, didn't you?)
...
but Our Mr. Brooks really is quite hopeless.

Because whenever reality and Mr. Brooks' perniciously ignorant ideology come into conflict, reality will always take it in the neck.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm laughing. I'm crying. I'm laughing. I'm crying.

John said...

The fundamental fraud is the notion of American "journalism" itself.

We have not journalism but a multi-faceted, corporate institution providing imperial stenographers, propagandists, producers of diversionary "circuses" and crafters of the daily hate - which aspect so readily, if tragically, exposes the vile and pernicious hoax of American exceptionalism.


John Puma

Tata said...

Certainly, Mr. Brooks will never acknowledge that he's lying and that we know he's lying, but why does PBS refuse to acknowledge it? Why does PBS give him air time? If for some blood-soaked reason that must continue, wouldn't that be the place to confront him?

John said...

Re PBS:

Being terminally cute, glib and smug does not guaranteed commission of journalism.

Visit: http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/

John Puma

alise said...

Once again, Our Mr. Brooks is treating us to a column of pure drivel, who's sole intent is to further the fallacy that all of our woes are caused by those horrible extremists on both sides and if they would only listen to the wise and reasonable centrists, such as Our Mr. Brooks, all would be well. What a crock of shit!

For one thing, Brooks is by no stretch of the imagination a "centrist", if indeed anything such a thing exists. Brooks is doing his level best to disassociate his establishment Republican masters from the Tea Party lunatics. Almost of the Republicans signed onto the twin travesties that are the Ryan Plan and Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge. Now they discover that hey, guess what, most people don't want your extreme policies shoved down our throats and establishment Republicans are trying to backpeddle like mad but are too craven to stand up to the Tea Party. Hell, they might lose their facetime on FOX. Horrors! Enter Our Mr. Brooks and other of his ilk to try to convince people that establishment Republicans are really reasonable folks with your best interests at heart and they're not all like those nasty Tea Party extremists. And hey, those socialist Democrats are even worse. Again, total and complete bullshit!

If you ask me, there is no such thing as a centrist or an independent. Labeling yourself as such only denotes that you don't have the courage of your convictions. We have a saying about politics here in Texas: "There's nothing in the middle of the road except yellow stripes and dead armadillos".

Cirze said...

But why would he respond?

His gig is, of course, not actual reporting, let alone journalism.

It's repeating the nonsensical about the "middle" being between theTea Party (somewhat reasonable but crazy) and the radical socialists (never reasonable, totally crazy).

And there's the fact that he has the neverending NYT gold slot.

So far as I know (have unintentionally made myself into one of the blogosphere's resident experts on Mr. Brooks' habits, history and folkways) Mr. Brooks has never responded in any venue anywhere to any of the by-now thousands of thoughtful, factual critiques, emails, letters to the editor, comments and posts written about his terrible, terrible opinions.

Anonymous said...

If a Brooks Bolus drops in the porcelain bowl,

But no single-cell organism feels it splat,

Did David really drop trou?

Thanks to you, Mr. Driftglass, I can not see Our Mr. Brooks' name without blurting out: David FUCKING Brooks. It tends to scare the other patrons.

Hope you don't mind: I've decided to switch to "bugfuck crazy" for a spell. See what drops in the bowl.

Beleck said...

just watch how all Republicans will never, ever admit any error of any kind. since they don't have to "think" and explain anything. and won't admit any other "position" exists.

their dismissal of other opinion, other than their own, is what they all do to keep the "curtain" closed.

The man behind the curtain, "don't go there Toto,"
we are not dealing with real anything with these people.

they have for 30 years kept up the Party Propaganda, facts not necessary for the "reality" they foster.

Can you break through to people that will never admit your rights or opinions even exist? Never go there. never. it is something to see these people just go back to the same set of "Propaganda" ad infinitum.

Batshit crazy. People of the Lie, who are Batshit crazy.