Making Shapeless Prose

Once again giving writing by rote a bad name, Our Mr. Brooks pens a quick primer on one method of making a living by writing badly:

1. Settle on a meaningless word or phrase on which you will hang your entire thesis.

I’m borrowing the phrase “other-directed” from David Riesman’s 1950 classic, “The Lonely Crowd.”

2. Mention in passing that you really have no idea what you are talking about.

"I don’t actually know what sort of person Romney is. He’s a reticent man. He’s unwilling to talk about his roots, home and family history, so it is hard to understand what’s really going on in his head."

3. Unspool a list of declaratives detailing how he-who-you-really-have-no-idea-about can become he-who-you-wish-he-would-be if only he would quickly undergo a series of massive personality inversions and reversals:

If Romney is to thrive, he really needs to go on an integrity tour.


He needs to show...


He needs to trust...


He needs to tell his own...


He needs to tell us...


He needs to stop...


He needs to show that he is willing...


He needs to step outside...


He needs to find a policy...

And if invisible unicorns would just stop being so other-directed and learn to poop solid gold then they would be completely awesome.

Actually Williard Romney would be the perfect candidate for the GOP to select from a "creative destruction" point of view.

The GOP is an old company with a ruined brand run by lunatics, bigots, idiot nephews and a handful of oligarchs who are only interested in squeezing the last. few pfennigs out of the carcass of the Land of the Free before they fire-sale the whole thing and locust-swarm on to the next mega-grift.  And Romney has the skill set that every successful "loot and scoot" artist possesses: the ability to suppress his gag reflex so profoundly that he can wade through a chin-deep lake of flaming poo wearing a titanium smile while telling the gibbering, bug-eyed offal dwellers w-h-a-t-e-v-e-r they want to hear.

Whatever it takes to close the deal.

Because, in the end, the leaders of the GOP -- just like the delusional leaders of so many other ruined companies -- have no use for people who tell them the truth.  In fact, they actively shun and hate people who tell them the truth.

Like any other bunch of 3rd generation inbred senior executives, they want someone who will flatter them; who will tell them great, big, heroic lies about their genius and bravery and patriotism and the more gigantic you make your whoppers the better.  They don't want some dick lecturing them about the horrid decisions they have made -- horrid decisions that landed the in this spot in the first place.  No, they want Pecos Bill-sized tall tales about what studs they are: how powerful and canny they are and how everyone on Earth secretly envies them.

The Right has shown that people with little or no talent beyond being pathological liars can accumulated enormous wealth and influence peddling transparently ludicrousness fair tales to imbeciles.

In that environment, there is no reason why an accomplished vulture capitalist like Romney should not, in the end, be wildly successful.