David Brooks Phones It In

Fresh from a several-month "book leave" and returning the Gray Lady just long enough to squeeze out a few, genuinely terrible columns, Mr. Brooks has now gone back to the literary hammock to parcel out his own end-of-the-year-fake-award thingies, most of which Mr. Brooks' flash-fries in same gloppy vat of obsessive Centrist trans-fat he uses to kill the flavor of virtually every subject:

On the one hand, [Aaron Swartz] seems to have been the victim of the formless freedom of the Internet life. On the other, he did have intellectual daring and a fierce independence.

Overall, it's probably a mercy, although Senator Rand Paul would probably disagree:

"I do support letting David Brooks dick around for a couple of weeks if he wants to. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to pundits like him," I imagine Sentor Paul saying. "When you allow people to continue collecting a check while being this lazy and unproductive, you're causing them to become part of this perpetual wingnut-welfare-dependent group in our economy."

All-in-all, you're better served reading this.