David Brooks Continues To Beg America

To stop - please, for love of God stop -- talking about the predatory antics of the rich people he shills for as if they have anything whatsoever to do with the plight of the Poors or the Soon-To-Be-Poors:

...

Inequality is certainly widening. Mobility is something we have to think about as Americans. It is the American dream. But as a frame, it is a very broad frame. What Mark talked about, the concentration of wealth at the top, is caused by one set of problems, middle-class wage stagnation caused by another set of problems, what is happening in the lower 20 or 40 percent caused by a different set of problems.

So you have got a whole bunch of problems all intermingled. And my viewing, the political system I don't think can deal with all these different problems all layered on top. If I were President Obama doing the State of the Union address next week, I would say, where is the greatest injustice? Where is the greatest harm?

And I would say that's at the bottom 20 percent or the bottom 40 percent...

Definitely!

Let's all "think about" this stuff.  

As Americans.  

Because something something the American Dream.

Meanwhile - Look over here!  Look over here! -- please for God's sake lets get back to talking about unwed teenage mothers and stuff:

...You take kids, what do they have to do to have a pretty -- chance of a decent life? Graduate from high school at age 19 with maybe a 2.5 GPA, not get convicted of anything, not get pregnant. Only 37 percent of kids at the bottom 20 percent income scale are doing that, only 37 percent.

For the record, without too much effort, any competent citizen from Paul Krugman to my sainted mother can incinerate Mr. Brooks' increasingly frantic and transparent attempt to decouple 30 years of aggressively pro-plutocrat, anti-labor, anti-equality policies of the Right from any discussion of income inequality...

...which is so much of out mainstream is devoted to keeping fragile Conservatives like Mr. Brooks as carefully protected and climate-controlled as any hothouse orchid, and the Hell away from competent citizens.

But if you find it entertaining to watch someone just punch this whole, stupid line of claptrap right out of the ring, check out David Cay Johnston at about the 10:35 mark of this video from the Melissa Harris-Perry show (if you have the time, the whole thing is worth watching):

And for extra laughs, your Moment of Zen comes courtesy of David Brooks -- the man with the new, $1.3M Cleveland Park mansion *$4M Cleveland Park mansion, who began his career making a buck shilling for one horrid brand of Conservative snake-oil after another and who now jets all over the planet on the New York Times' dime -- expressing his bafflement about why anyone would do stupid, terrible things in pursuit of money and status:

What is mystifying about this couple [the McDonnells] is the fascination with Rolexes and Ferraris. I have like a $80 watch or something like that. Why do you need a $6,500 watch? What are you getting out of it? He needs status. I guess he wants a Rolex.

*Thanks to alert reader marindenver for correcting my failing memory.