America's Most Famous Truth-Dodging Establishmentarian

Wishes employers would hire truth-spouting risk-takers.

America's most noted apple-polishing conformist wants employers to get out there and hire people who will tell the boss when the boss is wrong.

No, this is not an April Fool's joke: this is David Brooks open letter to "Employers".

You may not realize it, but you have a powerful impact on the culture and the moral ecology of our era. If your human resources bosses decide they want to hire a certain sort of person, then young people begin turning themselves into that sort of person.

Therefore, I’m asking you to think about the following principles, this Employer’s Creed. If you follow these principles in your hiring practices, you’ll be sending a signal about what sort of person gets ahead. You may correct some of the perversities at the upper reaches of our meritocracy. You may even help cultivate deeper, fuller human beings...

Of course, I can't fault Mr. Brooks too much for his genre choice.  After all, the  practice of meeting a column deadline by tossing off a wad of ceiling insulation disguised as a "Dear Mr. President...",  "Dear Jesus..."  or "Dear Santa Claus..." letter that will never go anywhere, do anything or be taken seriously by anyone is as old as anything I can think of.

Also, to be fair, Mr. Brooks' column does have many hopeful, uplifting suggestions that I'm sure will be of great value to the inhabitants of whatever alternate universe he is writing about.

But over here in this universe, in my own, pointless Open Letter, I would ask that if Mr. Brooks is going to get drunk and watch a video about employment, and then wake up and dash off the first thing that pops into his head about what "Employers" should do...

...that he please not use "Hired!" as his source material...

...but instead try to pass while watching something that is closer to real world, here-and-now experience of the average American employee who is not David Brooks.