Friday, July 11, 2014

David Brooks vs. Alphonse Capone

DFB3


Always on the lookout for an milk crate from which to deliver 800-words-worth of pretension on The Meaning of Life, today Mr. Brooks chooses what once-and-future presidential fallback prom date, Mittens Von Romney, would call "sport" to explain existential reality to the proles:
Baseball or Soccer?
JULY 10, 2014

Is life more like baseball, or is it more like soccer?
...
Actually, at this exact moment, I'm kinda wishing it was more like MMA Ultimate Fighting.  But please, do continue.  And, if possible, begin right off the bat (hehe) by making it clear that you don't actually understand baseball at all, but have instead sculpted a primitive baseball replica out of butter in order to better make your Insightful Contrast:
Baseball is a team sport, but it is basically an accumulation of individual activities. Throwing a strike, hitting a line drive or fielding a grounder is primarily an individual achievement. The team that performs the most individual tasks well will probably win the game.
As an expatriate Chicagoan, obviously I'm not competent to explain how baseball really works to Mr. Brooks.

Fortunately I know another Chicagoan who is up to the job:



Enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms.


7 comments:

Dan said...

Soccer however is merely Latinos and Europeans individuals chasing the comfort of the welfare state

Anonymous said...

Well, DFB has gone and done it now, choosing soccer over baseball as a “what’s more like life” analogy. I mean really, this is it, DFB has crossed the line. I can only imagine the “pinko, commie, fag, socialist, marxist, anti-Christianist, welfare sucking leach, hippie, liberal, love it or leave it ya bum. abortionist baby killer, leave my guns alone ya godless pagan,” epithets that will be thrown his way. The Holy Office of the Inquisition will be calling him in to answer a few questions about the purity of his blood as well, I would imagine.

If he thought his comment section was full of negative responses before, Oh shit, this is going to leave a scar the size of Texas…well, it will probably leave the scar on the assistant who has to read his comments for him. Also, I would suggest that he doesn’t go out to his favorite eatery any time soon as he may now find a little more of the general hoi polloi approaching him in a not to friendly manner.

This should be a fine example to the NY Times to put an editor on DFB, because any editor worth his salt would have told Mr. ‘I sound like I know what I’m talking about’ that you can’t put soccer above baseball in the US of fucking A, you mindless, moronic, pompous, pestilent twit. Or something like that, I’m sure.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

I was going to go with Rollerball, but as long as we are thinking about fictional games, I might be inclined to say The Running Mna, even though the game was..modified.. to the point of offense in the movie. As Long as I was thinking Bachmann-King, though, I figured modern life is much more like The Long Walk.

Cliff said...

David Brooks explains baseball from the porch of his $4 million house:

"Greetings, gentle plebeian! If you are perchance not a devotee of the noble sport of 'based-ball,' I will undertake to describe it to you:

"A dapper fellow upon a low hillock hurls a leather spheroid at a similarly-dressed dapper fellow, some yards away, who attempts to strike the spheroid with a marvelously tapered baton.

"Upon achieving a successful strike, the second dapper fellow promptly undertakes a circuit of no less than four stations arranged around the hillock before the spheroid can be recovered and returned to the baton-wielder with alacrity.

"Should a successful circuit be made, one tally mark is made in the favor of the baton-wielder.

"Please note, gentle plebeian, that 'based-ball' does not resemble the complexity of Life in any significant fashion."

Kathleen said...

Dear Law of Karma: Please hasten your journey to David Brooks' Rooms For Entertainment so his descent into Macbethian madness can proceed forthwith. I know your list is long, but I am willing to pay to move him to the top. Sincerely....

Cirze said...

We'll all chip in, Kathleen.

Brilliant, Dg.

Just more brilliant reporting.

Say "Hi!" to Fran.

Anonymous said...

Sitting around the campfire, Cub Scout leader Mr. Brooks, once again, for the umpteenth time, explains to the kiddies the nature of all things. Meanwhile, the kids are screaming and franticly trying to extinguish the flames from the fire that are beginning to rapidly spread out of control. Because as usual der leader Brooks decided to have the campout in the safety of his living room, and is oblivious to anything but the sound of the scrambled and distorted incoming radio signals in his brain…now was that dodgeball or badminton which is more like life, or Russian roulette and knitting…