Sunday, August 03, 2014

Both-Sides Brooks Versus Fail-Gunner Joe


David Brooks wants this guy taken out.

Badly (h/t Heather at Crooks and Liars):
DAVID BROOKS: ...Securing the border, deporting some of them, yes, who can sent back fairly, but then having some hearings to figure out who’s who. And it seems to me the Republicans have basically their policy — at least the political emphasis that’s come out is deport, deport, deport, wall, wall, wall.

It seems to me to make little sense in the short-term and is extremely damaging for Republicans in the long term.
...

DAVID BROOKS:  ... So that’s all fair enough. But this is about Palin-ization of parts of the GOP. This is not about passing legislation, not about, well, we’re in a party. We should pay attention to our leaders. We should craft some compromise. We should compromise with the other side. This is about making a statement that will sound good on FOX.

And so they want to make a statement that will sound good on TV or will sound good at a town meeting, but it’s not actually about governing. And there are a lot of — and my question is, OK, Ted Cruz, senator, it should be said, met with a bunch of House members, which doesn’t happen that often, and sort of helped organize this...
Which is silk-lined, tapioca-dipped Brooks-speak for this:
Of course the beauty of being David Brooks is that once you, David Brooks, have identified a problem -- especially a very large problem which your own Conservatism had a very big hand in creating --  you, David Brooks, need never be shy about stepping right up and insisting that someone other than David Brooks really needs to get in there and fix it. 

Whether it's fighting and dying in Mr. Brooks' Great Patriotic Wars or triaging the various follow-on catastrophes which his Great Patriotic Wars created or bearing the brunt of his crackpot economic schemes or being the guinea pig for one of his little social engineering experiments in character building -- you can always count on David Brooks to demand someone else get in there and do the hard, heavy lifting, because cleaning up another one of Conservatism's messes is a crappy job for other people.

His job, as David Brooks, is to sit on his ass sipping an indifferent chardonnay and spouting helpful suggestions about Humility and Character and National Greatness.

See?  Everyone has their role to play.

And make no mistake, Ted Cruz and all the little Cruzlings that are pounding the rubble that Dubya left behind are nothing less than the latest flock of Conservatism's batshit birds coming home to roost. David Brooks' Conservatism built Ted Cruz: gave him his vocabulary and his battle plans, gave him path to power and a map to follow, gave him an army of angry, ignorant bigots to lead, gave him hippies to punch, Big Gummint to scapegoat, the Liberal Media to blame and a vast stage on which to stand.

And now that another monster they made has kicked the lab door off its hinges and is running amok, here comes the David Brooks Two-Step.

Step One:  the implicit or explicit denial of patrilineage. Mr. Brooks' cover of "Billie Jean"  --

 

-- 'cause the kid his not his son!

From me back in 2011:
Well Into Their 117th Trimesters


David Brooks and David Frum both suddenly decide they really don't want to keep Reagan's baby.

Earlier today Mr. Brooks placed his order for a political D&C through pursed-lips and a frowny face by rewriting Reality's Timeline so that he was somehow never a part of the 30-year lead-up to the Giant Pig Party Implosion at the end of the Empire we see bearing monstrous fruit all around us.

Mr. Frum, more comically, decided instead to pretend that the person most responsible for the Giant Pig Party Implosion at the end of the Empire...was the Reasonable-to-a-Fault Democratic President! Because he has so far failed to put Frum's Republican Party down like the sick animal that it is, and failed to clean up the toxic partisan sewer that David Frum helped create..despite Mr. Frum and every other Conservative douchebag in America being warned to beware just exactly these consequences for the last 30 years by two generations of Liberals...
So that's Step One.

Here is Step Two (emphasis added):
DAVID BROOKS:
...
So, which senator is going to stand up and be the anti-Cruz? Who is going to stand up for Republican values, but I believe in governing? And so far, that person has not emerged.
...

DAVID BROOKS: So, you can just see, that’s why we need an anti-Cruz, because when all the guts and all the courage are on one side, then the policy flows to where the courage and the energy is. And there’s been very little courage on the other side.
Of course, within the federal government, the "anti-Cruz" already exists.

A whole bunch of them, as a matter of fact.

They're called the Democrats.

Their leader is President Barack Obama.

Perhaps you've heard of them?

Naturally, David Brooks is no more capable of factoring this blindingly obvious fact into his critique of Cruz (specifically) or Conservatism (generally) than a gerbil is capable of digesting antimatter: to do so -- to admit that one side is demonstrably insane and one side is not, that one side is driven by premeditated cruelty and hatred and defiant ignorance and one side is not -- would unravel his entire Both Sides scam, and so Brooks is stuck with pretending that, politically, the Right is all there is...and that Cruz and Palin and all the rest have somehow magically sprung fully-formed and without progenitor into heart the Republican ecosystem.

Alrighty then, if Mr. Brooks really thinks what the the world needs an anti-Cruz, what about...David Brooks?

After all, he's the perfect candidate.

As I have documented elsewhere in exhausting detail, back in the glory days of the Bush Administration, Brooks was only too happy to pound aggressively and enthusiastically away at us Dirty Hippies, gleefully calling us stupid, hysterical, hateful, unpatriotic and insufficiently enamored of the leadership genius George W. Bush's.  So clearly Mr. Brooks has no ethical problem with mounting a sustained, multi-media campaign using every resource at his command to wham the shit out of those he feels are unworthy.

And instead of doing cheap, drive-by battle with Imaginary Hippies, this time he could devote that zeal and resolve to taking on a real internal enemy.

A real danger to the republic.

After all, as he himself says, the rise of Cruz and Palinism is something which agitates Mr. Brooks greatly.  Plus, Brooks doesn't even have to run for office to exercise extraordinary influence. He has a massive, public platform from which the years have shown he can say pretty much any damn thing he wants, whenever he wants, and need never worry one little bit about blowback (by his own admission, Brooks has never had to endure so much as a single performance review during his decade at the New York Times.)

David Brooks can never never be fired, can write about anything he pleases as often as he pleases, job out the task of reading his hate mail to interns, lecture at colleges, Aspen or TED whenever he chooses, speak to large audiences every week on PBS and NPR, drop in on Meet the Press as the mood takes him and has the bottomless pockets of the New York Times at his disposal. In other words, he enjoys all the power the Beltway media world has to offer, and needs to worry about none of the consequences of using it.

And how has he been using the extraordinary gifts he has been given but never earned?  Pooping out one stagnant pile of Both Sider claptrap after another, interleaved with rambling, forgettable "chin-strokers and sociology".

You see the irony.  As a Conservative with tremendous reach and power, who boasts of back-room access to every powerful person in Washington D.C. but who can never be voted out of office and never has to bother about listening to his critics, David Brooks is now exactly the sort of person who David Brooks wants to stand up to Ted Cruz.

But will he do so?  With he personally take up his own damn cause?

Of course not.

Because as Mr. Brooks has correctly noted, "there’s been very little courage on the other side."  

And no three words more aptly describe the secret to David Brooks' remarkable success than "very little courage".

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I often wondered how in the face of such excoriating critique, Mr Brooks didn't dessicate into his component toxic dust and blow away.
Then Barry told me "don't be sanctimonious".
Now I know. Thanks for the chuckles Driftglass.

RoninMichigan said...

This is some beautiful stuff. Loved reading that.

Fritz Strand said...

Brooks' consequence free life is enough to make one believe in Greek Mythology.

janet said...

Beautifully done. Thank you driftglass.

Anonymous said...

This is why the rural and religious should never have power and always be crushed by the urban and secular.

The problem is Christianity and flyover, they aren't people. They are there to provider labor and laugh at, but don't tell them they count. Because throughout history, when you tell the religious country bumpkins that they are real citizens, they demand power. And when they get power they want to burn all the heretics. It happened to the catholic church, it's happening here.

We can fix that. Already in the cities that count mentioning you're religious is a sure way to not get a date, not get a job, and have every one treat you like the second class racist, sexist, science denying twit you are. There are no good one, only enablers. Religion is down among the younger generations as well... which is why these areas a blue and turning more and more like Europe. We've realized Christianity is the most toxic thing out there.

Second, fuck flyover. If Wall Street wants to screw them fine, just tax the money when it gets to NYC so we can give it people worth helping. And if those red states don't get ACA subsidies fine... the faster the Christian rural hicks die the fuck off the better for everyone.

Religious rural idiots have always been the toxin of every horror show in history. It's time the rest of us start dealing with the enemy and calling it out. Small Towns and Christianity are problems, and the people that live there aren't on the same level in anyway as the rest of us. We need to stop treating them as equals.

Monster from the Id said...

Hark, I do believe I hear the honking of a migrating Geese returning to poop in Lake Driftglass. (Bad grammar intentional.)

marindenver said...

There is very little courage on Bobo's part due to his incredible instincts for self preservation. If he were to become the anti-Cruz and actually act like a real journamalist or astute political commentator he would immediately lose his "both sides" cred and his carefully constructed world would come crashing down around him.

steeve said...

Usually i get told that Maddow can't call out Gregory, and Krugman can't call out Brooks, because they'd be fired. Boo friggin hoo, they'd be forced to subsist on the meager millions they have stashed away during their three-day-long job search.

But Brooks is so permanently entrenched, that if he were to admit that "real conservatism" is found squarely in the center of the democratic party and that he was completely wrong his whole life, he'd keep his job. And his weekly slobbering interviews. And he'd hear as much criticism as he does now - zero. It would cost him exactly 0.00 cents to make a major difference in this country.

Winski said...

Driftglass.... After listening to ANOTHER great Podcast by you and Blue Gal on Friday, I promise to send you guys some 'both sides' material... It won't be hard, it's everywhere AND plentiful... Here's a good start if you haven't seen it already..

http://crooksandliars.com/cltv/2014/08/david-gregory-blames-both-sides

What a useless AssKlown... How long can Gregory stay in a global job ???