Saturday, April 30, 2016

"Indians Will Be Touched!" David Brooks Pledges




Here's a fun fact!   30 years after this commercial was aired it turns out...



...there really was a bear in the woods.

And it really was vicious.  And dangerous.  And it really was easy for many of us to see.

But, in a surprising twist, it turned out the real bear in the woods wasn't the Commies after all.

It turns out, the real vicious, dangerous bear in the woods has always been the Republican base.

And now that bear is out of the wood.

And it's eating David Brooks' kayak.



As regular readers of this blog know, having failed publicly and spectacularly to keep the horrifying reality of Actual Conservatism sufficiently whitewashed with his Amazing Tales of Imaginary Conservatism, Mr, David Brooks is now spending some of his teevee face time and New York Times column inches reassuring his benefactors that some day real soon he is going to leave the comfort and camaraderie of his Acela corridor fastness and venture upriver into the Heart of American Darkness to report back on WTF is going on in the country about which Mr. Brooks has so profitably opined with such supreme confidence and invincible ignorance for so long.

Friday was another one of those columns.

First, comes the allocation blame.  To those Republicans.  Who are waaaay over there and not anywhere near Mr. David Brooks:
Donald Trump now looks set to be the Republican presidential nominee. So for those of us appalled by this prospect — what are we supposed to do?

Well, not what the leaders of the Republican Party are doing. They’re going down meekly and hoping for a quiet convention. They seem blithely unaware that this is a Joe McCarthy moment. People will be judged by where they stood at this time. Those who walked with Trump will be tainted forever after for the degradation of standards and the general election slaughter.
Second, comes the plea for unity. Let us not dwell too much on which of us made a fucking fortune carrying water for the scum of the Right, and which of us ended up broke and outcast for warning that this day was coming. Instead...
The better course for all of us — Republican, Democrat and independent — is to step back and take the long view, and to begin building for that.
Because now is not the time for recriminations people! Now is the time for us all come together -- Republicans (who are the authors of every recent disaster including this one), Democrats (who have been sounding the alarm for 30 years that Republicans are creating catastrophe) and, most important of all, Imaginary Independents (out of which David Brooks has spent so many profitable years spinning tales of his Imaginary Center) -- and agree that David Brooks should not be sacked for gross incompetence and run out of journalism on a rail.

Then comes Mr. Brooks begging his benefactors to let him keep his sweet gig despite overwhelming evidence that the sucks at it:
I was surprised by Trump’s success because I’ve slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata — in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own. It takes an act of will to rip yourself out of that and go where you feel least comfortable. But this column is going to try to do that over the next months and years. 
How adorable is is that, for David Brooks of the New York Times, it takes an "act of will" to "rip" himself away from juggling Paul Ryan's balls in his mouth long enough to go and talk to ordinary Americans where they are about what they think.

But Mr. Brooks can't do it alone kids!  No siree.  It's also up to you, Mr. and Mr. Real-America-About-Which-David-Brooks-Knows-Nothing  to do your part and...
...do one activity that leaps across the chasms of segmentation that afflict this country.
Or, as the rest of us call it, going to work, grocery shopping, attending church, participating in our kid's schools with other parents, helping out in our neighborhoods, chatting with the waitress who brings us pancakes and the guy sitting next to us at the bar, and, in general, living our lives.

Of course rather that trying to retrofit a spavined, myopic, infamously unreliable narrator like David Brooks for the rigors of a journey to the American Heartland, I suppose the New York Times could just hire a decent writer who already lives there, works there and interacts with other human beings there.

But nah!  That's just crazy-talk!

Instead, in an epic exercise in Cart-Before-Horse-Putting, Mr. David Brooks' finishes his column on the importance of finally taking a clear-eyed look at America-As-It-Actually-Is...

...with his dream-journal doodles of The-America-That-Might-Be after all of this Trump unpleasantness is safely behind us:
We’ll probably need a new national story...

I don’t know what the new national story will be, but maybe it will be less individualistic and more redemptive...

We’ll probably need a new definition of masculinity, too.

We’ll also need to rebuild the sense that we’re all in this together.

Maybe the task is to build a ladder of hope.

Then solidarity can be rekindled nationally.
Of course, we'll also need ice cream.

And ponies.

And to tell our exciting new national story we'll definitely need new national storytellers who are not completely full of shit.

14 comments:

Lawrence said...

Well, David, why don't you tell us what the national story is now? And the definition of masculinity? If we're going to build a new thing, shouldn't we know what the old thing was, and why it's broken? I have a real suspicion that you and I and several other people would define those things quite differently. Which means we don't all have one thing that's broken. Some people have a broken thing, and others have a thing which functions tolerably well. So which people have the broken thing, then?

bowtiejack said...

"We’ll probably need a new definition of masculinity, too.

We’ll also need to rebuild the sense that we’re all in this together.

Maybe the task is to build a ladder of hope.

Then solidarity can be rekindled nationally."

As Mr. Brooks clambers into the bathos-sphere and disappears from view.

D. said...

*snort* at bear videos,

(And that's exactly what Mr. Brooks sounds like: "Bear! Why are you breaking my kayak?!" And one wants to say, on behalf of the bear, "You pepper-sprayed me, and now you're complaining I'm breaking your kayak? Be glad I'm only taking it out on your plastic floater. And by the way, I notice you at least have the sense to keep your distance. Because I smell like a bear.")

dinthebeast said...

I don't know about you, but I can think of several things far less comfortable than meeting people and talking with them about their lives.
I'm not suggesting that DFB should be subjected to any of them, because that would be wrong.

-Doug in Oakland

Li'l Innocent said...

I wonder what he envisions himself doing? Roy Edroso on Friday had a fab imagining of Brooks in an unregenerate working-guys' bar somewhere (at a guess) in PA, or maybe upstate NY, but really... really, what would he do to talk to regular people? Go to a town someplace and stay in a motel, or perchance a bed and breakfast, and try actually living there for a while, getting to know a few people?

I bet he doesn't know how to make his own hotel reservations. Or how to rent a car.

You're right, Doug. It would be wrong.

bluicebank said...

Real soon. John Lithgow (Lord Worfin) said it best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd56CIFSMI4

Cirze said...

Who's the best writer around?

You baby, it's you.

The weekend dg applause begins.

invincible ignorance"

Robt said...

There has been reports of a bear roaming in the neighborhood. It may be dangerous. Vicious. No one has actually seen it. But reports of signs of the bear continue to alert everyone.
Until today, when bear poop was found. it seems it has pieces of a Kayak and a wood oar in the poop pile.

there has been sightings of David Brooks as well.
Boxcar wilbur told Boxcar Willie that Brooks hopped a ride with southern pacific from atlanta to Yuma.
Then,
a Crack addict is said to introduce Brooks to some widget sales person down this dark alley.
Brooks was said to be seen at a downtown laundromat and was asking for change for a #100 bill. He needed quarters for a dryer, I heard.

last I heard he was at a old boxing training place sparring with Rockie.

Even at St, hungry soup kitchen.

That salt of the earth Brooks really knows how to mingle with Regular middle class and poor folk..


His editor?
What does it say about Brooks' employer?






Lex Alexander said...

Brooks resolutely refuses to see that the problems we have today are the direct result of everything he and his party have stood for the past 50 years -- all the lying, warmongering, racism, other forms of bigotry, xenophobism, class warfare, anti-environmentalism, corporatism and just general viciousness. He has both enabled this disaster and lied consistently about it and its causes.

He can't now expiate his sins just by acknowledging that "mistakes were made" and had consequences; he also must accept personal responsibility. And he shows no signs of doing that. He has blood on his hands, and instead of washing it off he's just wiping his hands on the furniture and hoping no one notices.

Bob M said...

Per touching Indians in The Firesign Theater's Everything You know is Wrong - Ben Franklin ('the only president of the United States that was never president of the Unites States') laments he never felt the touch of a warm naked Indian or a cold naked forest.

I do wish that Mr. Brooks would just shut up about how out of touch he is...we all know that. It's not like WE find this to be shocking news, no matter how shocked our Ms. Brooks is.

Ellis Weiner said...

"He has blood on his hands, and instead of washing it off he's just wiping his hands on the furniture and hoping no one notices."

I don't think he sees it. He thinks all the best people just naturally have gleaming, scarlet-red hands. The problem isn't that he and his cohort have actually *done* anything. They just--regrettably--have failed to *notice* several things. But no more!

RUKidding said...

We’ll probably need a new definition of masculinity, too.

All this projection. No Fuck Cakes: YOU need to grow a pair, and while you're at grow the eff up.

Talk about a puling infant. What is it with this asshat? He's so afraid to get out of the Acela Corridor away from his bourgeois habitat & pals. Like what? He's gonna pass out from the stench of - oh icky icky yucky yucky - "those people"!?!1!

I assume Vegas isn't laying odds on DFB ever leaving the confines of his faaabulous Acela bubble to, you know, fake out that he's (gross! horror!) rubbing shoulders with some random proles in (shriek!) flyover country. Cuz he ain't gonna do it. No way, never, nuh-uh.

Pussy.

Unknown said...

Driftglass, this is a superb piece.

As for Brooks, one can only hope his employers will pull the plug on his media access.

Unknown said...

"We’ll probably need a new national story...

I don’t know what the new national story will be, but maybe it will be less individualistic and more redemptive...

We’ll probably need a new definition of masculinity, too.

We’ll also need to rebuild the sense that we’re all in this together.

Maybe the task is to build a ladder of hope.

Then solidarity can be rekindled nationally."

ALL of these things have been on offer for more than 30 years by one particular side of the political process.

"Men" don't blithely kill or destroy and entire country for war contracts

We ARE all in this together

TOGETHER we can cure cancer, go to Mars, and colonize the Moon.

AS A NATION we can decide to do what we want to do, to better living conditions for ALL mankind, to help those who need it, and to task those who are capable with learning everything they can about everything, so that they can show us HOW to do all these thins we want to do.

WHICH PARTY DOES THAT SOUNDS LIKE, DAVID???!!!!

*silence and crickets*

He will NEVER acknowledge his errors, because that might mean admitting who exactly was RIGHT all this time.