David Brooks to World: "Shut up! It's Daddy, you shithead! Where's my bourbon? Can't you fucking remember anything?"

Last night's gathering of New York Times Conservatives With Shitty Opinions.
Pictured from left, Ross Douthat, Bari Weiss, David Brooks, Peter Wehner, Bret Stephens

"Gourmet coffee and yoga pants? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon! That's what you'll drink tonight!" -- David Brooks

Last night the New York Times' Conservatives With Shitty Opinions handed their little clique's official talking stick of over their glorious leader, Mr. David Brooks.  And boy howdy, did he ever show the youngers how it's done!

"I'll send you a love letter, straight from my heart, fucker! You know what a love letter is? It's an op-ed in the New York Fucking Times, fucker! You receive a love letter from me, you're fucked forever! You understand, fuck? I'll send you straight to hell, fucker!"  -- David Brooks

As I have mentioned (checks notes) several hundred times over the past 14 years, the only reason Conservatives like Mr. Brooks continue to make a princely living writing shitty opinions for major American newspapers is that the hermetically-sealed Beltway media ecosystem has been set up to insure that Conservatives with shitty opinions never accidentally brush up against any serious critics of those opinions.

To start with, the House of Sulzberger clearly has no editorial standards whatsoever when it comes to the behavior of the denizens of their Conservative op-ed paddock: Brooks and Douthat and Stephens and Wehner and all the guest goofballs are free to go as feral as they choose, wallow in whatever deranged verbal midden pile they wish, and roam as far and wide as they please.  Sure, every now and then Joe Scarborough might cock a quizzical eyebrow at Stephens. or Mark Shields may shake his jowls in a mildly disapproving manner at his very good friend and fellow Civility Award winner, David Brooks, but day-to-day that's about as rough as it ever gets for New York Times' Conservatives With Shitty Opinions.

And so, despite having been demonstrably wrong about pretty much everything since forever, these entitled, cosseted goofs have come to truly believe that they are the aristocrats of American letters and the elite arbiters of Serious Opinions.  That they have earned the financial rewards and lavish praise which their profession has showered on them every day of their long, ridiculous careers.

So given that bit of context, you can probably guess what unconscionable invasion of his safe space triggered Mr. David Brooks hard enough to pitch a five-star, Frank Black freakout (Not Safe For Work) --

-- in The New York Times.

Yes, it was L'Affaire des BretBug. 

And why does L'Affaire des BretBug scare the shit out of David Brooks?

Because even though Bret Stephens followed the Official Conservatives With Shitty Opinions rule book to the letter he got his ass kicked anyway, and that is not the way the system is supposed to work!

 L'Affaire des BretBug began with Bret Stephens doing what pretty much every other Conservative Writer With a Shitty Opinion does: ignore the fact that Right is burning the world down all around them and instead devote a considerable fraction of their considerable spare time to trawl the internet until they find some incredibly trivial slight to get mad about.

And then punch down hard.

Except this time the peasants quite justifiably and effectively punched back.  And because the rules of the Beltway media specify that this not acceptable, instead of discretion-being-the-better-part-of-valoring himself out of the hole he was digging, Bret used his All-Access Beltway media pass to go on teevee to moralize indignantly about the righteousness of his idiocy.

Then, when the peasants dared to punched back even harder, Stephens used his New York Times column to compare the incredibly trivial slight he suffered on Twitter to the Holocaust.

Out here in the Real World it was immediately and hilariously obvious what was going on: that having shot his professional dick off with a BB gun, and then with a shotgun, Bret Stephens really thought the answer to his problem was to go after it with a bazooka.

When that didn't work, he stormed off in a huff and quit Twitter forever and ever.

Which makes perfect sense once you understand that, far as Stephens knew, he was doing everything according to Hoyle!  And yet his fellow shitty pundits failed to honor their commitment to the rigged came they all play by rising to his defense.  Worse still, not only did the peasants refuse to shut up and mind their manners, they mounted a peasant revolt that packed such a wallop that Stephens may now be forced to go on "book leave" and come back in a month or two with a new wife half his age and weighty tome about his spiritual journey.

Which is why, a week after Stephens' spectacular self-immolation, Brooks has come roaring out of the gate with one of the most nakedly unhinged public tantrums he has thrown since the infamous "The Harry da Reid Code" conniption of  aught-five:

The Harry da Reid Code

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m., writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It's been four weeks since he launched his personal investigation into the Republican plot to manipulate intelligence to trick the American people into believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Reid had heard of the secret G.O.P. cabal bent on global empire, but he had no idea that he would find a conspiracy so immense. 

...
Reid now knows that in the late 1990's, Dick Cheney and other Republican officials used fluoridated water in the State Department and other government agencies to brainwash Clinton administration officials into exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m., writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It has been four weeks since he began investigating this conspiracy and three weeks since he sealed his windows with aluminum foil to ward off the Illuminati. Odd patterns now leap into his brain. Scooter Libby was born near a book depository but was indicted while at a theater. Karl Rove reads books from book depositories but rarely has time for the theater. What is the ratio of Bush tax cuts to the number of squares on a frozen waffle? It is none other than the Divine Proportion. This proves that Leonardo da Vinci manipulated intelligence on Iraq and that the Holy Grail is a woman!...

The world's leading Brooksologists still marvel at the fact that David Fucking Brooks actually wrote that in the good, gray pages of The New York Times back in November of 2005.  And but for a few Liberal bloggers nipping at his ankles, he suffered no professional consequences for it, because that is how the system is supposed to work.

And as longtime readers know, pretty much every week for the past 15 years Mr. Brooks has used his extremely valuable New York Times real estate to publish tripe that may be slightly less openly hysterical than "The Harry da Reid Code" but is no less egregious or cloying or ridiculous or flat-out wrong.  And yet his relentless wretchedness never provokes the House of Sulzberger to take any disciplinary action because that is how the system is supposed to work.

Which is why L'Affaire des BretBug terrifies David Brooks.

Because if the public beat-down of Stephens is allowed to stand -- if this internet peasant revolt is allowed to actually affect the rules under which the Beltway media conducts its business -- it could happen to any of them.

Holy shit!  It could even happen to David Brooks!

And so, today...

And Now, a Word From a Fanatic
Inside the mind of an internet extremist.

By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist

I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.

And because every single god damn thing David Fucking Brooks writes must have a "Both Sides Do It" angle to it... (emphasis added):

I am one of those fanatics on the alt-right and the alt-left, the ones who make online forums so vicious, the ones who cancel and call out, the minority of online posters who fill the air with hate...

After which, it's just one, long primal scream of a middle-aged mediocrity who is terrified that he might be next on the professional gibbet: 

I was raised without coherent moral frameworks. I was raised amid social fragmentation and division, the permanent flux of liquid modernity...

I was raised in that coddling way that protects you from every risk except real life...

Own the libs! Smash the racist right! A war of pure good and pure evil...

 Everything is race. Everything is class. Everything is moral rot caused by godlessness...

Every human being gets reduced to some category, preferably the cunning ones I despise: the libs, white males.

Did you really think you could raise me on gourmet coffee and yoga pants and I wouldn’t find a way to rebel against your relativism and materialism?

Mr. Brooks rambles on quite a bit longer, but eventually he shows us what he really fears:

My moral system is simple, too. Up is evil and down is good. People above me on the status hierarchy are venal, while those of us in my group are victims of their corruption. The existence of any hierarchy itself is prima facie proof of injustice.

From the abstract vantage point of my computer screen, I see a world in which my opponents are elite oppressors and my kind are oppressed. They have their exclusive cliques and I am disdained. And here we get to the ultimate injustice: Why are they recognized while I am not?...

I’ve lost faith in reason. Communication is for condemnation and arousal. Forgiveness has become foreign to me. Sometimes you have to be vicious for justice. If I afflict the comfortable I have served justice...

Mr. Brooks is a weak, myopic, toxic fool who has built a very good life for himself based on wealth he did not earn and privilege he does not merit.  He owes everything he has and everything he ever will have of it to a corporate media power structure designed specifically to protect and reward weak, myopic toxic fools like him.

So shame on anyone who is surprised that the David Brooks who was putting a roof over his first wife's head  back in 2003 by mocking us stupid critics of the Iraqi Debacle for our stupid "nuance" --

In certain circles, it is not only important what opinion you hold, but how you hold it. It is important to be seen dancing with complexity, sliding among shades of gray. Any poor rube can come to a simple conclusion -- that President Saddam Hussein is a menace who must be disarmed--but the refined ratiocinators want to be seen luxuriating amid the difficulties, donning the jewels of nuance, even to the point of self-paralysis.

-- is the very same David Brooks who is now putting a roof over his second wife's head by mocking us stupid critics of goofs like Bret Stephens and David Brooks for our stupid lack of nuance:

So my politics is not really about issues, it’s epic wars for recognition. I don’t deal with the complexities of economics or foreign affairs. I seize upon the minor missteps made by my opponents in order to discredit their kind. You stumbled? I delight in crushing you! 

In other words, don't you fucking look at me!

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