Friday, April 17, 2020

David Brooks: The Return of the Crepes of Wrath



Studs Terkel knew from hardship.


His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants -- a tailor and a seamstress -- who moved from New York City to Chicago when Studs was a child and ran a rooming house during the Great Depression where Studs learned about the dreams and struggles of the working class from the people who would meet in the lobby there, and who gathered in Bughouse Square nearby to hear the soapbox orators inveighing against the predators of capitalism.  Although he earned a J.D. from the University of Chicago, Studs went to work as a hotel concierge instead, and later joined the WPA's Federal Writers' Project.  Studs would go on to become Chicago's great chronicler of the working class.

Chicago's most famous journalist, Mike Royko also knew about tough times.


He grew up over a bar, did a bit in the United States Air Force where he began writing for the base newspaper, got in with the legendary City News Bureau and never looked back.  Royko wrote with commanding authority about the mobsters, con men and bent politicians who ran the city, and with equal eloquence about the little guys who baked the bread, drove the trucks, tended the bars, taught the kids and made the book that made the city work.  He knew them all intimately because he worked the streets covering them all by day, and drinking with legends by night.

Like Terkel, David Brooks attended the University of Chicago and, like Royko, Brooks did a stint at the City News Bureau.

This is where all similarities end.

Mr. Brooks was raised in academic privilege, loitered at the University of Chicago long enough to score a BA in history (which, based on how routinely he molests and whitewashes the past in order to advance his political agenda, should have been revoked decades ago) after which he latched onto the wingnut welfare teat like a lamprey and has been nursing at its ample bosom ever since.  Brooks is America's most ubiquitous cheerleader for the myopically wealthy, the cluelessly privileged and politically inbred and has made his a career out of telling the rich and powerful the silky lies they desperately wish to be true.

Yes truly it can be said (and has been said, once or twice) that in all this wide, bountiful, fatally-conflicted nation -- from the mountains to the prairies and the whole rest of that song -- there is no one who can speak with less forged-in-the-crucible-of-hardship authority about what hard times have to teach us than David Fucking Brooks.

So imagine my complete lack of surprise when I opened the House of Sulzberger's little family newspaper this morning to find this staring back at me.



First, I'm sorry Brooks' kids no longer speak to him because he dumped their mother for an intern, and passive-aggressively lashing out at them via the op-ed page of The New York Times is the only way Brooks' knows how send them a message, but honestly, that sounds like a "David Brooks" problem, and not a "the rest of us" problem.

Second, this is every bit the Brooks-brand wretchedly oblivious moral hectoring that you imagine it to be.

And third, in the interest of self-care during these dark times, you shouldn't read it.  After all, that's my job.




Why Does David Brooks Still Have A Fucking Job?




7 comments:

rapier said...

Royko was one of America's greatest newspaper columnists. To me his greatest asset was that, at least until near the end of his life, his very very American tendency towards resentment was held in check against those that white ethnic Americans typically rail against. Liberals, hippies and most of all black Americans.

Make no mistake. Royko's stock in trade was resentment and this is not something that should be revered but face it, it's great for entertainment value.

Royko was almost certainly alcoholic but of that particular type that can consume vast quantities and function very well. That is from walking to talking to working.

Royko created Royko. He built his own myth but what the heck. He was a performer. Here he is with his most well practiced story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpuXfcx0pRU

Jason said...

Example #5,486,347,235 of republicans lacking irony and self awareness when opening their gobshite mouths. I agree Mr. Brooks. I think you should engage in a class and ideological Trading Places experiment. Give up your national platforms spewing the most vile milquetoast ideologically wrong headed opinions and start a blog under a pseudonym while elevating to your now open job, a progressive blogger who's been in the trenches clawing out a living for the past 20 years. Let's see how taking away your 6 figure paycheck and outlets to lie, obfuscate and be wrong about everything for decades works for you. It'll be all for a lark and a personal interest in social science. That and a bet of 1 dollar that you don't make it.

dave said...

it is a chore pretending to care.....showing rich people how to pretend to care.

they do care about putting out the effort as credentialing for full fledged to the bone never trumper status. to be able to say in a few months, in 4 years, i had absolutely nothing to do with this mess..iw as one of the good ones...

Robt said...

With all respect.

I do not intend to step on your keen productive imagination skills.

They are great. And here it comes.......................

But,,, A alternative of the Grapes of Wrath.

Oh Brother, where art thou?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kID9iXY5Nuk

Am I too off base?

Neo Tuxedo said...

Now I can't decide whether I'd rather see that, or the one where Steven "His intimate friends called him 'Candle-ends'" Mnuchin has to try and make US$1200 last 10 weeks the way he's expecting the Masses to do. (He might be able to do it by himself, if his surgically-enhanced wife takes the advice of the great Paul Riddell and spends the whole interval in her sorority's ice tomb on Telos.)

joejimtree said...

I just don't understand. We are living the cumulative realized lifetime achievement of David Brook's entire career. The government is drowned. He should be taking credit, doing laps around the stadium, with flowers thrown in his path. W

Why isn't his column an open celebration of how happy his is with how the government is performing? He should be dancing a jig that the feds are basically refusing to help. Isn't that what he wanted? Come on David, walk the red carpet, this is your time.

Robt said...

And the exact same question you remarkably posed to Brooks. Should be requisite question to every single republican candidate this election.
To every single Right wing media host, celeb, RNC paid hack, prior republican employee.
That accomplished all their wet dreams like Gover Norquist.

The religious right who now reside in the West Wing instead of their Temples.