It isn't very much after taxes but my child bride and I have the satisfaction that The New York Times doesn't care about the money I've raked in from all my side hustles. I should also add that my child bride doesn't have a mink coat, but she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat ... and a mansion in the exclusive Capitol Hill suburbs of Washington D.C.
And I always tell her that she'd look good in anything!
One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don't they'll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something — a gift — after a recent column of mine. An Aspen Institute board member read that I like fancy Italian deli meats and believe it or not, the day after I wrote that column, FedEx showed up with a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?
It was an Italian dry salami in a crate that he'd ordered from Harry & David. And my child bride named it Soppressata, because that's what it was. And you know, like all privileged white suburban goobers, we love the salami and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of how many of The Poors it may freak out, we're gonna eat it...
-- perhaps a few words are in order about his column in The New York Times today.
A very few words.
Here are the first lines:
How to Love America
Patriotism in a time of division.
Like you, I’m sure, I love America, but the love has changed. I started out with the child version...
OK, if the next line from Mr. Brooks' pen is not "But then America got old so I dumped America for a younger, hotter country" I shall be deeply disappointed.
...the child version: America is the greatest and most powerful country on earth.
That emotion doesn’t generally survive into adulthood, especially in times like these. That kind of patriotism tends to play down shameful truths. It tends to bloat into touchy and overweening pride.
Color me deeply disappointed. And since literally all Mr. Brooks does for The New York Times is extrude slightly tweaked version of the same paint-by-numbers Both Siderist claptrap year after year, I'll spare you all the padding and go right to the razor in the apple.
Yadda yadda patriotism.
On the right, people who often call themselves patriots are actually nationalists, a chauvinism that is an entirely different emotion...
Yadda yadda...
To a much smaller degree, the disillusion with e pluribus unum has caused some on the left to also conclude...
Yadda yadda...
Which is why I so admired Yale political philosopher Steven B. Smith’s book “Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes.”
Yadda yadda...
Smith ends the book with one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen lyrics...
Don't sell me America, Mr. Brooks. You're not the guy to close that deal.
4 comments:
To a much smaller degree he worked in the old both sides do it yadda-yadda. I guess that means its all good and the check will clear
https://twitter.com/WernerTwertzog/status/1362802454245572611?s=20
Don't sell me America, Mr. Brooks. You're not the guy to close that deal.
" You knew them as Distressed Flag Sale.
That was the title of their first album (subtitled For Sale Cheap One Country Inquire 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). You probably knew it as the “blue-cake-with-the-white-stars-on-the-table-with-the-red-stripes-formed-on-the-white-floor-by-the-blood-running- in-seven-rivulets-from-the-dead-G.I.” album.
Their second and last was NEXT! with the famous photo of the Saigon police chief blowing the brains out of the suspected VC in the checked shirt during the Tet Offensive of 1968, only over the general’s face they’d substituted Nixon’s, and over the VC’s, Howdy Doody’s."
-- Howard Waldrop, "Do Ya, Do Ya Wanna Dance?" (c. 1989)
At an elite Hollywood dog gala. Lassie and Rin Tin Tin said to Checkers.
"Raullf, Rough-rough Arf Gurrr rowlph ruff arf Grrr."
Translated into human :
"In absence of lawn, Brooks column makes a good substitute".
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