David Brooks: Branded!

Like his New York Times colleague and fellow unreconstructed Iraq War pimp Thomas Friedman, David  Brooks is a brand.  

A carefully cultivated and meticulously managed New York Times brand.

The first line of his Amazon book bin bio is "David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...".

The first words spoken by anyone who introduces him in any venue from from NPR to PBS to the now-defunct Charlie Rose Show are always some variation of "David Brooks, op-ed columnist for The New York Times..." as is the chyron every time he has appears on Meet the Press.

Even his Twitter handle is New York Times branded.  It's not @humbleguydavidbrooks or @furryfandavidbrooks or @davidITaughtAtYaleThatOneTimebrooks.  It's @nytdavidbrooks.  

Contrast this with Paul Krugman who is also employed by The New York Times and also mentions it in his bio, but on Twitter he's just @paulkrugman.  Maybe this is because he's done other things with his life.  

For example, Dr. Krugman is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and was previously a professor of economics at MIT, and later at Princeton University.  He retired from Princeton in June 2015, and holds the title of professor emeritus there. He also holds the title of Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. He was also was President of the Eastern Economic Association in 2010  He has also won a Nobel Prize and been a guest of honor at EschaCon.  

A rich and varied life indeed.

On the other hand, over the course of his entire adult life, Mr. David Brooks has never had any job other than spouting his shitty Conservative opinions for money.  

That's it.  That's all.  

And for the past 17 years Mr. Brooks has wired the New York Times name and imprimatur so deeply into his professional DNA that without the "New York Times columnist" brand as his passport to every other privileged opportunity that he has ever been afforded, I'm quite certain that Mr. Brooks would have either ceased to exist entirely, or would be fighting it out with Howard Kurtz for the scraps that fall off of Rupert Murdoch's table, or would be Mark Halperin's NewsMax co-anchor.  

All of which is to say that when he picked up an extra $250K flacking for Facebook on Facebook  it wasn't because he was @furryfandavidbrooks because nobody's gonna pay @furryfandavidbrooks a quarter of a million dollars for his opinions about anything.  

They were hiring Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times.

They were hiring a New York Times brand (from BuzzFeed):

NYT Columnist David Brooks Resigns From Nonprofit After More Evidence Of Conflicts Emerges

His resignation comes amid new revelations of entanglements with Nextdoor and the Walton Foundation.

...

Brooks's behavior raises thorny ethical issues for the Times. By appearing in videos for Weave funders, he's lending the paper's credence to entities in which he has a stake. The revelations of these entanglements has angered the Times’ newsroom, where reporters, who are typically not allowed to maintain outside jobs that would be perceived as jeopardizing their news judgment, have reported critically on Facebook. Murphy told BuzzFeed News that Brooks did not inform the paper that he was blogging for Facebook, or that Weave received funding from the company. His Weave salary was revealed by BuzzFeed News earlier this week.

And whether or not it was printed in his column or on Facebook, the a New York Times brand is exactly what they got.

Because a New York Times brand is all Mr. David Brooks has ever been.

Burn The Lifeboats