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I 'd never heard of David Brooks.<br>
<br>
Wikipaedia says he writes for the New York Times.<br>
I suppose that's why I've never heard of him.<br>
<br>
Wp also states that David Brooks is an admirer of Barack Obama.<br>
That's the equivalent of saying that David Brooks is some sort of a
fucking idiot.<br>
<br>
<br>
On 12/21/2013 6:25 AM, David Green wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:1387578342.33775.YahooMailNeo@web142402.mail.bf1.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
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style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Courier New,courier,monaco,monospace,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"><b>David Brooks: The Columnist</b></div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">By: Alex Pareene</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">It seems a pleasant life to be a
Columnist. He writes a few hundred words once, or at most twice a week.
He’s paid more to read those words out loud to people at elite colleges
and conferences. Naturally, people frequently want to know where a
Columnist comes from and how they come to have columns.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">The Columnist begins as a Young
Conservative Intellectual. It is important for the Young Conservative
Intellectual to be a converted radical, so <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/will-journalism-go-the-way-of-whaling/?hp&_r=0"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">he will have a story
of his foolish young radicalism</span></a> and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0402/features/index-brooks.shtml"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">of his conversion,</span></a> which
he will credit to William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman. He finds
meaning in seriousness as a concept. He admires Edmund Burke. The
Columnist will be a public intellectual, not a mere pundit. He will be
wry, but never funny. Lightly ironic, but never sarcastic. If he mocks,
it will always be gently.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">The Columnist floats around the
Conservative Media for a while, where he is guaranteed work for life so
long as he remains ideologically correct, but the columnist has grander
dreams. He wants everyone to admire his seriousness, and that will not
happen so long as he’s writing <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/000/095darhb.asp"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">“The Democrats Are
the Truly Stupid Party”</span></a> and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/770alraf.asp"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">“The Clintons Are
Actually to Blame for Enron”</span></a> at a conservative magazine,
where those takes are conventional and expected, instead of an Ideas
magazine, where those takes would be fresh and counterintuitive. At the
Weekly Standard, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/010/702ickxq.asp"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">“The way George Bush
ran his baseball team shows his many impressive leadership qualities”</span></a> is
simple partisan cheerleading. But at the Atlantic? So the Columnist
moves to a magazine of Ideas. He writes things like, “Liberals are
more materialistic than they claim to be,” and “Liberals are less
tolerant than they claim to be,” and “I have read Reinhold Niebuhr.”</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">Ideas, for those who aren’t clear
on the concept, are simply attention-grabbing assertions. The Columnist
is one of a group of people who create these assertions and sell them
to rich people. His first book, “I Confirmed All My Biases By Driving
to a Strip Mall,” is a big hit among people who like to feel superior
while reading gentle mocking of people who like to feel superior. “Some
Americans enjoy NASCAR,” he writes. “Others prefer arugula and are very
proud of themselves for this fact.” He treats this observation as a
bold Idea. He invents a term, to mock (gently!) a very specific social
class, and he freely condescends to a larger one. The Columnist will
never deny being one of the arugula ones, of course, he will just
position himself as that class’ foremost chronicler of its little
hypocrisies. His satire was <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://gawker.com/5167640/sounds-like-david-brooks-did-a-lot-of-acid-in-college"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">once silly, and
Perelman-esque.</span></a> It is now muted, and practically
indiscernible.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">In fact, you never know when the
Columnist is joking, which allows him to get away with quite a lot. He
writes patent falsehoods. A young reporter <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.phillymag.com/articles/booboos-in-paradise/"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">calls him and points
them out.</span></a> The Columnist asks, don’t you get jokes? He says,
“Is this how you’re going to start your career?” A Columnist does not
expect to be fact-checked. He interprets it as a threat, from a
would-be future Columnist.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">But the Columnist learns that it
doesn’t matter. The Columnist’s work is fantasy, an extensive
anthropology of fictitious creations, and other serious people are
enchanted. For the serious, a good Idea doesn’t need supporting
evidence. The Idea is its own justification. The Columnist moves from
his magazine of Ideas to his rightful position as official Columnist at
the last newspaper.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">Of course the Columnist knows he
didn’t just get this job for his Idea. The Columnist got this job
because the last newspaper is liberal, or perceived as liberal, but
wants very, very much to also be fair, so one or two of its columnists
are conservative. But you have to be a very specific kind of
conservative to fit in at the last newspaper, whose most important
readers are sensitive, liberal and rich (not coincidentally, just like
everyone the Columnist writes about). You have to be a “not-too”
conservative, preferably an erudite one who claims his conservatism
from, say, Burke. You have to support the Republican Party most of the
time but be careful to concede that they’ve perhaps gone just a bit too
far some of the time.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">In this unjustly successful phase
the Columnist will be one of the most influential people alive. Or at
least “influence” will be something else he projects, alongside
“seriousness.” Our Columnist may not have started intending to become
The Columnist. He may have preferred to be a humorist or essayist or
maybe even a simple Ideas magazine editor. But no one turns down a
column, and now his time is occupied with Sunday show panels, the
follow-up books, debates of world-shaping importance (conducted only
with other Columnists of his stature), and Ideas Festivals. (The
Columnist <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.salon.com/2013/09/15/david_brooks_was_wrong_on_iraq_and_afghanistan/"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">spends the Bush years</span></a> being
wrong about Iraq.)</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">By now the Columnist uses the
word <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/opinion/14brooks.html"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">“modesty”</span></a> a
lot, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/opinion/11brooks.html?_r=0"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">as in</span></a>, “A
few decades ago, pop singers didn’t compose anthems to their own
prowess; now those songs dominate the charts.” The Columnist’s take is
widely praised, and he <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/david-brooks-and-mark-shields-to-receive-inaugural-prize-for-civility-in-public-life-at-national-press-club-139689673.html"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">even wins an award
for civility.</span></a></div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">Soon, there is even a serious
president. The president immediately takes to the Columnist. They bond
over their shared habit of mentioning having read Edmund Burke. They
are both of them more serious than they are liberal or conservative.
The president wants very much to be the sort of president the Columnist
likes, and the Columnist wants very much to be the sort of Columnist
the president reads. It seems like a perfect relationship.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">But the Columnist is secretly
already in decline. His party no longer even bothers to put forth the
pretense of pretending to take the Columnist seriously. While the
Columnist is writing “modesty manifestos” the powerful people he is
supposed to have a channel to are all talking Breitbart, not Burke. Of
course they had always liked Rand more than Burke anyway, but they had
once thought, like the president thought, that they needed to protect
their alliance with the Columnist in order to preserve their legitimacy
among the serious. It turns out that ignoring the columnist does no
damage to the brand. No power is lost when the party spurns the
Columnist. The president still talks to the Columnist, but the
president no longer acts like his world resembles the Columnist’s world.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">But a Columnist is secure for
life. His influence can wane, and the fun can go out of his work, but
he will always be taken care of. He will be asked to teach at a
prestigious school. His lack of expertise in any subjects beyond
meeting deadlines and the projection of seriousness won’t be a problem,
of course. Projecting seriousness is a useful tool for future elites.
He will call his course something like “Modesty” and while he will
prepare himself for snarking from the uncivil mob he will insist <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/david-brooks-defends-yale-course-on-humility.html"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">that there is
nothing inherently ridiculous</span></a> about assigning his own work
in a class on “modesty.”</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">He teaches them seriousness. They
teach him Macklemore. He studies his small sample of young people,
unrepresentative of anything but their own class backgrounds, and as he
always does he extrapolates to the whole. He <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/opinion/brooks-the-empirical-kids.html?ref=opinion&_r=0"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">uses their work</span></a> for
his column, and they dutifully keep up the charade that these specific
young people stand in for the entire world of young people.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">He gets to know these kids. And
he realizes, or decides, that he hates them. They’re unjustifiably
self-assured. They’ve got atrocious taste in everything, especially
music and politics. They’re all unaware beneficiaries of a cushy life
of grade inflation. These people are going to succeed him? This
miserable bunch, these kids who’ve mistaken their performance of
overachievement for actual achievement of any kind?</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">He hates them, and he hates, too,
the people he imagines them growing into. He imagines them becoming the
kinds of people he has always hated, in fact. People who’d helped to
erode <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/opinion/08brooks.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1387314744-jNoatd6rS4AB1xQfymgpaA"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">his status signifiers</span></a> and
people who mock his seriousness. People who write for Web sites. Web
sites! And the people writing for Web sites have no deference for the
Columnist. He has always dismissed these Web sites, but he now worries
they are where new columnists will come from. Younger men, with more
marketable sensibilities, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.salon.com/2013/12/16/hack_list_no_10_malcolm_gladwell/"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">adopt his patented
method of Idea generation,</span></a> and generate more buzz than he
can now manage. People realize that the Columnist speaks to a
constituency of one. Seriousness is still a valuable trait, obviously,
and the Columnist will be welcome at Aspen every year for the rest of
his days. He will not go hungry. But the Columnist sees this world just
beside his own, where his seriousness is disrespected, even scorned.
This world is the problem, he decides.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">Now the Columnist decides he’ll
write a column just for his constituency of one.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/opinion/brooks-the-thought-leader.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r=0"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">He writes a column
for himself.</span></a> The column is about those terrible kids. It is
about those awful Web site writers. It is about everyone the Columnist
knows professionally and socially. Of course, most of all it is about
the Columnist. Because the Columnist is an expert in conflating
unrelated or irrelevant elements in order to craft an Idea, he will
conflate all of the things he hates into one subject, and then he will
imagine that subject’s decline into irrelevance and existential
dissatisfaction. (The column is self-hating, but he is still the
Columnist so it is also still self-aggrandizing. The Columnist makes
sure to recognize and praise his own modesty and humility, compared to
the relentless assuredness of those kids and those Web site writers.)</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">There are still jokes. There is a
joke about Macklemore, a reminder of the column he had those kids
write. There are slightly exaggerated observations of the habits and
foibles of the Columnist’s hyperspecific socioeconomic and regional
milieu, of the sort he’s always made. Indeed, the central joke <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://web.archive.org/web/20050309041845/http:/www.csis.org/intern/kissing.html"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">is very nearly one
he’s already made.</span></a> But the Columnist is no longer lightly
ribbing. The Columnist is trying to inflict damage. But no one really
understands why, or whom the column is directed at.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal">Of course, the column that the
Columnist wrote for himself, that makes no sense to others, gets buzz.
The Web site writers tweet about it on their iPad Airs and the Ideas
magazine writers discuss it and drive traffic to it. The Columnist <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/12/what-the-hell-is-david-brookss-column-about.html"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span
style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">takes no pleasure in
the buzz</span></a>. Death approaches. But until it arrives, no one
will ever take away the Columnist’s column.</div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv7362461116MsoNormal"><i>From Salon, </i><i>December
18, 2013</i></div>
</div>
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