David Brooks is the worst! Again.

Lord of the Memes

David Brooks AUG. 7, 2008

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Oh, we're off to a great start with this one, I assume this is meant to be some sort of a play on words, maybe a reference to Lord of the Rings, or Lord of the Flies or maybe the Lord of the Dance?

Either way, it didn't land. So on with the column!

Dear Dr. Kierkegaard,

All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual, sprinkling quotations from Kafka, Epictetus and Derrida into my conversations, impressing dates and making my friends feel mentally inferior. But over the last few years, it’s stopped working. People just look at me blankly. My artificially inflated self-esteem is on the wane. What happened?

Existential in Exeter

Wait, what? Brooks is writing a fake advice column now? In the guise of Soren Kierkegaard? And he's calling the fake guy he made up a pseudo-intellectual? Is that what's going on here?

Dear Existential,

It pains me to see so many people being pseudo-intellectual in the wrong way. It desecrates the memory of the great poseurs of the past. And it is all the more frustrating because your error is so simple and yet so fundamental.

You have failed to keep pace with the current code of intellectual one-upsmanship. You have failed to appreciate that over the past few years, there has been a tectonic shift in the basis of good taste.

Honest to God, who is more of a pseudo-intellectual than David Goddamm Brooks? It's only due to the existence of William Kristol that Brooks isn't the stupidest pundit in the mainstream,.

You must remember that there have been three epochs of intellectual affectation. The first, lasting from approximately 1400 to 1965, was the great age of snobbery. Cultural artifacts existed in a hierarchy, with opera and fine art at the top, and stripping at the bottom. The social climbing pseud merely had to familiarize himself with the forms at the top of the hierarchy and febrile acolytes would perch at his feet.

Just like how any simpleton can apparently get a column at the New York Times, toss in a few $5 thesaurus words and be taken seriously as some kind of expert on world affairs.

Also, stripping was NEVER at the bottom of the cultural hierarchy. It goes Opera, non-musical theatre, stripping, musical theater, punditry.

In 1960, for example, he merely had to follow the code of high modernism. He would master some impenetrably difficult work of art from T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound and then brood contemplatively at parties about Lionel Trilling’s misinterpretation of it. A successful date might consist of going to a reading of “The Waste Land,” contemplating the hollowness of the human condition and then going home to drink Russian vodka and suck on the gas pipe.

Ahahahah! Because intellectuals are always depressed substance abusers! Ahahahaha, it's funny because it's a gross stereotype!

This code died sometime in the late 1960s and was replaced by the code of the Higher Eclectica. The old hierarchy of the arts was dismissed as hopelessly reactionary. Instead, any cultural artifact produced by a member of a colonially oppressed out-group was deemed artistically and intellectually superior.
During this period, status rewards went to the ostentatious cultural omnivores — those who could publicly savor an infinite range of historically hegemonized cultural products. It was necessary to have a record collection that contained “a little bit of everything” (except heavy metal): bluegrass, rap, world music, salsa and Gregorian chant. 

Oh my God, having well-rounded musical tastes? What a bunch of dicks, right?
Also, "world music," that's not a thing. It's a derisive term used to refer to any style of music that does not come from the US or Britain, as if West African High-Life belongs in the same category as Eastern European Klezmer or Brazilian Samba. As if Ali Farka Toure' has anything in common with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Jaoa Gilberto. It's just that kind of dismissive colonialist attitude that lumps the entire non-English-speaking world into one grouping as the "other." Am I being too pseudo-intellectual for you, David? Oh, God - I am! I'm making myself nauseous re-reading that last paragraph. Ugh!

It was useful to decorate one’s living room with African or Thai religious totems — any religion so long as it was one you could not conceivably believe in.

Right, cause you couldn't possibly believe in something like Buddhism or Islam. Those are just silly old belief systems for the primitive cultures. right? Which, I guess, is why it's okay to decorate one's living room in "cultural appropriation chic."

But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone. On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.

So. . . the medium became the message? What a radical transformation that definitely didn't occur at all before 2007.

 

Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it.

Also, get off my lawn you darn kids!

Seriously, David Brooks has made the discovery, in 2017, that people use smartphones to store and transmit information.
And what "global thought leader" is being defined by his "social bookmarking site" or his e-mail provider?  Is that why people take buffoons like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham seriously? Because they're using the correct e-mail or social media platform? And would Bernie Sanders' platform have gotten more traction had he used a Samsung Galaxy 6 instead of whatever he uses to send Tweets, a rotary phone I'm guessing?

Mabel? Get me Instagram! Klondike Five. . .

Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel

How?

How could Kindle possibly change the world? 

Does anyone even think that? 

Does Amazon even think that? 

I've never heard anyone claim that Kindle has changed anything beyond maybe their reading habits. The World?

This transition has produced some new status rules. In the first place, prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever. 

WHAT? "Buzz," by it's very nature, is fleeting. People get excited about a thing, then everyone knows about the thing so the thing isn't special anymore and then there is buzz about a different thing and the initial thing is forgotten. Or, to put it more succinctly:

Maximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem — Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc.

Okay, so people go to Pitchfork to learn about new music. In my day, we went to NME or Spin or BAM or a thousand other print magazines. How is this any different? Other than saving a trip to the newsstand. It's not like people go to Pitchfork, read up on the latest hip bands and then don't go and listen to the new hip bands. No one has ever had a conversation that went "hey, have you heard the new song from the Insufferably Twee?"  "Nah, I read about them on Pitchfork, that's really all I want. I don't care about hearing the actual musicians play actual; music."

And you can repeat that same paragraph just substituting Bookforum and the New York Review of Books for Pitchfork and New Music Express.

These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples.

And this is a totally new phenomenon. There have never been critics before. No one has ever had a television show, for instance, telling people which movies are good and which are bad, possibly with a thumbs up/thumbs down type of system?

Second, in order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.

THIS IS NOT A NEW THING!
Back in the 1980s, there was no greater thrill than knowing about a band your friends hadn't heard of. One time, my friend and I were record shopping, he asked the cool record store guy if they had "Treebound Story." The record store guy had never heard of them. It was my friend's greatest moment of triumph. 

When you first come across some obscure cultural artifact — an unknown indie band, organic skate sneakers or wireless headphones from Finland — you will want to erupt with ecstatic enthusiasm. This will highlight the importance of your cultural discovery, the fineness of your discerning taste, and your early adopter insiderness for having found it before anyone else.

I don't know how else to say this, Brooks: It Has Ever Been Thus!

If you can do this, becoming not only an early adopter, but an early discarder, you will realize greater status rewards than you ever imagined. Remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upsmanship is forever.

That's it? That's the whole column? I still have no idea what point Brooks is even trying to make.  And he gets paid for this. 
What a racket!

David Brooks Continues to be the Worst

Oh my Gawd, he gets paid to write this. Paid a lot to write this drivel!

Let’s Not Get Carried Away

David Brooks JUNE 20, 2017

I was the op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal at the peak of the Whitewater scandal. We ran a series of investigative pieces “raising serious questions” (as we say in the scandal business) about the nefarious things the Clintons were thought to have done back in Arkansas.

Now I confess I couldn’t follow all the actual allegations made in those essays.

But that didn't stop me from gleefully printing each and every one, no matter how far-fetched!

Now I confess I couldn’t follow all the actual allegations made in those essays. They were six jungles deep in the weeds. But I do remember the intense atmosphere that the scandal created. A series of bombshell revelations came out in the media, which seemed monumental at the time. A special prosecutor was appointed and indictments were expected. Speculation became the national sport.

And op-ed page editors continued using the passive voice as if they had no culpability in the matter at all!



I mean, you do realize you're confessing to journalistic malpractice, right? Publishing allegations for which you have no evidence and which you do not even understand. "These accusations are incomprehensible, I can't make heads or tails of what is even alleged to have happened. Well, I guess I'd better publish them in a major national newspaper!"

In retrospect Whitewater seems overblown.

Really? You think Whitewater might have been "overblown?" A manufactured pseudo-scandal which never produced any evidence of wrongdoing (other than a BJ), you think that might have been "overblown?" You know, most of us didn't need the help of retrospect to see that. But, you know, most of us don't have cushy jobs with major media outlets. To land that kind of gig, you have to be dead wrong in public over and over again, especially when it comes to the Clintons and whatever phony scandal Richard Mellon Scaife can dream up to feed to Matt Drudge.

In retrospect Whitewater seems overblown. And yet it has to be confessed that, at least so far, the Whitewater scandal was far more substantive than the Russia-collusion scandal now gripping Washington.

Yeah, you can tell that this Russia thing has no substance by the number of people having to recuse themselves and how many administration members are lawyering up.

There may be a giant revelation still to come. But as the Trump-Russia story has evolved, it is striking how little evidence there is that any underlying crime occurred — that there was any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians. Everything seems to be leaking out of this administration, but so far the leaks about actual collusion are meager.

Jeezus, do you hear yourself? When a Democrat was in office, no scandal was too ridiculous to be given credence and trotted out on to the national stage. But when it's a Republican, even an incompetent, deranged Republican like Trump, suddenly all this smoke surely doesn't indicate a fire!

I'm hearing echoes of Iran-Contra. "Sure, the Reagan Administration directly violated the law, but come on. What harm was done? Surely his intentions were good!"
Or the Iraq Invasion: "Well, sure they lied, manipulated intelligence, cherry-picked any bullshit from any unreliable kook that seemed to support their story and ignored all the relevant experts, but obviously, this was a failure of the intelligence community!"

There were some meetings between Trump officials and some Russians, but so far no more than you’d expect from a campaign that was publicly and proudly pro-Putin.

Well, maybe my standards are a bit different, but I would expect ZERO meetings between a candidate and the KGB! Especially when that candidate is not a part of government, not involved with foreign policy and has no earthly god damn clue what the hell he's doing.

Second, there is something disturbingly meta about this whole affair. This is, as Yuval Levin put it, an investigation about itself. Trump skeptics within the administration laid a legal minefield all around the president, and then Trump — being Trump — stomped all over it, blowing himself up six ways from Sunday.

Wait, there are Trump skeptics within the administration? The Trump administration? The administration who gave us this sickening display of obsequious devotion?

Now of course Trump shouldn’t have tweeted about Oval Office tape recordings. Of course he shouldn’t have fired James Comey

But even if you took a paragon of modern presidents — a contemporary Abraham Lincoln — and you directed a democratically unsupervised, infinitely financed team of prosecutors at him and gave them power to subpoena his staff and look under any related or unrelated rock in an attempt to bring him down, there’s a pretty good chance you could spur even this modern paragon to want to fight back. You could spur even him to do something that had the whiff of obstruction.

Okay, first of all there was no special prosecutor until AFTER Trump fired James Comey. How are you gonna sit there and pretend that firing Comey is some sort of pushback against a special prosecutor?

And secondly, Bill Clinton is hardly a paragon of presidently virtue, hardly a modern-day Lincoln, but an unsupervised, infinitely financed team of prosecutors with subpoena power and direction to look under every unrelated rock in order to bring him down is EXACTLY what happened to Bill Clinton, and you didn't see him firing the guy investigating him or implying blackmail against Ken Starr. It's one thing to say that Trump can't be expected to live up to the standards of Imaginary Lincoln, but shouldn't he at least be held to the standard of Slick Willie?

And third, firing the director of the FBI when the FBI is investigating you is hardly a "whiff of obstruction." It's pretty much textbook obstruction.

There’s just something worrisome every time we find ourselves replacing politics of democracy with the politics of scandal.

Yes, and I'm sure you said the same about "Fast and Furious," the IRS "scandal," birtherism and Benghazi, right? Haha, I'm kidding. Of course you didn't, you disingenuous piece of shit.

In democracy, the issues count, and you try to win by persuasion. You recognize that your opponents are legitimate, that they will always be there and that some form of compromise is inevitable.

My God, it's as if he's completely unaware of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Paul Ryan and the entire Freedom Fucking Caucus!
And how do you reconcile "recognizing your opponents are legitimate" with  King Birther himself, the Oaf in the Oval Office? What the fuck was birtherism if not an attempt to delegitimize the Presdient?

Donald Trump rose peddling the politics of scandal — oblivious to policy, spreading insane allegations about birth certificates and other things — so maybe it’s just that he gets swallowed by it.

Oh my GAWD! So he is aware of Trump's "politics of scandal," or as it's known in the real world "racist conspiracy-mongering. But somehow there's always an excuse for a Republican - in this case, that he's gotten "swallowed" by the culture of Washington scandal or something.

The people who hype the politics of scandal don’t make American government purer. They deserve some of the blame for an administration and government too distracted to do its job,

 Good! The best possible outcome of all this is an administration too distracted to do its job! Although, to be fair, it is already distracted by petty Twitter feuds, golfing, insulting foreign leaders, and shiny objects.





Also, when you say "the people who hype the politics of scandal," I assume that includes former op-ed editors of the Wall Street Journal?

Things are so bad that I’m going to have to give Trump the last word. On June 15 he tweeted, “They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story.” Unless there is some new revelation, that may turn out to be pretty accurate commentary.

 Oh, yes. Very accurate. Right up there with "I did not have sex with that woman," "I am not a crook," and "there is no doubt that Sadam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."

You know, if there's one type of statement that can be relied upon for truthfulness, it's a statement from the accused that he didn't do it. I mean, if he says he's innocent, he must be, right?


               

How is David Brooks still employed?

Full disclosure. I am not a fan of HRC. I don't hate her, and if she is the Democratic nominee I will absolutely vote for her. I would very much prefer Bernie Sanders, but against Trump (or any Republican) it's no contest. That being said, David Brooks is  the worst.

David Brooks MAY 24, 2016

Why Is Clinton Disliked?

Honestly, shouldn't you be concentrating on why David Brooks is disliked? Because, believe me, it's a long list.

I understand why Donald Trump is so unpopular. He earned it the old-fashioned way, by being obnoxious, insulting and offensive. But why is Hillary Clinton so unpopular?

You know why Hillary Clinton is unpopular. You know damn well. You know that when Hillary Clinton first appeared on the national scene as the wife of candidate Bill, she was a successful working woman who refused to be apologetic about it.  A married woman who still used her maiden name,and knew that she could raise a child successfully without becoming June Cleaver and conservatives were apallllled! Before anyone really even knew anything about her, the right had convinced middle America that she was anti-family, anti-man, anti-America, etc, etc, etc. That she was contemptuous of traditional mothers, was the anti-christ, etc. You know this. Don't play dumb.

In the New York Times/CBS News poll, 60 percent of respondents said Clinton does not share their values. Sixty-four percent said she is not honest or trustworthy. 

So then what's the mystery?

If the majority of voters hold different values and find her untrustworthy, of course she wouldn't be popular.

But, those column-inches aren't gonna fill themselves, so. . .

But what exactly do so many have against her?

I would begin my explanation with this question: Can you tell me what Hillary Clinton does for fun?

Jeezus Christ, who the hell cares what her hobbies are? I mean, assuming they aren't strangling kittens or committing arson, why would anyone care what Hill does in her spare time? Does she even have any spare time? She sure as hell won't have much if she's president.

We know what Obama does for fun — golf, basketball, etc. We know, unfortunately, what Trump does for fun.But when people talk about Clinton, they tend to talk of her exclusively in professional terms.

Oh, dear God! She's seen in professional terms? What a handicap! People think she's a competent professional? How can that be bad?

Oh, right!

Clinton’s unpopularity is akin to the unpopularity of a workaholic. 

Really? Because you know who was a notorious workaholic?

This guy!

At least in her public persona, Clinton gives off an exclusively professional vibe: industrious, calculated, goal-oriented, distrustful. It’s hard from the outside to have a sense of her as a person; she is a role.

Oh, you know what? Maybe if a bunch of idiots in the media didn't talk about which candidate voters wanted to have a beer with,

A Cold One With Donald 

There has never been a better candidate to have a beer with than Trump.

By Seth Stevenson

 

Who wouldn’t want to pull up a barstool to next to this guy?

 or which is most "relatable" to "soccer moms" or every other bullshit metric you morons come up with to judge "electability," maybe it wouldn't matter so much if people can get a "sense of the candidate as a person" or whatever.  You think George washington was a fun guy to have a beer with? You think you'd like to hoist a pint and shoot the breeze with John Adams or Woodrow Wilson? If you're going by who would be fun to hang with, ony Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson probably make the list. And Ben Franklin would have been president for our country's first decade at least.

This formal, career-oriented persona puts her in direct contrast with the mores of the social media age, which is intimate, personalist, revealing, trusting and vulnerable. It puts her in conflict with most people’s lived experience. Most Americans feel more vivid and alive outside the work experience than within.

Well, A) most Americans have crappy jobs that they hate. and B) most Americans are not qualified to hold any elected office, let alone President. 
Also, I think that the voters understand the difference between some B-list celebrity Tweeting every thought that pops into his head and a serious candidate for the Oval Office.

Obviously, this guy doesn't, but most people do.

There’s a larger lesson here, especially for people who have found a career and vocation that feels fulfilling. Even a socially good vocation can swallow you up and make you lose a sense of your own voice. Maybe it’s doubly important that people with fulfilling vocations develop, and be seen to develop, sanctuaries outside them: in play, solitude, family, faith, hobbies and leisure.

What? What does that even mean? How does a fulfilling career make one lose one's own voice? Also, a "socially good vocation?" Do you not have a thesaurus? Or are you lapsing into Newspeak?  And why would it be important that those who are fortunate enough to have a "vocation that feels fulfilling" be seen to have outside interests? Are the doctors, athletes and movie stars supposed to set an example for us little people? Well, gosh, if Johnny Rockstar has time to take up sky-diving, I'm inspired to do the same! Thank God for people with fulfilling vocations! You know, I was worried for a while when I saw that Sue the Surgeon wasn't developing any sanctuaries outside herself, but now that she's found a hobby and some leisure, I can rest easy!

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that the Sabbath is “a palace in time which we build.” It’s not a day of rest before work; you work in order to experience this day of elevation.

Okay, I think we're getting a little off-track now.
 Also, I'm pretty sure that the Sabbath was instituted as a way to compel the children of Israel to take time away from their occupations to praise J-w-h, not to build themselves a time-palace. The point was to remember who the Boss was, and what one's priority should be (the worship of J-w-h), not as a reward for having worked hard the previous six days. And it was certainly not a day for people to experience elevation. Part of the whole Sabbath thing was to keep people humble. You were more likely to be prostrating yourself before the Lord on the Sabbath than elevating yourself in any way.

 See, now you've dragged me off-track too. Can we get back to the subject at hand, which was, I believe, the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton?

Josef Pieper wrote that leisure is not an activity, it’s an attitude of mind. It’s stepping outside strenuous effort and creating enough stillness so that it becomes possible to contemplate and enjoy things as they are.

Okay, that's a fine recommendation for the taking of leisure time. Fine. But what the hell does it have to do with Hillary? Look, I've done this before. Start off writing about one thing and then suddenly realize you've meandered on to a whole different topic. I've done that. But I'm not a highly payed columnist for the NEW YORK FUCKING TIMES either. I'm just some guy who dicks around on Blogger in his spare time, makes zero dollars, and doesn't have the time or inclination to go back and edit. You're supposed to be a professional, Brooks. Get your shit together.

Even successful lives need these sanctuaries — in order to be a real person instead of just a productive one. It appears that we don’t really trust candidates who do not show us theirs.

Wow, nice save.




 You know what I want in a President? I want what I think most people want. I want someone who is going to dedicate her/himself fully to the demands of the job. I want a workaholic. I think most people do. Look at the three candidates left in the race. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are all over 65 years old and amazingly tireless. They campaign non-stop. And people respond to that. People don't really seem to like a presidential candidate that takes time off in the middle of a campaign to go on a cruise, as Newt Gingrich infamously did in 2012. They want a smart, competent, hard-working grinder.

But what if they didn't?

Hillary is that person. So is Bernie. And Trump has conned an awful lot of people into thinking that he is that person too. That seems to be what people want. You want to know why Hillary is unpopular?  Well, we've addressed part of that already , up near the top. Let's get into the rest tomorrow.

Does Anyone Really Read David Brooks?

 

Hmm, better weigh in on this Jeremy Lin while there's still time!

The Jeremy Lin Problem

By DAVID BROOKS

Jeremy Lin is a basketball player who has been playing exceptionally well lately. How exactly is this a problem?

Jeremy Lin is anomalous in all sorts of ways. He’s a Harvard grad in the N.B.A., an Asian-American man in professional sports. But we shouldn’t neglect the biggest anomaly. He’s a religious person in professional sports.

Oh my God! Have you never watched a professional sports event?

  

 

 

Seriously, there's more genuflecting and sky-pointing in a Major League ballgame than in most churches.

We’ve become accustomed to the faith-driven athlete and coach, from Billy Sunday [in a shotgun ragtime band?] to Tim Tebow. 

So, how is he an anomaly? How can a religious man in sports be considered an anomaly if we've become accustomed to religious men in sports?

We’ve become accustomed to the faith-driven athlete and coach, from Billy Sunday to Tim Tebow. But we shouldn’t forget how problematic this is. The moral ethos of sport is in tension with the moral ethos of faith, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim. . .

The sports hero tries to perform great deeds in order to win glory and fame. It doesn’t really matter whether he has good intentions. . .Ascent in the sports universe is a straight shot. You set your goal, and you climb toward greatness. But ascent in the religious universe often proceeds by a series of inversions: You have to be willing to lose yourself in order to find yourself; to gain everything you have to be willing to give up everything; the last shall be first; it’s not about you. 

Yeah, that's great, Dave. Any chance that you might some day make the same point about the Capitalist ethos? That maybe it's just a wee bit hypocritical to talk about God and Jesus all the time while living in a system that rewards the greedy, the acquisitive, the selfish the least godly amongst us?  That there might be a contradiction between claiming to worship the man who said "sell all you have and give the money to the poor" while enacting policies that ensure that the wealthiest can continue to amass more and more wealth at the expense of everyone else? How about the difficulty in reconciling "Thou shalt not kill" and "Blessed are the Peacemakers" with 10 years of constant war and sabre-rattling?  No, I don't think you'd be allowed to write for the NY Times if you were aware of those types of contradictions.

For many religious teachers, humility is the primary virtue. You achieve loftiness of spirit by performing the most menial services. (That’s why shepherds are perpetually becoming kings in the Bible.)

If by perpetually, you mean once, then sure. I mean, I'm no theologian, but other than David, I sure can't think of another Biblical king who started out as a shepherd.

 

This David ...................................................Not This one.

The most perceptive athletes have always tried to wrestle with this conflict. Sports history is littered with odd quotations from people who try to reconcile their love of sport with their religious creed — and fail.

[citation needed]

 Jeremy Lin has wrestled with this tension quite openly. In a 2010 interview with the Web site Patheos, Lin recalled, “I wanted to do well for myself and my team. How can I possibly give that up and play selflessly for God?”

Maybe you could just assume that God has bigger fish to fry and probably couldn't care less how many assists you have?

Jeremy Lin is now living this creative contradiction.  

When he was a bench-warmer getting released by Golden State and Houston he wasn't? God only notices the really good players?

 Much of the anger that arises when religion mixes with sport or with politics comes from people who want to deny that this contradiction exists and who want to live in a world in which there is only one morality

I think most of the anger comes from people who feel like they are just trying to watch a game and didn't really sign up for a sermon.  Also, it's really aggravating when dolts like you hype up a Tim Tebow or Jeremy Lin as if an athlete with religious convictions were a rarity.

Is This For Real?

I used to see David Brooks' column occasionally. The San Francisco Chronicle used to run it in syndication. So I know Brooks is kind of an idiot. But this is just unbelievable.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Redefining What It Means to Work Hard

By DAVID BROOKS AND GAIL COLLINS

In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.

Check this crap out! It reads like a parody.

David Brooks: Gail, to wrench me out of my fiscal funk last week, you allowed me to talk about sports and sex, in the person of Tiger Woods. I want you to know how much that helped.

Today, I’m going to start off talking about sports, but I promise, we’ll soon be discussing social class.

Oh, good! David Brooks' views on social class. For a minute, I thought you were going to talk about something interesting, like sports.

Gail Collins: David, this is not the first time somebody has promised that a discussion of sports is going to quickly evolve into something else. This is always a prelude to a discussion of sports. Sometimes with an occasional oblique reference to quantum physics or the ancient Greeks. But go ahead, I’m resigned.

David Brooks: O.K. My first subject is Barack Obama. He is without question the best basketball player ever in the White House, except for Taft, of course, who was the Charles Barkley of his day.

Ha ha ha!! Because they're both fat! Ha ha ha !!!

During the N.C.A.A. tournament Obama beat CBS’s basketball analyst Clark Kellogg in a game of P-O-T-U-S (the White House version of Horse). And then, being Obama, he said something very self-aware. He said that Kellogg (who was a genuine basketball star before going into broadcasting), only let him get close in the game because he didn’t realize that Obama might go on to win. That shows the president is wise to the wiles of flattery. Good for him.

So he's not stupid enough to think that he beat THIS GUY:

fair and square?

But then Monday he threw out the first pitch at Nationals Park. Atrocious. I don’t mean to be sexist, but the man throws like a Democrat.

Ha ha ha!! Because only girls are Democra. . . wait. That doesn't make sense.

The gap between his basketball ability and his baseball ability is so wide as to be a threat to the nation. The fact that he did not have the wisdom to bring in a team of pitching consultants to help with his delivery is a sign of dangerous hubris.

Or a sign of hos having more important "Predidenty" stuff to do.

Gail Collins: I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it but I hate hate hate all that White House basketball-buddy stuff.

Why can't he play golf like a real president?

Now, that's presidential!

Maybe I could demand that the president devote equal recreational attention to the national pastime. He could certainly find a trillion women in the administration who could play baseball at his level.

Ha ha ha , because girls are not good at basebal! ha ha ha !

David Brooks: A few hours after that atrocity of opening day, Duke went on to beat Butler for the national championship. Unlike 90 percent of America, I was rooting for Duke last night. This was widely cast as a class conflict — the upper crust Dukies against the humble Midwestern farm boys.

That is completely non-surprising. Almost everyone loves an underdog,
but oh, no. Not Brooks!

Gail Collins: I’m sorry, when the difference is one weensy basket, I’d say Duke won neither by privilege nor hard work but by sheer luck. But don’t let me interrupt your thought here. I detect the subtle and skillful transition to a larger non-sport point.

Please, God, let that be sarcasm!

David Brooks: Yes. I was going to say that for the first time in human history, rich people work longer hours than middle class or poor people. How do you construct a rich versus poor narrative when the rich are more industrious?

And there it is.

The trademark David Brooks Bullshit.

Just look how industrious these rich people are being:



Compared to these lazy bum poor folks:






Also, most "poor" or blue collar folks are paid by the hour. That means that even if you are willing and able to work more than your standard 40 hours a week or 8 hours a day, depending on what state you live in, your boss would have to approve overtime pay for you to work extra. Most companies are understandably reluctant to pay overtime, so not a lot of working class folks end up working more than 40/week.
Whereas executives are paid a salary, so they can spend as many hours "working" as they see fit. "Working" in this instance includes reading reports, 3-martini business lunches, watching powerpoint presentations, and hitting the executive gym.

Gail Collins: It may be true that the more hours you work on average, the wealthier you are likely to be. But while it’s harder to quantify, I’m pretty sure that the work gets more and more pleasant the higher up the ladder you climb. Forty hours in a chicken-plucking factory feels a lot longer than 60 hours managing a large corporation.

I'm not sure who Gail Collins is, but I don't think it would take a lot of money to get her to kick David Brooks in the crotch. Let's take up a collection!

David Brooks: Here’s the trickiest case of all. I don’t know if you saw Tara Parker-Pope’s piece in the Science section on Tuesday, but she reported on an interesting set of statistics. First, parents are spending more time with their kids today than in previous generations.

Actually, she said that the time parents spend with kids has risen "since the mid-nineties," not "previous generations." I'll guarantee you that my parents' generation spent a lot more time with their kids than today's parents (for better or worse) But why let facts get in the way?

Before 1995, mothers spent on average 12 hours a week with their children. By 2007, that number had leapt to 21.2 for college-educated moms and 15.9 hours for those with less education. I was fascinated by how parental time correlates to education. Is it possible that college-educated parents are spending more time passing down their advantages than other parents? Could it be that the rich replicate themselves by dint of hard work and parental attention, on top of all the other less worthy advantages?

Oh, I see. I'm not rich because my parents didn't deserve to have a rich son. If only they had worked harder. . .oh, wait. My parents worked their butts off, and spent tons of time with us. Enough time to make me and my siblings all a bit neurotic. So, shouldn't I be rich now?

If only I'd understood earlier how deserving the rich are!

Oh, they've worked so hard!

If only my parents would have had the foresight to pass a publishing empire on to me and my siblings! What the hell were they thinking?

How is the New York Times putting their imprimatur on this mess?

No wonder newspapers are dying!