David Brooks explains how to make it in journalism:
Well, you start out being a coddled little genius nurtured by the think tanks and vanity publications and fanzines of the American right. Then you make a career out of whatever pop sociology text you read 10 minutes ago. Then you write a couple of books about how the American genius for mindless consumerism is the future of the country. Then you get a column in the New York Times. Unfortunately, there comes a conservative president who fks up everything from hell to breakfast, and all of the intellectual arboretums in which you were raised fall into disrepute. Dutch Elm disease of the mind become epidemic. So you backpedal as fast as you can, running over several of your previous selves in the process until you finally end up one day writing a column in which you pretend that you haven’t spent your adult life pumping your speaking fees and grazing the buffet tables at various brainiac circle jerks.
I’m in Pittsburgh on business today, so light blogging. Talk amongst yourselves.
I guess 12/18 is David Brooks Day: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/18/hack_list_no_4_david_brooks/
His genius is finally recognized for what it is !!!!11!!
How close to his sell-by date has Brooks become for the New York Times? Can they bundle him up with Douthat and make it a two-fer?
Who besides Pete Peterson reads these guys?
Who besides Pete Peterson reads these guys?
Apparently a guy down in Washington, D.C. does. Also, too, apparently “Bobo” Brooks just recently got divorced.
wow. did you know any backstory about the divorce?
I don’t know other than what Marie posted below. I just found out late Monday night/early Tuesday morning via Twitter. People were lambasting it already and David Dayen made the comment on Twitter that “Bobo” had recently gotten divorced so maybe that explained this awful column. And Bmaz, being a lawyer, looked stuff up and sure enough “Bobo” did get divorced.
WAPO 11/18/13Love, etc.: David Brooks and Sarah Brooks divorce.
Perhaps it was great for the first twenty-six years and then became crappy.
Ouch, self-immolation is a bitch.
David Brooks is jockeying for the title of biggest moron in show business.
Does the Times ghostwrite comments and then recommend them for public consumption? This one in particular seems like a test for Poe’s law:
James Hadley
Providence, RI
NYT Pick
Mr. Brooks, I quite like the new ironic style of your writing. It is un-American in a most positive way.
Irony is basic to the British discourse, it seems written into their genetic makeup. But something in the American experience has eradicated that gene – reading the comments here I notice that a plurality of readers miss it altogether.
Making ones point ironically allows for a wider and more creative response from a reader or listener. It is a prompt, rather than a polemic. Good Show! And quite on point for the topic of the notorious bores about whom you write.
Actually, the quote is Charles Pierce explaining Brooks, but holy mother of God, what a bizarre column. I’m not sure which is more terrifying, the thought that Brooks is aware he’s describing an alternate version of himself, or the thought that he’s not.
BTW, I knew it was Pierce even before clicking the link, because Brooks isn’t that good a writer.
I always like it when Pierce writes THIS in his pieces about BOBO: “Moral Hazard licked his balls in deep concentration and settled into his spot by the window.” It sets just the right tone regarding the degree of attention BOBO deserves.
undertone of despair? he’s not 80, that’s what he’s looking forward to? wow.