driftglass imagines a post-apocalyptic future in which virtually all evidence of our present era has been destroyed and historians are left to study fragments of our media’s output, much of it distorted through something called “fuckingblogs.” In this prospective future, there is much debate about whether a writer/pundit named David Brooks actually existed or was some kind of composite. Some, the Historicals, argue that Brooks was “an amalgamation of several real but wildly different people.” Another group, the Fictionals believe that Brooks was a “literary contrivance… a fictional narrator whose own pathological unreliability is integral to the story.” A tiny third group, despised by the other two established schools of thought, is called the Literals.
These “Literals” assert that “David Brooks” existed literally, as an actual person, who really did write every, single viperish, false and self-contradicting thing which has been attributed to him. That he really was elevated to the highest ranks of the Pundit Guild. That his opinions were read and taken Very Seriously by Big Thinkers, government officials and hundreds of millions of ordinary people around the world. And even though the “fuckingblogs” show that the obvious fatuousness of “David Brooks” fables were routinely and effortlessly shredded by “fuckingbloggers”, for reasons the Literals are never able to explain, David Brooks was somehow allowed to accumulate vast wealth and power…by publishing reams of patently silly drivel…all while never once having being challenged by anyone of any stature.
This really could happen. Some massive solar magnetic pulse could fry 95% of all the digital information on Earth, leaving future historians to debate questions like “how is it fucking possible for David Brooks to have written and said all the shit attributed to him?”
But, even in this dystopian future, historians will agree that Richard Cohen lived and that the Washington Post was a goddamned sick joke.