It’s probably not true, but it feels like every time I either write about David Brooks or link to someone who has written about David Brooks that there are commenters who take offense. This disapproval is typically expressed in just a few distinct ways.
1. He’s an idiot, why are you paying attention to him?
2. I gave up reading that corporate tool x many years ago.
3. You’re obsessed.
I have to consider the possibility that these critiques have some merit. I don’t really think that they do, but I am aware that giving a crap about what is printed on the New York Times editorial page is a form of elitism. Hell, even being aware of what is printed on the Times opinion page is a form of elitism, particularly now that it is usually behind a paywall.
I say “form” of elitism, because it isn’t so much an overt act as a status of being. There’s nothing really preventing the hundreds of people who live in the trailer park down the hill from being aware of whom writes what in the Times, but they collectively could not possibly give less of a fuck. They have “real” problems and difficulties.
And dividing myself from the trailer park folk is maybe the most archetypal kind of self-conscious elitism. I know that I am not like them, that we have different tastes, that I operate in a realm of abstract and political ideas that are removed from what is relevant in any clear and direct way to their lives.
Just saying these thing sounds obnoxious, and it could be even worse if applied to the people who live in the poor communities of our inner cities.
Maybe I cured myself a bit by going into those kinds of communities and putting aside my preconceptions and my hifalutin tastes and making myself a student and a peer, and taking their political interests as my own. Maybe I’m kidding myself.
Either way, I get that talking a lot about David Brooks can seem like a pretty wankerific habit. The thing is, it’s not just Brooks. It’s elite opinion journalism in general. Like it or not, there are people, relatively few of them really, who are in positions to make very important decisions about what kind of country we’re going to be and what kind of wars we’re going to fight. We’re pretty clear that this is a problem when we’re talking about billionaires and the CEO’s of the military-industrial complex, but we’re less aware of it when it’s a mere column in a newspaper read by our elite class. And I can’t donate a billion dollars to Bernie Sanders but I can point out that David Broder is full of crap.
I’ve gone about this battle in different ways at different times, and certainly working for ACORN was not the same as critiquing Maureen Dowd’s latest psycho-sexual drivel.
It’s all important, however. And it matters that David Brooks is beating up on the poor with bad math.
And I am going to go out on a limb here and say that ten or twelve years of bloggers critiquing our elite opinion writers has taken them down several pegs, reduced their influence in necessary ways, and been well worth the effort.
Everything we do matters. Sometimes we don’t see it because we’re each such a small part of a large system. I’m convinced that it’s going to take a constitutional amendment to get the plutocrats out of elections in the really big way they’re getting in now. The problem isn’t sharing power with all the other little folks; it’s that we’re all collectively drowning against the influence of a few billionaires. So we need to band together and get our states to take action that could lead to the kind of change that’s required.
I know many are skeptical of ever getting big money out of elections but I’m not. I don’t think we can afford to let nagging doubts overtake us. We have to try.
Out here in Washington, I’m collecting signatures for a referendum to get this issue on the ballot. It failed last year but I think we’ll go over the top this year. Once on the ballot, I think the voters will overwhelmingly approve. We won’t be the first state backing an amendment.
There’s nothing really preventing the hundreds of people who live in the trailer park down the hill from being aware of whom writes what in the Times, but they collectively could not possibly give less of a fuck. They have “real” problems and difficulties.
Yeah, that’s it. Too busy with real problems.
Important reasons to keep on the Brooks beat:
His power within the MSM has only grown during the years since he launched his condescending, factually false and offensive attacks on those who opposed W. Bush’s Iraq invasion. Brooks literally has blood on his hands, lots of it. He used to have a column in a right-wing magazine; now he has a much larger readership in the Times, weekly pundit gigs on at least three television and radio programs and frequent appearances on the Sunday shows, and access to getting his book-length drivel published, promoted and reviewed. He is the conservative pundit heard by more Americans than any other. If we leave his consistent form of soft-spoken but vicious racism unaddressed, his poisonous opinions and “facts” would be delivered purely into the cultural bloodstream. When our movement points out Brooks’ offenses, it dilutes his poison and reduces the number of people he influences.
The persona Brooks has been allowed to take is that of the moderate conservative, due to the modulation of his voice and the words he uses. When we clear aside this theatre he is allowed to mount by his unquestioning MSM colleagues, we can see that Brooks’ policy advocacies separates him not at all from the craziest TEA Party representatives. That MUST be pointed out, over and over again.
And, finally, there is a personal aspect to our critiques which is appropriate, in my view. David natters on and on and on about “character” and “humility” while visibly possessing none. He calls out the entire community of low-income Americans for lacking these traits and explains this as the reason he wishes to steal money from the poor, and calls out no monied elite person who lacks these traits while advocating policies which would hand the money stolen from the poor to the rich and powerful. Outrageously, Brooks want the rich to become even more rewarded for the crimes of ruining our economic, educational and social systems.
Keep on slamming away, BooMan. It’s important.
Brooks’ policy advocacies separates him not at all from the craziest TEA Party representatives. That MUST be pointed out, over and over again.
The high point in a great post. I think you really nailed why trench warfare against this “reasonable conservative” is so important.
He’s syndicated, and in lots of papers, I imagine. They print his column in our local Boulder, Colorado Daily Camera. The Daily C also prints Krauthammer and Broder. I haven’t paid attention to them myself but they’re certainly influential.
And conservative groups are buying up newspapers, sigh. The Koch brothers want to buy big newspapers- link
Oops, that was an old link. That particular deal to buy newspapers didn’t go through.
Critiques of the latest dribble spewed by those of Brooks’ ilk are best kept short and sweet. That’s as much attention as is warranted.
There’s almost always a “Brooks” or two in offices and corporations. People that for some unfathomable reason the boss favors or has taken a shine to. Generally doofuses and jerks that others do their best to ignore. When that’s not possible, others rely on passive/aggressive. When that person becomes intolerable, a mini-revolt emerges. Not unknown for the boss to become collateral damage in the battle.
How about raise the minimum wage, Mr. Brooks? That way the people who are working wouldn’t need as much welfare which is spent paying for things that they can’t afford even though they work, which means the government is engaged in corporate welfare to support low-wage businesses. I know you can make an argument that in some poor neighborhood you can require a mom and pop store to pay that high a wage, but we’re talking about large corporations paying that wage.
I am glad you attack David Brooks, Booman. The truth matters. Poor lives matter. Black lives matter.
CAN’T require
Main reason to write about him is that it can be fun. Charlie Pierce entertains himself endlessly writing about Bobo.
BTW, you were an ACORN organizer? Me too. When?
Also, what’s with the frog?
Thank you for this. And thank you for your efforts.
I do agree they do have some influence on society at large, and talking about what these media squatters write does have its merits.
But I don’t really think the mentality you cite of the “trailer park folk” is really just limited to the poors. How else can you explain our hideously low voter turnout? And if they vote they would put more thought into an issue than what’s written in the opinion pages of the NYT.
Call me a cynic, but we get the electorate we deserve.
good that you critique Brooks. . as for his social conventions that govern civil relationships – one major factor in the breakdown is decades of marketing “me, me, me” – go get yours and f* everyone else”, which a segment certainly acts upon and is lionized for.
Booman, you go right on bashing David Brooks, relentlessly, tirelessly, endlessly, viciously.
Don’t let anyone stop you. It’s absolutely a worthwhile endeavor. I can’t tell you how tired I am of people (within the various circles in which I move) breezily dismissing David Brooks or the New York Times or the cover of the New York Post or any high-end commentary as “irrelevant” or “silly” or “funny” or whatever words apply to this sort of “regrettable” upper class mechanism for toying with public opinion.
People always want power without responsibility; we’re supposed to look at David Brooks or William Kristol or George Will or Ross Douthat or (espeically) Richard Cohen and begrudge them their limousines and seven-figure salaries and gigantic global microphones, while overlooking or forgiving their ignorance, their stupidity, their illogic, their pandering and their astounding irresponsibility. (“Oh, that’s ‘just’ Richard Cohen…he always says stuff like that,” some patrician says in tones of polite regret.) NO! No. Absolutely not. Hit them again! Again! Harder and harder! We’re all right behind you.
A helpful context for tracking Brooks, Friedman, Dowd, and others of their ilk is to demonstrate where their influence actually shows up. Where does their understand get into policy and how does it get there? Are the policy-makers themselves the actual fans of these folks? Your “elite” status and contacts could possibly shed some light on this for those of us who are two rungs from the trailer park economically and still grateful for public libraries and the social safety net.
The transmission belts of the mighty crapola Wurlitzer are much more fascinating the any single woofer or tweeter in the gizmo.
Who exactly reads David Brooks? What audience keeps the NYT from dropping him? Lawyers and accountants? Department store managers? Congressional aides? (Which ones?) His cocktail weinie circuit friends?
Who exactly are the Bobo-heads in Congress, governorships, legislatures, and the media?
That’s a really good question. We’re told that PBO reads and admires him, which enrages me, but I can’t see how it would affect policy, and I don’t believe it anyway. My guess is that it would mainly be journalists who live in Washington and cover politics, Sunday morning TV people with no understanding of policy, looking to him for a “serious” (and easy-to-read) idea of what conservative thinking is about for civilized people.
He’s laundering concepts from his friends at American Enterprise and Manhattan Institutes for media consumption. And with his panoply of pseudo-interests in everything from cognitive neuroscience to theology, he can slip the points in where people don’t even notice them. As in Friday’s column where he was ostensibly just blowing the usual smoke about inner city society going “off the guardrails”, but sneaking all sorts of (false) points about the “explosion” in government spending on poverty since 1980 or the management of the Baltimore police in the same period.
Somebody like Chuck Todd or Luke Russert, with no intellectual resources for evaluating these things, and in the general atmosphere of cynical politeness (because it’s “just politics”), just absorbs them into his vocabulary and passes them, unconsciously, on. That’s how in 2008 everybody in Washington suddenly believed (after years of preparation) that the national debt was out of control, or in 2003 that Saddam Hussein was “a threat”.
Brooks is just ground zero for this kind of manipulation, and it’s worth analyzing how he does it.
Consider Rush Limbaugh. Here is some great information on his audience:
https://www.quantcast.com/rushlimbaugh.com
If you have listened to the marketing of his audience numbers, you’ve heard anywhere from 10-20 million. As the link illustrates, that must be taken in context: per day? per week? per month?
The quantcast clearchannel numbers paints a clear picture: monthly he’s averaging under 2M unique visitors/viewers. If you add that up over the year, yes, he’s got 10-20 million “unique” visitors.
That is STILL a drop in the bucket when you consider the 300+ million in this country: 6.6% at the most generous. That’s less than the % of people who believe they have seen a UFO. So is he relevant?
He is relevant because some portion of Congress listens to him, and because of this his influence is expanded. How does that happen and to what extent does this overrated bloviator control Congress?
Beating Brooks is like hitting a piñata without the blindfold. It’s a lot better than what I believe should happen to Brooks and his roving band of flunkies(feeding the boa constrictors in Florida).
You’re right to go after Brooks. As for dismissive attitudes, at what point do you fight back? We can’t allow these cowards to get away with their bullshit. Whenever people talk politics like Brooks and ’em are serious, I break into one of my rants. It’s pretty effective.
Boo, you’re a philosophy guy so I guess you remember what Kant said: “after reading Booman and(other lefty blogs) you would have no tolerance for political twaddle.”
Also, because he DOES come off as “reasonable”, people like my father -who is quite liberal- are sometimes taken in by him.
Just post a link to Driftglass’ shop. He has so thoroughly deconstructed Brooks that he could write a better Brooks column than Brook himself.
Criticizing Brooks is a public service. Brooks is the “sane” conservative and as DG has pointed out, is currently re-writing history. One of the reasons that Republicans aren’t totally laughed into the ocean is that they have hacks like David Brooks who will always play up the conservative side whenever he’s not casting about with the BothSides argument.
Sure, Republicans own Ted Cruz, but hey, nameless Democrats somewhere are just as crazy!
That’s basically Brooks’ argument, and it needs to be smashed every time it pops up.