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.