RIP David Brooks

not really

to be fair, his soul is dead

maybe, someday

http://img2-cdn.newser.com/square-image/64121-20110331221226/david-brooks-gop-senator-groped-me.jpeg

http://i.imgur.com/tSGDs.png

He and E.J. Dionne on NPR are like a shrimp and goldfish floating in a thin gruel.

lol i am ded

I always knew David Brooks was an asshole ....

Bump this thread whenever he dies.

RIP, hell needed a bunch of cretinous demographic catchphrases.

David Brooks epitomizes the kind of career pundit who always seems at least a tiny bit guilty that he gets paid at all. I used to think Frum was like that, too, though I heard an interesting sign-off from him on NPR yesterday, where he announced he was abdicating his point/counterpart position because he didn't feel his views currently aligned with that of "the right."

Frum has more brains than Brooks.

frum is worth a million brookses, which says more about brooks than frum

lol xp

Bobos in mourning.

I only brought up Frum because he's another guy who practically sounds like hand wringing.

Frum's a smart feller but I've never quite forgiven him for:

http://gopbelgium.com/images/booklist/The%20Right%20Man%20by%20David%20Frum.gif

i hate david frum and the things he has historically stood for but at least he's not a total waste of space

Not the right thread, but since we're posting remarks by GOP buffoons here's Douthat's latest dispatch from fantasyland.

So Frum with some hand-wringing seemingly admitted yesterday that stimulus might have been necessary and now Douthat says stimulus would have been ok if it had been done by a President McCain (in a better way of course than the Dems did). Oy veh.

oh douchehatpaws

more like Ross don'tdouthat amirite

my fav douthat moment was when i saw him interviewed on tv and the interviewer read a wonkete quote that called him a something like a misogynist neck beard homunculus and his response was all 'well sometimes you make arguments that work and sometimes they kinda fall flat but you know' and it was like dawg they just called u a homunculus

lol

In November 2009 I saw Douthat on a Friday at noon in the gay portion of Dupont Circle with a man-friend.

haha wow: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/opinion/workers-of-the-world-unite.html

this turdball should write slashfic:

Occasionally you get a candidate, like Tim Pawlenty, who grew up working class. But he gets sucked up by the consultants, the donors and the professional party members and he ends up sounding like every other Republican. Other times a candidate will emerge who taps into a working-class vibe — Pat Buchanan, Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin. But, so far, these have been flawed candidates who get buried under an avalanche of negative ads and brutal coverage.

This year, Romney is trying to establish some emotional bond with the working class by waging a hyperpatriotic campaign: I may be the son of a millionaire with a religion that makes you uncomfortable, but I love this country just like you. The strategy appears to be only a partial success.

Enter Rick Santorum.

The country doesn’t want an election that is Harvard Law versus Harvard Law.

wait, hasn't david brooks spent years arguing that this is a perfectly good thing??

If you took a working-class candidate from the right, like Santorum, and a working-class candidate from the left, like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and you found a few islands of common ground, you could win this election by a landslide.

Brown was born in Mansfield, Ohio, the son of Emily (née Campbell) and Charles Gailey Brown, M.D.[1] He was named after his maternal grandfather. He became an Eagle Scout in 1967. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian studies from Yale University in 1974. At Yale, he was in Davenport College, the same residential college as U.S. Presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush

and you found a few islands of common ground

Sometimes he sounds just like Tom Friedman

Has anyone read the Life Reports David Brooks has been running in the nytimes? It's a really good way to make yourself hopeless and depressed.

Otoh, you can probably say that about anything relating to David Brooks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/opinion/brooks-the-materialist-fallacy.html

had to physically restrain myself from ripping the skin off my face as I was reading this.

He really is such a dunce.

what the hell's he talking about

yogurt, I think

He is doing a little kid level response to the standard criticism of Murray's latest book

http://ussc.edu.au/blogs/David-Brooks-apparently-thinks-society-means-white-people

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/02/america-might-be-better-shape-david-brooks-thinks

more like Roast in Piss

Please take a number, if you would like to be the next columnist/blogger/economist etc. to critique David Brooks' latest pronouncement:

Here's Dean Baker

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-denounces-economics-is-biology-next

Brooks also has an interesting theory on the loss of skills. He tells readers:

"The American social fabric is now so depleted that even if manufacturing jobs miraculously came back we still would not be producing enough stable, skilled workers to fill them."

Five years ago we had two million more people employed in manufacturing than we do today. Has the social fabric become so depleted in this period that these people or others could now not fill these jobs if they came back? If Brooks really thinks that the ill effects of unemployment are that extreme he should be screaming for more stimulus in every column.

brooks recasts real world problems as a morality play in his role as conservative apologist: every david brooks column

tho often i guess they are not so much real world problems as fake made up problems

Today's helping, courtesy of a certain ilx alumnus: http://www.salon.com/2012/02/17/david_brooks_i_have_heard_of_jeremy_lin/singleton/

But even while grappling with the tension between religious values and contemporary cultural values, which is basically well within Brooks’ wheelhouse, he demonstrates a hilarious misunderstanding of sports, and what sports are “about,” because Mr. Brooks has been spending far too much time in his cloistered elite liberal media ivory tower munching on brie and arugula and not enough time among Real Americans in their “Sporting Taverns” watching “The Big Game” over a pint of mass-market domestic lager.

suspect beating up brooks when u need an easy column will outlast "analyzing" linsanity/linreality tbh

A few generations ago, teenagers went steady. But over the past decades, the dating relationship has been replaced by a more amorphous hook-up culture.

a few generations ago, it was legal to marry a 15 year old

a few generations ago, interracial marriage was against the law

a few generations ago, bestiality was legal in Florida

The half-century between 1912 and 1962 was a period of great wars and economic tumult but also of impressive social cohesion. Marriage rates were high. Community groups connected people across class

In the half-century between 1962 and the present, America has become more prosperous, peaceful and fair, but the social fabric has deteriorated. Social trust has plummeted. Society has segmented. The share of Americans born out of wedlock is now at 40 percent and rising.

Ah, the good ol' days..... If only married people had kids, we could have impressive social cohesion and a strong social fabric like we did before 1961, when only men could get decent jobs and we kept those darned negroes out of our good schools, restaurants, and bus seats....

beyond self-parody at this point

Can't be a coincidence that his name is *this* close to douche-hat: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-safe-legal-rare-illusion.html

First they went after the Rockefeller Republicans, but I was not a Rockefeller Republican. Then they went after the compassionate conservatives, but I was not a compassionate conservative. Then they went after the mainstream conservatives, and there was no one left to speak for me.

Got pretty bummed because he's scheduled to speak at a conference I'll be attending next month, which meant I would have had to cover his talk for our org's magazine. Was dreading that. But turns out he's speaking at a luncheon during the conference, so I think I'm free of that burden!

does your org have a rule against reporting on luncheons?

one more liberal wanting a free ride!

David Brooks making right-wingers angry:

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/02/28/is-david-brooks-comparing-the-tea-party-to-nazis/

I would also point out that the Rockefeller Republicans were losers and compassionate conservatism put us on the brink of financial ruin

the last half of the sentence OTM

Similar statements were made about Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and John McCain.

maybe reagan but otherwise, no, child

well ok W in 04 too

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/is-david-brooks-teaching-humility-at-yale-the-most-pretentious-moment-in-history-20121219

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14zUrsmH6eO_i-arEN0zf1LwFID7SoyxkgAo36NUiHp0/pub

The strategies covered here start from a similar premise—that human beings are blessed with many talents but are also burdened by sinfulness, ignorance and weakness, which is why I call on both parties for common sense solutions to our problems, the most notable of which is a cat o' nine tails.

We will pay special attention to those who attended elite prep schools and universities.

u don't say

someone please call his office phone

Modern societies have become economically and socially more unequal. We will explore status competition and the desire for social distinction—executives who feel unabashed when asking for lavish salaries. We will ask whether it is proper to put a Yale window sticker on the back of your car. We will look at codes of social modesty and ask whether modest people make better business leaders

"Students will be asked to grapple with the indictment of their generation made by Christian Smith, Alasdair Macintyre and Jean Twenge."

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/david-brooks-now-totally-pathological.html

More fun from Chait

Brooks rose into prominence as a moderate Republican and has enjoyed immense success and prestige as a result. Psychologically, he could hurl himself from a moving car more easily than he could reject Republicanism, no matter how batshit crazy the party becomes.

same with Frum at this point, imo. i realize he can't begin to approach the loathsomeness of Brooks, but his blog basically serves to titillate liberals (who the fuck else pays attention to him?) and provoke a chorus of 'i-told-you-so's'

except for his recent weird preoccupation with the evils of zomg marihuana and the fact that he can't get his mouth off Israel's dick for 5 seconds, i really don't understand how he's still able to call himself a Republican with a straight face.

i suppose renouncing Republicanism would damage his brand, his blog traffic would suffer and he wouldn't be one of cable news' 4 go-to guys who are "trying to save the party"

(re Frum on pot and Israel: i realize that neither of these positions would preclude one from being a card-carrying Dem)

I mind Frum far less than Brooks. At least Frum gives the impression that he has groggily awakened from a nightmare.

lol at "the chinese have no word for nerd"

clean hit:

David Brooks has an unparalleled ability to shape an intellectually interesting idea into the rhetorical arc of an 800-word op-ed piece. The trouble is, a central part of his genius is choosing the little factoids that perfectly illustrate his points. No doubt he's happy enough to use a true fact if the right one comes to hand, but whenever I've checked, the details have turned out to be somewhere between mischaracterized and invented.

Is it just me or is there a kind of critical mass of media/internet people piling on him now? I find the timing strange -- I didn't think his latest column was particularly more noteworthy than a lot of his other drivel.

I was a little bemused too when he was EVERYWHERE in my twitter feed night before last. I checked the brooks threads on here and saw only vague lol refs-- I'l be god damned if I'm giving that little psycho a click so I actually still haven't read the column in q.

h8 him so much

I think he may have struck a nerve with a lot of bloggers with that "thought leader" piece, since it seems to be satirizing a certain kind of aspiring intellectual not too dissimilar to many bloggers themselves. Yglesias was particularly harsh:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/17/david_brooks_scant_self_awareness_divorced_pundit_suddenly_not_so_worried.html

Basically accuses him of hypocrisy for his recent divorce.

Pareene: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/18/hack_list_no_4_david_brooks/

He's overdue for a flogging, I just don't know why it's happening now.

i wouldn't flog him with my little brother's lash

o nate otm

have remained blissfully ignorant of this whole kerfuffle so a little disappointed at the reasons for this thread revive

Don't worry guys, with any luck Iraq will turn out like Rwanda!

too late to neglect it into genocide

Equating sunnis/shiites w hutsis/tutus is next level idiocy

Next level idiocy is just what we've come to expect from Mr. Brooks. The NYT demands nothing but the best from their columnists.

"America was governed best when it was governed by a porous, self-conscious and responsible elite."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/opinion/david-brooks-snap-out-of-it.html?_r=0

http://www.civil-twilight.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/gal_sweat_president_bush.jpg

someone put an icepick in this jackass

is it bad that when I saw this thread in the new answers page my first thought was "oh thank god"?

fucking thread title gets me EVERY TIME, I perk right up

fuck he didn't die :(

must resist urge to deconstruct this odious "porous elite" concept, not worth the effort

i for one welcome our new sponge overlords

i guess i'd hafta read the column to find out if his point is that we're now governed by a sealed-off, unconscious and irresponsible elite.

not gonna

love the equating of Ted Cruz with Karl Marx.

I’ve been living in and visiting New York for almost a half-century now. One thought occurs as I walk around these days: The city has never been better.

"There has never been a time when there were so many interesting places to visit, shop and eat, when the rivers and the parks were so beautiful, when there were so many vibrant neighborhoods across all boroughs"

What's the over on how many times in the past year Brooks has set foot in Staten Island, the Bronx, or Queens? (Airport, Yankees, and Mets don't count.)

"Second, the elite we do have has to acknowledge that privilege imposes duties. Wealthy people have an obligation to try to follow a code of seemliness."

This guy...

"After you shit on the poor, be sure to give them a towel to wipe your ass"

a code of seemliness!

Don't buy luxury cars for your kids? What else ya got for us, Comrade?!

"when there were so many people paying 40-60% of their income in rent"

a code of seemliness a little too close to a code of socialism amirite

did you know: rivers have "never" been so beautiful as they are today.

One thought occurs as I walk around these days: The city has never been better. I have never been wealthier or more pampered.

or more seemly

How does it seem to seem

Frankly agape that he actually wrote A CODE OF SEEMLINESS

ghosted for him by intern frank lee agape iiuc

let brooks be finale of seem

The main problem with plutocracy is its unseemliness, this is true.

xpost lololol

Yes it's quite fortunate that we're not up against any civilization-threatening crises in these contemporary times.

I remember a few days after 9/11 when he called on males of NYC to look to the example of Nero Wolfe's factotum Archie for the good-humored, undemonstratively ass-kicking attitude the coming times would demand.

oh here: from his October 2011 column:

Sixty-five miles from where I am writing this sentence is a place with no Starbucks, no Pottery Barn, no Borders or Barnes & Noble. No blue New York Times delivery bags dot the driveways on Sunday mornings. In this place people don't complain that Woody Allen isn't as funny as he used to be, because they never thought he was funny. In this place you can go to a year's worth of dinner parties without hearing anyone quote an aperçu he first heard on Charlie Rose. The people here don't buy those little rear-window stickers when they go to a summer-vacation spot so that they can drive around with "MV" decals the rest of the year; for the most part they don't even go to Martha's Vineyard.

The place I'm talking about goes by different names. Some call it America. Others call it Middle America. It has also come to be known as Red America, in reference to the maps that were produced on the night of the 2000 presidential election. People in Blue America, which is my part of America, tend to live around big cities on the coasts. People in Red America tend to live on farms or in small towns or small cities far away from the coasts. Things are different there.

Everything that people in my neighborhood do without motors, the people in Red America do with motors. We sail; they powerboat. We cross-country ski; they snowmobile. We hike; they drive ATVs. We have vineyard tours; they have tractor pulls. When it comes to yard work, they have rider mowers; we have illegal aliens.

they have rider mowers, we have illegal aliens

tomato, tomahto

this fucking guy x10000 billion

read america

oops typo: October 2001 column.

that helps

Fuckin vintage

The weird Archie Goodwin bit was in an nyt ed

Marvel Comics Archie Goodwin?

No, that was also the name of Nero Wolfe's side kick who brooks wanted us to emulate in the post 9/11 universe

I actually keep forgetting to check whether the marvel editor took that as a nom de plume after Rex stout

for the most part they don't even go to martha's vineyard.

they wear infinity gauntlets

People in Red America tend to live on farms or in small towns or small cities far away from the coasts.

YOU'RE RIGHT THAT IS EVERY POSSIBLE TYPE OF HUMAN SETTLEMENT.

"Occasionally one even finds a village, or a mere hamlet."

Don't people in "red America" mostly live in suburbs? I mean almost no one fucking lives on farms in any color America, he's just trolling his DC neighbors so hard with that.

some people say "undocumented workers from latin america," david brooks says "illegal aliens."

man everything is so much worse than i always forget that it wasn't.

I just love the title.

http://gawker.com/david-brooks-son-is-a-gigantic-bro-1644052311

http://gawker.com/david-brooks-son-is-a-gigantic-brony-1644052311

That's kind of shitty and gross imo (to publish that, I mean).

the Podhoretz family is shitty and gross

dude's life is probably hard enough with such a sanctimonious moron as a father

The info's all from his Facebook page; if anyone's going to go "His privacy!" about this I'm going to ask about this wonderful world you live in which is not here.

It's too bad about what Gawker has done to our world then

Privacy isn't the issue. Publishing a mocking article about someone who isn't in the public limelight and who hasn't done anything to deserve it is shitty and gross.

dude's life is probably hard enough with such a sanctimonious moron as a father

― Οὖτις,

David Brooks' kid too.

John Podhoretz, the son of former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, tweeted: “Everybody who thinks David Brooks has to ‘reveal’ his son, who’s 23, has joined the Israeli army can go fuck himself.”

yeah

and hurting / jmm right about this cheapshit article

And people who know me know I fucking hate David Brooks

Gawker blows

It's definitely shitty and gross and I doubt anyone would be defending this if it was someone who wasn't the douchey son of a douchey columnist.

fuck gawker

i don't think we know nearly enough about this kid to say he is "douchey" either. all i've gathered from that article is that he smiles a lot in photos.

The info's all from his Facebook page; if anyone's going to go "His privacy!" about this I'm going to ask about this wonderful world you live in which is not here.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, October 9, 2014 1:11 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cool post

Have any good stories about young J.B.? Hop in below or shoot us an email.

this addendum is the worst part

like, they are actively soliciting material to use to smear this person, a private citizen, on a nationally popular website. how is this the same thing as facebook existing?

i think margaret sullivan made a legitimate point, but that's a long way from singling out someone who's not a public figure and writing an entire article (well, 'article') ridiculing him.

Also a lot of the stuff is just about his personal/social life, it's not like they're pointing out some Super PAC he runs or something.

yeah, disclosing his relationship with the israeli army is totally different and unrelated from raiding his facebook profile for pictures and "likes" that encourage readers to make assumptions about what he is like as a person.

It fits with Gawker/Jezebel's bad habit of trying to show that someone is a Bad Person instead of focussing on one egregious incident. It leaves a bad taste. If you think/know someone's done something wrong then stick to that - don't do an armchair audit of their whole life.

the gawker/jezebel tone is so toxic. it's weird to read an article i basically agree with (not this one) and still come away feeling gross.

it's the plague of my generation

haha

The info's all from his Facebook page; if anyone's going to go "His privacy!" about this I'm going to ask about this wonderful world you live in which is not here.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, October 9, 2014 1:11 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok ned, i'll lift whatever info i can about you from the internet and write a high-profile piece for a major website mocking you. that's exactly the same thing as you having a facebook profile, right?

to be clear i will not actually do this to ned. i was just making a point.

The info's all from his Facebook page; if anyone's going to go "His privacy!" about this I'm going to ask about this wonderful world you live in which is not here.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, October 9, 2014 7:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Heart u Ned but come on, a private person putting stuff on Facebook doesn't make it ok for a big website or medium to use everything they can find to negatively profile someone just because his father is a douche. It's the stringing together of seemingly unrelated things to make up a profile fitting your idea of someone (or someone's father) that is the scariest thing about this.

David Brooks' son being in the Israeli army seems relevant at least to the extent that he does at times write about Israel. The rest of it is just kind of catty and pointless.

FWIW, I've taken the responses on board and have been thinking off and on about it for the past half hour. The larger points about expectations of privacy/guilt-by-association are well taken. (Though frankly any guy from a fraternity who likes Tucker Max makes me a little skeeved separate from anything else; still, I'm not about to grill every last person who unironically likes the Chive or whatever.) And I'll admit the funniest part to me besides the headline, per Alfred's post, was Podhoretz fully embracing his bitter bastard persona at last; then again I did post the direct link so I can't not own that. Likely wouldn't post it now.

Still, though -- building off Milton Parker said, is it just the world that Gawker made or also something else? I keep thinking about news stories from all over the place essentially now regularly talking about photos on social media, posts, etc. when it comes to someone that figures in it, for whatever reason. I guess I'm more jaded than I realize but I honestly wasn't *surprised* that this could happen, and that may be my own burden to bear.

I guess I'm just kind of disappointed to see articles that amount to "Hey look at this fuggin guy," let alone about non-public figures.

But that said, look at this fuggin guy:
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/files/2013/01/Podhoretz_Swim.jpg

First line in today's column: "George Eliot was an emotionally needy young woman."

followed by an account of their prom date

Yet what do we mean when we use the word meaning?

oh boy he's going with Clinton-style epistemology

is he dead yet?

well, he's braindead

colleges should invite terrible speakers more often because hebdo

Op-Ed Columnist
I Am Not Charlie Hebdo
By DAVID BROOKS

Not sure I want to read this

absolutely sure I don't

I Am Not David Brooks

Not sure I want to read this

If you read my comment above yours, you've already read it

picturing this column accompanied by a picture of Brooks in a t-shirt that reads "I AM DAVID BROOKS"

lol u guys it's so bad though

To be fair, he's not saying that people who speak out against racial or religious insults are exactly the same as people who walk into an office and murder people. Just, you know, there's a continuum. To be safe, we should stop calling people racists.

Yet what do we mean when we use the word meaning?

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 8, 2015 1:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in homage to the events in paris, david brooks will be channeling jacques derrida in this week's column

Let me put it this way: If we look at the people in history who achieved great things — like Nelson Mandela or Albert Schweitzer or Abraham Lincoln — it wasn’t because they wanted to bathe luxuriously in their own sense of meaningfulness. They had objective and eternally true standards of justice and injustice. They were indignant when those eternal standards were violated. They subscribed to moral systems — whether secular or religious — that recommended specific ways of being, and had specific structures of what is right and wrong, and had specific disciplines about how you might get better over time.

Even remotely, distantly comparing people protesting a campus speaker to people actually shooting up a newspaper is just so insidious it's unbelievable.

http://images.politico.com/global/2012/10/121030_david_brooks_605_ap.jpg

Let me put it this way.

Let me tell you, in an eleven-word sentence, about "the people who achieved great things."

Ridicule becomes less fun as you become more aware of your own frequent ridiculousness.

that must be an excruciatingly long and slow process for him

wicked subtweet

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/when-values-disappear/?_r=1

That posting is a nice rebuttal to Kristoff's misinterpretation of WJW as well as to Brook's absurd let's punish non-college going Dads for their lack of morals and values thing in a recnet column of his(based on Brooks misinterpretation of Putnam's new Our Kids book)

every time i open this thread

http://stack-dog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/0571AE26-7118-4B22-9810-B37B1C100BAE_zpszc2oknoh.png

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/for-david-brooks-the-rich-are-people-the-poor-are-numbers-20150311#ixzz3UG7EQzeE

Matt Taibi v. Brooks

Brooks is EXCITED about Marco Rubio! He has *ideas*!

On his first day in office, he handed each legislator a book with the cover “100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future.” The pages were blank. He was inviting his members to fill them in — a nice collaborative touch.

well, I guess that's one way to look at it...

my dad has a blank book titled everything i know about sailing; where's his bobodorsement

http://i.imgur.com/sQGxpot.jpg

Easy target but couldn't resist.

"Despite all these efforts, there are too many young men leading lives like the one Gray led. He was apparently a kind-hearted, respectful, popular man, but he was not on the path to upward mobility. He won a settlement for lead paint poisoning. According to The Washington Post, his mother was a heroin addict who, in a deposition, said she couldn’t read. In one court filing, it was reported that Gray was four grade levels behind in reading. He was arrested more than a dozen times."

this is a more fucked up way to frame the situation than just saying something outright racist.

dude was beaten to death for no reason and brooks feels the need to scrutinize his academic record

Without connecting it to the fact that he was sufficiently exposed to lead paint at a young age to merit a large settlement. And connecting that to our failures in cities generally.

Like, the connection between lead exposure, brain damage and antisocial behavior is sufficiently well-established that not taking the next step in THAT little mental journey is beyond irresponsible. If you feel like that's the nut of this story, tell the whole damned story.

I mean, Brooks does address that stuff but he says the failure has to do with the culture of poverty -- avoiding that specific buzz phrase of course because it is rightly derided now. He sees Gray as a "victim" but doesn't point his finger at the institutional racism that is enshrined in policy on the federal, state, and local level. That's what's so insidious about him.

He's not crude enough to say "Freddie Gray was a thug and it's his own fault." He blames "systems" just not ones he could be seen as complicit in upholding.

and also freddie gray as far as we know didn't engage in much antisocial behavior -- brooks admits as much. and even if he did, that is immaterial. the penalty for whatever it is he might have done over the course of his life isn't supposed to be death.

last one: i wouldn't be too quick to make the lead paint-brain damage connection without more evidence. for most people who read below grade level, the problem isn't their capability. usually it's a problem in their educational background, a learning difference that wasn't addressed or something like that

In a fantastic interview that David Simon of “The Wire” gave to Bill Keller for The Marshall Project, he describes that, even in poorest Baltimore, there once were informal rules of behavior governing how cops interacted with citizens — when they’d drag them in and when they wouldn’t, what curse words you could say to a cop and what you couldn’t. But then the code dissolved. The informal guardrails of life were gone, and all was arbitrary harshness.

That’s happened across many social spheres — in schools, families and among neighbors. Individuals are left without the norms that middle-class people take for granted. It is phenomenally hard for young people in such circumstances to guide themselves.

Holy shit.

"Cops are on a rampage. Hey, that reminds me of how poor people have no morality."

how I would love to stuff David Brooks into a woodchipper

you should be able to say any and all curse words to cops without fear of anything more than a cold stare.

unless they're off-duty, in which case they might smack you like anyone else.

higher standard

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/opinion/david-brooks-what-is-your-purpose.html?ref=opinion

where is your porpoise?

"These days we live in a culture that is more diverse, decentralized, interactive and democratized. The old days when gray-haired sages had all the answers about the ultimate issues of life are over."

r.i.p. gray-haired dude...

he is for TPP in case ya missed it

(so he and T Friedman can clink glasses over that one)

Correction: May 5, 2015

An earlier version of this column misspelled the given name of a French philosopher. He was Jean-Paul Sartre, not John-Paul.

An even earlier version misspelled it as Ringo.

I think he was actually referring to Pope John-Paul Sartre. A gray-haired sage of the middle ages.

http://images.politico.com/global/news/110705_brooks_bloggers_nbc_328.jpg

Being Nothingness

As I travel on a book tour, I find there is an amazing hunger to shift the conversation.

lol

"can we talk about something else besides your stupid book plz"

oh shit more conversation

i heard Brooks being interviewed for 15 mins on WNYC last week before realizing it wasn't James Woods on downers.

Brooks and Woods comparison making my day

the voices are closer than you might think!

My disdain for Woods is earned since I usually made it halfway through a New Yorker article and then went uh, who is this jerk again? Oh, him.

James Woods, the David Brooks of literary criticism. Book him, Dan-O.

he means James Woods the actor, not James Wood the critic.

Ah hell. I was thinking "authorial" voice. Not unreasonably.

Except of course that there is no James Woods the critic. I see that now.

A joke about stopping by Wood on a snowy evening takes on a totally different meaning, doesn't it?

I don't care much for his recs these days but James Wood was often a great critic although he looks like I imagine a New Yorker critic looks.

I've heard that & figure there must be some reason for his reputation. As I hadn't paid attention, I can only go by what I've read in the New Yorker for the last ten years or so. It's sanctimony, it's unimaginative. He takes up the most boring issues one could have with books.

If you have answers to these questions, go the website for my book, “The Road to Character,” click on First Steps and send in your response.

David Brooks, click-baiter.

I vaguely remember The Road to Character.

http://media.nola.com/tpphotos/photo/2014/11/10/16305462-standard.jpg

(l-r: gray-haired sages)

Also I just noticed he was so excited about linking to his website that he left out a preposition. We really are without moral authorities these days, aren't we?

i believe the oldest sage in that photo is the only one not wearing a very obvious rug.

http://the-toast.net/2015/05/05/david-brooks-writes-a-sestina-about-poverty/

Krugman wrote a nice response

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/opinion/paul-krugman-race-class-and-neglect.html?_r=0

Every time you’re tempted to say that America is moving forward on race — that prejudice is no longer as important as it used to be — along comes an atrocity to puncture your complacency.

was surprised this turned out to not be a reference to Brooks' column tbh

lol

is there a thread for discussing how bad kristof is?

who's kristof

If so it needs some of this

https://sensemadehere.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/nick-kristof-is-not-smarter-than-an-8th-grader/

yes came here to post that

he's either a liar or very very stupid

in which albert burnenko proposes that brooks sent his exwife a dick pic and is swimming in existential despair http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-dont-think-david-brooks-is-okay-you-guys-1702674607/+AlbertBurneko

ok irl at this

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--na-ypttb--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/1242070180469282708.jpg

good overview

that krugman column linked above has its heart in the right place, but sentences like these make me cringe more than a little:

Take, for example, issues of health and mortality. Many people have pointed out that there are a number of black neighborhoods in Baltimore where life expectancy compares unfavorably with impoverished Third World nations. But what’s really striking on a national basis is the way class disparities in death rates have been soaring even among whites.

it's the phrase But what’s really striking that rankles. as if it's a competition between class and race! "yeah, i know racial disparities are profound, but what's really striking..."

also:

It has been disheartening to see some commentators still writing as if poverty were simply a matter of values, as if the poor just mysteriously make bad choices and all would be well if they adopted middle-class values. Maybe, just maybe, that was a sustainable argument four decades ago,

no, that was never a "sustainable" argument in re. structural poverty.

i mean krugman wants to make this all about the recent increase in inequality and all that portends, but in doing so he kind of hand-waves away some stuff that he really shouldn't be...

no, that was never a "sustainable" argument in re. structural poverty

yeah this bothered me too when I read it. as if there were not huge structural reasons for poverty 4 decades ago - "previous generations of poors were just bad decision makers" is not a historically valid argument imo.

Krugman doesn't write felicitous prose. He concedes that his wife severely edits him.

Fortunately to Brooks every generation of poors made bad decisions

at least previous generations of poors had elder sages to let them know what bad decisions they were making

undeserving poors will always be with us

it's the phrase But what’s really striking that rankles. as if it's a competition between class and race! "yeah, i know racial disparities are profound, but what's really striking..."

It IS a competition between - not class and race - but class and identity politics - in the competition for redress. Lobbing little victories toward the aims of identity politics is easy. Fixing class inequality is hard and is unlikely to make the Wall Street money masters happy.

Racial inequality only exacerbated by class inequality, obviously.

FP

flag this, pal

discussions are made so much more interesting with amateur football refs running around throwing hankies at minor dissents

well there's a whole much more interesting discussion happening on the 'privilege as a meme' thread about this subject

but here's a preview: you're wrong

Oh there's always action on the racism, sexism, privilege threads. But look at how quiet the class-related threads are.

Do you actually disagree that racial inequality is exacerbated by class inequality? What exactly is so threatening about this notion?

Can people have more than one political identity at a time?

Because a rise in good ol' cross-the-boundaries class consciousness would be kind of helpful right now --- I believe I heard West and Smiley talking about economic commonalities and shared conditions, for example. It's certainly what I'm talking about.

And it puts the current "left" to sleep.

Do you actually disagree that racial inequality is exacerbated by class inequality? What exactly is so threatening about this notion?

It does not seem like that is what you were saying. You seemed to be dismissing concerns about racial inequality. Bad cops are not quizzing African-Americans about their class status

It IS a competition between - not class and race - but class and identity politics - in the competition for redress.

― Vic Perry, Thursday, May 7, 2015 7:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a thread for making fun of david brooks btw, he wrote a love letter to the ruling class today http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/opinion/mothers-and-presidents.html

eye have already been rolled at Jacobin class articles on the privilege thread so VP's views are clearly in need of flagging

happy Mother's Day!

If I like Barbara Bush, do I hate my mother?

was kinda shocked at him coming right out and saying society exists at the begining there tbh

he doesn't love Thatcher THAT much

its like the core conservative belief, he never wouldve ceded that much ground to left a couple years ago

"According to some surveys, 90 percent of businesses around the world are family-operated businesses."

for real?

eye have already been rolled at Jacobin class articles on the privilege thread so VP's views are clearly in need of flagging

― Is It Any Wonder I'm Not the (President Keyes), Friday, 8 May 2015 14:44 (1 hour ago) Permalink

This guys been on a roll lately

for real?

yes only 10% of business-owners don't have families

brontes and amises in novel writing

Some mothers — and some fathers, husbands and wives — shape their kin with extraordinary power, and in certain directions.

you know the ones im talking about: east, southeast, south by southeast

well, family-operated business would mean at least two members of a family run the business. so, again, really? 90% of all businesses?

at least two members of a family run the business

it does?

anyway Brooks is a moron it's safe to say that number is bullshit

I dunno, Wikipedia says

Family business is the oldest and most common model of economic organization. The vast majority of businesses throughout the world—from corner shops to multinational publicly listed organizations with hundreds of thousands of employees—can be considered family businesses.[1]

I wouldn't be that surprised.

90% seems high to me too, but i mean what is a business and what does it mean to be part of it, i help out my dad w his business occasionally is that family business now idk

sure they can be, if you're willing to call franchises operated by families as "family businesses" or huge corporations with majority stockholders from a single family as "family businesses" etc. I mean it's just a dishonest rhetorical device, it doesn't reflect reality.

xxp

every corporation has a right to a family too, just as it has a relationship with God, its creator.

corporations are families, hello

Business has a right to children

90 percent of businesses around the world are family-operated businesses

this is shocking? pretty much goes from the murdochs and the ny times and the koch bros down to yr corner store and w33d dealer

to da mob (family)

99% of business are like little mom and pop businesses, it's just that a small percentage of businesses seem to dominate commerce.

Trying to imagine the puffed-up pinkish glow this gave to Mr. Brooks' jowls this morning:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/opinion/robert-redford-on-david-brooks.html?src=recg&_r=0

redford kind of a dim bulb. part of me kinda doesn't want to live long enough to see brad pitt become redford. both kinda not-great dim bulb pretty boys. like warren basically. for some reason i'll never forget being on nantucket when i was a little kid and a funny cab driver going on an on about how short robert redford was and how terrible his skin was! she was really shocked. he's got a couple of inches on tom anyway.

http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/Movies/PhotoG/robert-redford-tom-cruise-2007-14413.jpg

would pay to see cruise as a hobbit

Would pay to see cruise as a hobbit and get murked by one of those stocky beardo dudes with axes

even harry pooper is a hobbit next to K-Ho.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/19/article-2344324-0A062415000005DC-666_306x504.jpg

KIDS TODAY YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING???

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/opinion/david-brooks-the-campus-crusaders.html?_r=0

david brooks' face should come with a trigger warning...

plus, how many PC backlashes do i have to live through?

it's political correctness gone mad GONE MAD

EVEN AMERICA'S LIBERALS ARE RUNNING SCARED FROM THIS NEW BREED OF YOUTH

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid

excellent URL there

haha, it really is!

it doesn't help that the model they used to illustrate their article totally looks like someone i would want to shut up.

said the same thing yesterday:

Here's today's discussion subject: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid

lol @ at the url

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 3, 2015 9:35 AM

on this thread: Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

ah, okay, didn't see that...

too easy to resist though!

http://bostonreview.net/made-america/claude-s-fischer-problem-david-brooks

The Road to Character is an engaging book; Brooks works hard to save his soul—and ours. He is as passionate about moral improvement as a self-described “narcissistic blowhard” can be. The sections recommending that we surrender to love don’t quite attain the level of love drunkenness one finds in, say, the Song of Songs, but aspire to that bliss. Chandler’s 1854 advice book also extolled love. Lincoln marked a passage: “The motive power of man is Affection. . . . Our Character is the complex of all that we love.”

not credible

rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals

Running a government is a craft, like carpentry.

World of StateCraft

to revert fondly for a moment to j's post of July 27, 2015:

He is ... a self-described “narcissistic blowhard" a self-described “narcissistic blowhard" a self-described “narcissistic blowhard" a self-described “narcissistic blowhard" a self-described “narcissistic blowhard" a self-described “narcissistic blowhard" a self-described “narcissistic blowhard" a self-described “narcissistic blowhard"

is there anything about this guy that can teach us something

no

bacon is awesome you guys

go away

calls H R Clinton "thoughtful and constructive" in today's column

hope that is a kiss of death

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/david-brooks-proposes-a-kinder-gentler-republican-party-20160121

Taibbi has fun.

The hilarious part about the Brooks column is the wounded, incredulous tone. Where, he asks, is the love? You know, like the old days, when the hick megachurcher and the Upper East Side Yalie were joined at the hip for the cause of a sharply-reduced top income tax rate!

"Social inequality is always felt more acutely than economic inequality."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/opinion/i-miss-barack-obama.html

I can't exactly disagree with much in that column, but I can point out that you reap what you sow.

no one linked the "Donald Trump Is Not Real" column eh

it was linked on the *other* David Brooks thread

Personally, I don’t think there is one correct answer to whether we want a dog or a cat as leader. Depends on the situation; there are successful examples of both types. But I’m struck by how catlike Obama is. And it’s striking how many Americans have responded by going for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, who are bad versions of the bounding in/we-can-change-everything doggy type.

writing's a bitch

"I was surprised by Trump’s success because I’ve slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata — in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own. It takes an act of will to rip yourself out of that and go where you feel least comfortable. But this column is going to try to do that over the next months and years. We all have some responsibility to do one activity that leaps across the chasms of segmentation that afflict this country."

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/726061722642034689

"Poor Like Me"

need a rewrite of Simon & Garfunkel's "Dangling Conversation" as "Chasms of Segmentation"

and beside all this, between us and david brooks there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to him cannot; neither can he pass to us, if he would come from thence.

I wonder where davids gonna hang out

@CafeFilthmuck
He might even ask his caddy what iron to use from this lie.

But this column is going to try to do that over the next months and years.

can't wait!!

We’ll need a communitarianism.

he starts to say it, but it gives him a stroke

I had so much fun reading it

"The little loves..."

https://twitter.com/monfrat/status/737642983802179590

The larger culture itself needs to be revived in four distinct ways: We need to be more communal in an age that’s overly individualistic; we need to be more morally minded in an age that’s overly utilitarian; we need to be more spiritually literate in an age that’s overly materialistic; and we need to be more emotionally intelligent in an age that is overly cognitive.

A tradition, whether it’s Thanksgiving dinner, an annual family reunion or a burial ceremony, takes a physical activity and infuses it with enchantment.

We need to be more communal in an age that’s overly individualistic

this fucking guy never met a republican he couldn't front for until trump came along

every time this thread is revived I am disappointed

How can a man who is wealthy from writing write so poorly?

The larger culture itself needs to be revived in four distinct ways: We need to be more communal in an age that’s overly individualistic; we need to be more morally minded in an age that’s overly utilitarian; we need to be more spiritually literate in an age that’s overly materialistic; and we need to be more emotionally intelligent in an age that is overly cognitive.

A tradition, whether it’s Thanksgiving dinner, an annual family reunion or a burial ceremony, takes a physical activity and infuses it with enchantment.

what's this, the voiceover from triumph of the will

it sounds like he's been talking to his rabbi a lot

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CsesuuZXgAA6hL0.jpg:small

oh good

YES

When Europeans first settled this continent they had two big thoughts. The first was that black people were not human beings. The second was that it was acceptable, therefore, to treat them like cattle.

http://verysmartbrothas.com/the-10-worst-sentences-in-david-brookss-the-uses-of-patriotism-ranked-from-this-is-fucking-stupid-to-this-dude-is-on-crack/

i personally rested in peace after reading this garbage

Who the fuck is reading Brooks and nodding and agreeing with him, I want to slap those people

i mean he's no maureen dowd

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/opinion/donald-trumps-sad-lonely-life.html

The funniest part is the gorilla bit

But maybe i just find anthropomorphism funnier than most ppl idk

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C28eXmVUoAAZnu9.jpg

http://bavatuesdays.com/files/2013/03/socialism-big-lebowski-ethos.gif

Lickspittle

Ugh I really hoped he was dead this time

Hope springs eternal

https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2017/01/24/you-will-never-be-good-enough-for-david-brooks/

^^^ I read it this afternoon. Wonderful.

Why do people, who know how to read and write, spend so much time doing both to the NYT pundits? Please shout that at the top of your lungs to get the effect of how I feel about the question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lba_yQHzZCo

why attach that video though

I forgot the caption where I think writing about david brooks instead of doing anything else is probably like that guy going YO instead of calling 911? as I write about people writing about david brooks because I'm procrastinating on some work that I really need to do tonight because the idea that I'll have time to do it tomorrow is laughable.

I think really the metaphor I believe in is that the gas tanker flipping over and exploding is the NYT editorial page, America is all the other vehicles, and we are the guy with the phone, and nothing we do matters.

@dick_nixon
The much-younger woman who played no part in David Brooks' divorce, the "research assistant," I wonder how she feels.

Why do people, who know how to read and write, spend so much time doing both to the NYT pundits?

I know there are several blogger who feel it is their duty to analyze every word Brooks (& other NYT columnists) writes because this is the ruling class talking to itself.

After this sad attempt at a Presidency implodes, there will be several takes on how it was the fault of our era and social media in particular that Trump could not succeed, followed by immediate and yet extremely well-thought-out ripostes from all of these intelligent bloggers, and it will be yet another drop in the opportunity cost bucket of idle smart people, and Bobo will keep his job.

I can discuss Brooks and overthrow Trump and chew gum at the same time.

try not to swallow the gum

my throat can only swallow gin

Healthy approach.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/the-politics-of-cowardice.html

dayummm

he looked for the good news in others and saw the arc of history bending toward progress.

god stfu Reagan hated MLK

every time this thread gets bumped I get my hopes up

god stfu Reagan hated MLK

― Οὖτις, Friday, January 27, 2017

lol yes

xp same

he looked for the good news in others and saw the arc of history bending toward progress.

This was the same Reagan started his campaign at a _very_ particular spot in the South, should be also noted.

ok so did he get fired from the times or what

(reference: David Brooks vs. George Will)

That thread says yes, but he has a column today unfortunately (which isn't as objectionable as usual, but probably contradicts stuff he has written in the past)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/opinion/the-cuomo-college-fiasco.html?ref=opinion

But his FB page says ex-columnist for NY Times

Oh god david brooks wrote a column about how no one wants to hang out with him anymore pic.twitter.com/428umTxgui

— eve peyser (@evepeyser) July 7, 2017

rough divorce eh

he remarried a much younger woman, yes?

oh did he? I have no idea.

awaiting his new book The Ghosting of America

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2017/04/30/new-york-times-columnist-david-brooks-weds-his-former-researcher-anne-snyder/

I keep opening this thread hoping the title is true

you are "mean" as the Yam would say

one day, Alfred, one day...

shakey he married a younger woman who was formerly his researcher.

his first wife, a gentile, also changed HER FIRST NAME to Sarah when they married.

what the fuck

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DEdC8ngXkAAyQ8J.jpg

You know, I had JUST decided not to click on that column.

lol

today's David Brooks column is worth reading pic.twitter.com/6UbURCmVAc

— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) July 11, 2017

I think this friend of his just hated Italians but Brooks's larger point still stands: inequality creates culture fissures and resentments

'instinctively, i led her into a gourmet sandwich shop / i don't know why but I had to start it somewhere'

Typical Brooks nonsense, but I'm surprised there are so many presumably sensible people in the twitterverse who are equally baffled by Italian cold cuts.

I think this friend of his just hated Italians but Brooks's larger point still stands: inequality creates culture fissures and resentments

Sure, but this idea that "cultural" inequality is the true source of these issues and not the cost and access issues he passingly cites is back-asswards. (That seems to be the implication in the excerpts I've seen, anyway, not giving that shit a click)

Totally.

so many presumably sensible people in the twitterverse who are equally baffled by Italian cold cuts.

really?!

i don't know what any of those things are (except pomodoro). that's not what's bad about the column.

at least he did some shoe leather reporting on this one. He could have just written about the scene in the Wire where the kids go to a fancy restaurant.

u guys keep getting my hopes up

David Brooks: This sandwich has lettuce. It's leaves you can eat.
Idiot friend (went to non-Ivy League college): ME NO EAT LEAF! NO LETTRUS!

— Pixelated Boat (@pixelatedboat) July 11, 2017

Typical Brooks nonsense, but I'm surprised there are so many presumably sensible people in the twitterverse who are equally baffled by Italian cold cuts.

― Moodles, Tuesday, July 11, 2017 10:33 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm... confused... then again this is why they keep him on, he's eminently hateable

Ime if you don't live somewhere with a heritage of Italian immigration you won't know what those things are. Maybe salami. Maybe not.

exactly^^ brooks conflates regional differences w/class distinctions

but he assumes a lot, i mean tastes change. my non-elite midwestern relatives eat sushi now.

Any actual Italian neighborhood would blow his mind apparently. Which is insane.

xp yes of course. Same here. :)

hey i never ate anything other than iceberg lettuce until college where was this funky GREEN STUFF (romaine) on the salad bar, google caesar chavez/lettuce boycott for details

also it's obvious that this "friend" does not exist

composite of the many people who didn't attend college he's lunched with over the years

then why wasn't the meat bologna

When yours truly, the urbane, worldly Alabamian, and my buddy from the Detroit burbs who was fluent in Japanese, took our no-college-degree having asses to the Okonomiyaki joint in San Francisco that was called Okonomiyaki, and we had a bunch of our no-college-degree having fellow enlisted folks with us, we would help explain the menu items to them, so that nobody got any jump scares from the bonito flakes or the tempura veggies. The point being if you are "friends" with a person then they should trust you to explain stuff to them without being a condescending shit, regardless of your class backgrounds or height or hairstyle or what ever the fuck, and you should be happy to help explain to them what the words in the foreign language are. Also, if you are "friends," then you might have an inkling of what they like to eat and which menu items would be good analogs to their favorite foods.

David Brooks has no friends, which is why his last column was about bailing, and this one is about taking his gardener out for lunch.

i do have a university degree but it's not in gabagool. like many people i have eaten in an italian deli, which is not a sign of class - italian deli sandwiches are often hearty and affordable. though I'm sure not in the bougie place brooks frequents.

but like also all those things are just fucking ham

David Brooks has no friends, which is why his last column was about bailing, and this one is about taking his gardener out for lunch.

Tooth bomb.

'instinctively, i led her into a gourmet sandwich shop / i don't know why but I had to start it somewhere'

Haha

lost Morrissey lyric

I want to eat with the common people

Trump: This Russia thing is busting wide open. What can possibly distract from it?
Bannon: (Pause) I have an idea. Get me David Brooks....

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 11, 2017

If I did a Patreon campaign to raise money for David Brooks fan fiction, would you support?

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 11, 2017

loathe to credit matty glesias but this does look like the place brooks was talking about

I think the infamous sandwich summit took place at Radici on Capitol Hill. pic.twitter.com/fhlYs1YGaV

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 11, 2017

it's also a really bad menu and having to untangle what different sandwiches are, when the descriptions are _bad_, when you're already having to deal with eating lunch with david brooks is a bit much. don't think that has anything to do with education level

It’s not really the prices that ensure 80 percent of your co-shoppers at Whole Foods are, comfortingly, also college grads; it’s the cultural codes.

For real tho, it's the prices.

prices + locations imo

No kidding. My sister-in-law recommended some random bullshit chicken salad at Whole Foods to us because she was trying to seduce us into the paleo lifestyle; it was bland as fuck and cost $18/lb. I have refused to set foot in one in the intervening 2.5 years.

(Here you can glimpse the Brooks imagination at work, visualizing people without college degrees wandering scared and confused through the aisles of Whole Foods, gaping at exotic items like peanut butter and apple butter and butter.)

I'm sure I'm biased because I'm Italian, but that Yglesias post is exactly what I was talking about. That menu just reads like a bunch standard Italian sandwich stuff and it describes the sandwiches fairly clearly, but I guess people freeze in terror when confronted with scary Italian words? Did the Mexican restaurant they went to use words like tacos, tortillas, queso, etc.? Is there a difference I'm missing? Both cuisines have been a part of US culture for a long time.

parentheticals on menus should be a strict no-no, that's practically the blink tag of menu UX

My own personal bias is that you should shop at Whole Foods because my sis works at an SF location, so please give her money, even if indirectly. (That said, I don't shop at one myself; I am a horrible person.)

I'm sure I'm biased because I'm Italian, but that Yglesias post is exactly what I was talking about. That menu just reads like a bunch standard Italian sandwich stuff and it describes the sandwiches fairly clearly, but I guess people freeze in terror when confronted with scary Italian words? Did the Mexican restaurant they went to use words like tacos, tortillas, queso, etc.? Is there a difference I'm missing? Both cuisines have been a part of US culture for a long time.

I think the difference is that the proliferation of different Italian coldcuts wasn't really a thing until about 5 years ago, and even then it started mostly in gourmet delis. I have incredibly bourgie, clued-in friends and I didn't start hearing about "soppressata" as a specific type of coldcut until mmmmmaybe 2010?

(Meanwhile, when I was in college in the early 90s, queso dip was becoming A Thing, so that's now been in the public consciousness as a default consumption choice for 25+ years.)

imo it's a difference in menu appearance and presentation, it reminds me of of a few french-style bakeries I've been to.

the format of having a menu item name in bold (or just numbered) followed by the prime ingredients, maybe not all ingredients, is the standard in every chain and a lot of smaller shops that are seen as class-neutral or lower middle class, whatever

the ingredient laundry list thing is the format a bakery here uses for their sandwiches/salads and I've been tripped up because I default to "I'll have the roast beef sandwich" could mean two different things because the one I didn't notice had roast beef listed third

tbh I've had sandwiches with all those italian meats at less classy joints and you just say "I'll take a number five" or whatever because the ordering system is made for convenience and not presentation

it's not the meat and cheese names tripping up people, or if it is, it's not the stumbling block

sometimes you just want a hot meal on a plate and not an overpriced sandwich, too

is that a metaphor for Bannon

I'm sure I'm biased because I'm Italian, but that Yglesias post is exactly what I was talking about. That menu just reads like a bunch standard Italian sandwich stuff

Yesssssssss if u are ITALIAN or are accustomed to an area with Italian immigrant influence over the historical cuisine. Particularly outside of cities/the East Coast, that leaves out a lot of places, a whole bunch of which were like reverse-introduced to perfectly normal sandwich meats as gourmet items that are expensive and not locally available.

Exactly what Dan said, basically.

I would almost bet David Brooks has no friend and he's extrapolating his own confusion into a fictional colleague so as to not admit he has no idea what those meats are

Perhaps he was writing a column about his impending vegetarianism and was confused.

xxp: Yeah, growing up in MN we had "bologna" and "salami" and "pepperoni" and that was it. Even living in the Boston area after college, I mostly remember seeing all of these things loosely billed as "salami" unless I was in an Italian restaurant trying to flex on its antipasti plates until someone decided that money was to be made introducing the nouveau riche to the names of different varieties of cured meat.

Burrata in Paradise

hey I only learned about capicola after working at Miami Subs in the early '90s.

tbh I grew up in an area with a large italian immigrant base, have a family tradition where we get a bunch of meats/cheese from this local italian grocery around the holidays for a lunch, and even then we seldom branched out further from coppicola and basic salami

ha Alfred, I was just about to reminisce about my life-changing introduction to burrata, which was... 4 years ago?

actually I think we did get soppressata on occasion but never called it anything other than "dry salami"

Not to mention my mom thinks all foods w too much flavor are morally suspect, and cured meats like ham contain sodium nitrate and might give u cancer, so we were down to roast beef, sliced turkey, or PB&J for sandwiches p much. Peppercorn salami? As if.

actually I think we did get soppressata on occasion but never called it anything other than "dry salami"

^^^^^ this rings very true; my take was that there were many different types of salami but they were all called "salami" and it was kind of mindblowing to realize that they all had names I'd never learned

hey I only learned about capicola after working at Miami Subs in the early '90s.

yeah this stuff was on chain deli menus in the early 90s

and we NEVER sold it. One time the manager put in an order for 14 capicola subs to fuck with us.

yeah this stuff was on chain deli menus in the early 90s

... where you grew up. They were hardly any chain delis where I grew up, let alone any with this stuff on the menu.

AND in the early 90s I was a broke college student who ate a good 99% of his meals on campus, so there was little-to-no opportunity for me to find a deli with this stuff on the menu.

There was a local sandwich place I used to go to in Back Bay that had an Italian sub with bunch of this stuff on it but I never knew what any of it was and, when I looked at the sandwich, it all looked like salami so I categorized it all as "salami" and stopped trying to sub-categorize.

there was a chain deli on my campus and I worked there but yes I did not live everywhere in the US

I mean, the mexican place thing is a red herring for classist shit, too, because there are fancy places in that realm but they're still few and far between

Nobody is going to pass a quiz on the differences between Oaxaca cheese and asadero before they get their tacos

So would our terrified friend have been soothed by a simple explanation like "it's salami with tomato on bread"?

didn't mean to imply I was addressing yr personal experience anyway, just noting that my introduction to these items corresponded to Alfred's in timing/venue

xp

because there are fancy places in that realm but they're still few and far between

in New York

(which, last time I checked, generally has total garbage Mexican food - so maybe Brooks got what he deserved: a shitty lunch)

in most places!

lol "most" you wanna poll some states

So would our terrified friend have been soothed by a simple explanation like "it's salami with tomato on bread"?

― Moodles, Tuesday, July 11, 2017 2:19 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think Brooks' description of his friend's demeanor was horrible but that is maybe the implication here, that he was too lazy to say this, or he had no idea himself

there's great Mexican food in West St Paul now thanks to immigration

CA, WA, OR, NM, AZ, NV, CO, TX, FL, IL = p big swathe of the country imo (and I'm probably leaving out some states just cuz I've never actually visited + eaten fancy mexican food in them)

xp

there are a few threads where we've gotten into it, but the places able to charge higher rates for authentic mexican cuisine run into the same cost/authenticity/lineage questions that lead us to bringing up Rick Bayless and it's a related but different issue

eh I'm not touching the "authenticity" debate aspect

Haaaaa

http://www.avclub.com/article/explaining-david-brooks-column-stupid-coworker-who-257938

As I explained to my grateful, greasy compatriot then—and as David Brooks so finely elucidated for us now—it was not their fault that the nation’s deeply entrenched class divisions fostered by systems built on institutionalized racism and economic disparity have left them so feeling marginalized. They just need to pull themselves by their Wonder Bread bags, stop eating gas station nachos, and get hip to David Foster Wallace, because that’s what’s really standing in their way

the plot thickens pic.twitter.com/dHEDsPXPIG

— KRANG T. NELSON (@KrangTNelson) July 11, 2017

which one of you is krang t nelson

that paragraph is pretty stupid but i'm surprised at the huge reaction to this

not I, although he gets much respect for his antics

exactly^^ brooks conflates regional differences w/class distinctions

― busy bee starski (m coleman), Tuesday, July 11, 2017 12:37 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark

i think this is right. fwiw is this the menu of the best hoagie shop in the philly area:

http://i.imgur.com/Wc47x3A.png

http://www.thesiciliandeli.com/id10.html

they have a big NRA sticker on their front door and didn't take cards until like a year ago. i think most of the big hoagie shops in philly specify which cold cuts. i still don't know the difference between soprasetta and gobbagool or w/e fwiw

I can't even begin to explain how much better Mexican food is in the Twin Cities than it was 20 yrs ago.

- full disclosure: mediocre college educated (4 yr degree, state school), have read Infinite Jest, did not know those particular sandwich meats

now that's how you make a menu

xpost -- I gather all you had then were various Taco Johns.

c’mon man, we had Chi-Chis by then

(at first I misread that as Tasty Tacos and was confused since that’s a long-running local chain that you’d have to visit here to know. also, I ate lunch there)

I miss the Mexican food on lake st so bad sometimes.

you can get capicola at frickin jimmy johns

https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/wj8gmx/italian-meats-arent-ruining-american-education

account of friend's horror needs more gabbagool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EHFRYVxhd8

c’mon man, we had Chi-Chis by then

― mh, Tuesday, July 11, 2017 6:07 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jejejeje tu mamá tiene chichis

indeed

Gotta love talkin’ about David Brooks online. :-)

As always respect 2 dayo 4 repping gloco's finest

Theory: Brooks has begun elevating his "thought pieces" into edgy, meta-level performance art since marrying his intern. Like Andy Kaufman.

— D (@hereticalstoic) July 18, 2017

Comparing Brooks to Andy Kaufman is offensive in any context, ironic or not

True. Brooks has made me laugh more than once. Kaufman, never.

good impression of brooks imo

they've both been mostly dead since 1984

This is not a party that’s going to produce a lot of modern-day versions of Jack Kemp.

God bless David Brooks that he intends this as a criticism.

Nice bit about Brooks-types(like Josh Barro and the Hamburger Problem):

https://thebaffler.com/the-jaundiced-eyeball/more-mush-from-the-taste-police

It is, at any rate, a cinch that the prescription of first resort for professional prognosticators of our national politics is this peculiar pundit brand of mind-cure. In this backward-spooling cosmology of our public life, the more stubborn and deep-seated challenges of structural reform, painstaking political organizing, and demanding long-term strategizing yield magisterially to the modulations of attitude, taste, and Zeitgeist fealty that the Vox Populi supposedly demands from its pundit class and the allied liberal cognoscenti.

who the fuck thinks this is writing

it certainly is a lot, of, words

david brooks actually cracked me up on the news hour on friday. he called trump an anti-mentor. everyone he helps becomes worse. his whole trump thing was good actually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3MXqcoPkMM

lol that was funny

http://pinstor.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/antimonitor.jpg

/pol/ with a graduate degree has logged on. pic.twitter.com/cvlZtPfHRQ

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) August 1, 2017

800+ words on manliness and what the greeks would think of today's masculine ideals, somehow no mention of the fact that in ancient greece men loved to fuck each other

thats pretty manly

too manly for brooks, clearly

the greeks were pro-gay sex, anti-gay marriage

brooks is terrible but he had a line on tv the other week (after spicer quit?) about trump being an "anti-mentor" that was good

8 posts up

ah yes that's probably where i saw it

yeah i watched another one of those Brooks & Shields videos last Friday, it was equally good. he's a good talking head!

ok, this theory from a friend checks out pic.twitter.com/w3WaGzMOJ3

— Peter Finocchiaro (@PLFino) August 1, 2017

oh hell yes

does brooks actually have a graduate degree or just the underserved confidence of a man with one

the latter. daddy was an english prof tho.

you just made me go check whether david brooks was the son of cleanth brooks, which would have messed my mind up bad

The manliest virtue is leaving your wife who you made change her first name for your assistant on a book called "The Road to Character"

— Will 🐋 Menaker (@willmenaker) August 1, 2017

ouch

daddy was an english prof tho.

genetic memory right?

Modesty means having the courage to rest in anxiety and not try to quickly escape it. Modesty means being tough enough to endure the pain of uncertainty and coming to appreciate that pain. Uncertainty and anxiety throw you off the smug island of certainty and force you into the free waters of creativity and learning. As Kierkegaard put it, “The more original a human being is, the deeper is his anxiety.”

Over the next few months I’m hoping to write several columns on why modesty and moderation are superior to the spiraling purity movements we see today. It seems like a good time for assertive modesty to take a stand.

"assertive modesty"

*masturbates modestly*

now we're speaking my language!

man who makes his living writing doggerel at length about concepts he has all of a sudden pulled out of his ass and decided are key to living the good life thinks he knows dick on a stick about modesty

The son of Cleanth and Garth Brooks

pretty sure everyone's seen that overt/covert white supremacy pyramid graphic that's been making the rounds, but the thing that sticks with me, especially in the face of comments like Brooks's, is that anything not explicitly in the overt category gets tagged as a "purity movement" or as imaginary

as if racism and a social divide ceases to exist if no one is actively screaming about it

truly the people who claim they're being discriminated against when no one is shouting epithets in their faces, they are the real racists

so still not dead?

David Brooks and Tombot can't stand those "purity movements"

do not book them on a cruise to the smug island of certainty

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=34035

Brooks' support for Damore is not an isolated example of contrarianism. I've been posting for more than a decade about his confused but consistent interest in the science of prejudice.

i love language log but these types of exercises presuppose that brooks has ever written a single word in good faith

i can't imagine looking at david brooks and seeing a real human there

got to buy it!

https://store.thebaffler.com/collections/successitudes/products/david-brooks-toilet-paper

the thought of brooks' smug face passing over my sphincter is making me want to never take a shit again

yeah the only toilet paper i've ever bought with someone's face on it was Osama Bin Laden in the fall of 2001

osamathumbsup.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIFXwi3VYAA1erZ.jpg

is that short for pajamas

meets pajama requirement

Please, Jerk, Make Sense

In all honesty I actually do think McArdle is good at the form and this is probably a good course!

Jesus, this one

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/opinion/this-american-land.html

Taibbi, Pareene and one of the Chapo guys read it on the Tarfu Report and it's so fucking amazing to hear actual humans read this garbage out loud.

And why does he refer to Teddy Roosevelt as TR?!

are they still doing the helium thing or did they run out? :)

They ran out. Now it's a drinking game.

I had a Brooks moment at dinner last night

This local restaurant, kind of a neighborhood place with pretty generic american fare prepared well, has some menu item with a title like "Chef's Favorite Chicken."

The waitress explained to us that it is, in fact, Chicken Souvlaki but they were puzzled it wasn't getting ordered very much so they changed the name. It's now one of their most popular dishes

Customer base is mostly white midwesterners, middle class income, seemed to be mostly people 50+ years old and a handful of families with kids

so not the typical Slowdive audience

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-gets-story-on-wage-growth-and-productivity-completely-wrong

"multiculturalism is the theology of the educated class" I don't think David Brooks interacts with nonwhite people https://t.co/s44YbHyNgI

— Bree Newsome (@BreeNewsome) September 26, 2017

jesus christ he continues to excel at being a fucking idiot, but ever since someone posted a video of him on PBS with Mark Shields, I've been watching their segments p regularly... he comes off so much better in that context, & never says anything dumb or particularly conservative. Maybe he farms this shit out.

the pbs brooksbot is programmed to appeal to pbs viewers. the nyt brooks algorithm is programmed to appeal to a tribe of ancient demons who will soon emerge from hibernation to reclaim dominion over all humanity I think

jesus christ he continues to excel at being a fucking idiot, but ever since someone posted a video of him on PBS with Mark Shields, I've been watching their segments p regularly... he comes off so much better in that context, & never says anything dumb or particularly conservative. Maybe he farms this shit out.

― flappy bird,

same on NPR. These venues keep him employed and on the lecture circuit.

Lately I've been thinking about whether Bret Stephens may in fact be worse than David Brooks, and whether he deserves his own thread

This local restaurant, kind of a neighborhood place with pretty generic american fare prepared well, has some menu item with a title like "Chef's Favorite Chicken."

The waitress explained to us that it is, in fact, Chicken Souvlaki but they were puzzled it wasn't getting ordered very much so they changed the name. It's now one of their most popular dishes

Customer base is mostly white midwesterners, middle class income, seemed to be mostly people 50+ years old and a handful of families with kids

― mh, Thursday, September 14, 2017 10:06 AM

The rhythm of these sentences has the zonked-out pseudo-erudition of the average Brooks column

I'm not ragging on you btw! I'm pointing out how they're an eerie Brooks copy

Stephens was hired specifically to be worse than Brooks, but Brooks is rising to the challenge

shakey mo collier has been falsely getting my hopes up for more than ten years now

epic troll

I’m officially a fan of this idea that DB has outsourced his column to a ghost, like Jim Davis or Garry Trudeau did with their respective predictable effluvia

jesus christ

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/what-sincerity-looks-like.html?mcubz=3

the only small consolation from that dreck is that he didn't turn it into a metaphor for Obama vs. Hillary, which is what I was expecting.

rolling worst music writing

i will never get over people thinking that a pop star's lyrics are like court testimony or something. when it was really some dude on the toilet texting back and forth with t-swift an hour before they hit the studio. "wt rhyms with drama?" "uh karma?"

DB hoping to land at Pitchfork

(I skimmed that column bcz life is short)

I'm sure there's something subtly insidious buried somewhere in that pap, but I don't have the energy to dig for it.

how did his editor let him start two separate paragraphs with 'it's interesting...'

editor?

[imghttp://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intel/2011/07/05/05_davidbrooks.w710.h473.2x.jpg].img]

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intel/2011/07/05/05_davidbrooks.w710.h473.2x.jpg

That 'sincerity' column was his usual half-baked near-nonsense, but I did like the description of Taylor Swift barking "see what you made me do" over and over, because anyone who says "see what you made me do" deserves to be kicked until they stop.

fuego!

LOL @ "It’s been a long time since the Sex Pistols burst on the scene."

surely that should have been "came on the scene"

Didn’t the Dead Boys do that in the kitchens at CBGBs?

David Brooks on the scene
know what I mean?

OMG pic.twitter.com/X2xy8ha2qT

— Marshall Steinbaum (@Econ_Marshall) October 4, 2017

David Brooks: the only way to combat Trump's hokey white supremacist narrative is with... another hokey white supremacist narrative pic.twitter.com/0dh0MaRnx5

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) October 3, 2017

"we are not a country of bashing immigrants & building walls. We are a country of genocidal westward expansion & butchering natives". Oh ok.

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) October 3, 2017

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNua0B0UQAAkajj.jpg

GAH mookie why did you inflict that on me??????

Loooool

rofl

also his 5-word proposal to his second wife

his ghostwriter is definitely a double agent

So you begin getting to know him or her better, first over a meal, then through activities.

say what u like about brooks but this guy fucks

...up everyone's day

^^^could not be more otm

OK the excerpt posted above may be lol but I made the mistake of reading the full piece and now I am so fucking pissed and disgusted. This guy is worse than lol and pathetic. He is so fucking gross.

yeah i barfed. horny prospector.

just a horny prospector

*dead*

sung to the tune of "I am a Lonesome Hobo!

"This time, for sure!"

Oh.

every time this thread pops up I see the title and I *know* i'm going to be disappointed but I click anyway thinking "maybe today really is the day."

https://thebaffler.com/blessed-and-brightest/a-liberal-comity-show

Wherein Brooks and Robert George had a civility-off with Melissa Harris-Perry and Howard Dean held by a group unsarcastically calling itself “Intelligence Squared”

every damn time.

^

One gets the feeling these days that we are all sliding towards certain bleak inevitabilities -- the final collapse of American democracy, for instance, or a David Brooks column on Cat Person.

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) December 11, 2017

please tell me that doesn't actually exist

give it time, give it time

David Brooks woke up Monday and was the 15,604,880th person to think 'guys what if EXTREMES on BOTH SIDES were the same--like a sort of horseshoe' and got paid roughly 3,500 for the article

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) December 12, 2017

doesn't sound like the horseshoe i know

Brooks is going to independently discover fishhook theory in 2020

Thank you for your service, sir. I wasn't ready to talk about the power of touch before, but because of you, I finally am. David, you're the guy I want to have this conversation with. Please call me at your earliest convenience. pic.twitter.com/qP8SZsH2a3

— eve peyser (@evepeyser) January 19, 2018

he’s still alive huh

And feelin’ virile

Love this dude like I loved Nino.

don't you mean Sheev

Darth Brooks does have a marginally better ring to it than several other Darths that have been suggested over the years

I dunno, I’d confuse that way too much with President Skroob/Dark Helmet

David Brooks really wants to know he’s scoring with his new wife

Just what we were all waiting for, Brooks on Jordan Peterson. Thanks, NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opinion/jordan-peterson-moment.html

This is like Werner Herzog gets turned down for prom pic.twitter.com/pKBDRhEb0i

— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) January 26, 2018

..Women are choosy maters. … Most men do not meet female human standards.”

Brooks quoting this because his wife reminded him he just baaaaarely makes her standards

it's fine though he knows he can just go out and buy another one when she's fed up

stupidity of the point aside, something about the wording "women are choosy mater" just grates, what an ugly terrible writer

good too be a man and accept whatever woman will take you

this is the kind of writing you can only solicit on a six-figure salary

choosy maters choose jif

lol

Also this: "Most men do not meet female human standards" strikes me as highly implausible. Is he trying to inflate the significance of the fact that he mated?

For example:

https://www.webmd.com/men/news/20060601/how-many-men-become-fathers

Nearly 50% of men age 15-44 report having had at least one kid (including adoptions, which is probably not a huge percentage). But that doesn't even account for the huge number of people in that age range who just haven't had kids *yet*.

The always salty Tom Scocca is extra salty today in his Brooks thread

Every David Brooks column is a humiliating self-portrait but this one really gets to the core of his vacuous nebbishy authoritarianism pic.twitter.com/ykqh4ghWVO

— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) January 26, 2018

yeah, for example this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/user/nigahiga/videos?sort=p&flow=grid&view=0

has six videos with over 40M views EACH, including "how to be ninja" and "how to be gangster"

xp the use of "appeal to authority" is kind of amazing. who is Tyler Cowen? well, he's David Brooks's friend. what makes him a good judge of what makes someone a public intellectual? not sure here, but he's David's friend, and we trust David

"Choosey Maters" is my favorite Smokey song iirc

apparently Tyler Cowen is a libertarian economist and blogger, not coincidentally another shithead who also gets paid to write by the NYT.

tyler cowen is a big-wig dignity wraith at george mason university (the academic version of mordor) funded by the sauron boys, charles and david koch

https://economics.gmu.edu/people/tcowen

a real doozy from our boy today. apparently Democrats are throwing away their chance at winning overwhelming legislative majorities simply because they can't shake this nettlesome need to defend a woman's sovereignty over her own body. at one point Brooks envisions a world in which Roe v Wade no longer exists and the decision of whether to keep abortion legal is left up to the states. the way he hand-waves the idea that (in his own estimation) roughly 40% of states might make it illegal literally took my breath away.

hey they can always move to a nice blue state like his

this fuckin guy

We need to acknowledge our vulnerability here.

Isn't this like the definition of concern trolling?

next column is gonna be about your decades-younger wife taking issue with your misogynist views

i still can't get over the huge disparity between his idiotic & inarticulate columns and his appearances on PBS with mark shields, where he comes off fairly reasonable and milquetoast. whoever's ghost-writing his columns is trolling

I can; different environments draw out different aspects of our personality, don’t they? One can be a real asshole online and quite personable face-to-face and be so unconsciously

it's not just a difference of disposition, he's ideologically a different person. i get what you're saying though

Maybe the camera light triggers some deep personality flip; the Manchurian Pundit or something

Often a fellow with a new young wife becomes an embarrassment. David Brooks is the same embarrassment he was with the old wife.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) February 21, 2018

https://www.mediaite.com/online/twitter-blasts-david-brooks-for-suggesting-the-left-should-show-respect-to-gun-owners/

Sadly, not that kind of blasting.

I had this weird dream, it was some TV show where David Brooks was going to be "embedded" as a player on an NBA team (I guess like George Plimpton & the Lions?)

anyway I was watching this show on TV and he was sitting there wearing a basketball uniform and shoes and stuff but still wearing his "smart guy" glasses and was just sitting there in the timeout never shutting up and making all these "observations" and the players were clearly annoyed then he was actually talking to the coach about the play coming out of timeout as if he expected to actually play in the game