RIP David Brooks

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not really

unorthodox economic revenge (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 13 October 2011 16:08 (thirteen years ago)

to be fair, his soul is dead

tylerw, Thursday, 13 October 2011 16:09 (thirteen years ago)

maybe, someday

am0n, Thursday, 13 October 2011 16:10 (thirteen years ago)

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

ice cr?m, Thursday, 13 October 2011 16:16 (thirteen years ago)

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

lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 13 October 2011 16:23 (thirteen years ago)

lol i am ded

am0n, Thursday, 13 October 2011 16:27 (thirteen years ago)

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

curmudgeon, Thursday, 13 October 2011 17:53 (thirteen years ago)

Bump this thread whenever he dies.

RIP, hell needed a bunch of cretinous demographic catchphrases.

Axolotl with an Atlatl (Jon Lewis), Thursday, 13 October 2011 17:53 (thirteen years ago)

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."

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 13 October 2011 18:00 (thirteen years ago)

Frum has more brains than Brooks.

lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 13 October 2011 18:00 (thirteen years ago)

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

horseshoe, Thursday, 13 October 2011 18:01 (thirteen years ago)

lol xp

horseshoe, Thursday, 13 October 2011 18:01 (thirteen years ago)

Bobos in mourning.

something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 13 October 2011 18:05 (thirteen years ago)

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

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 13 October 2011 18:05 (thirteen years ago)

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

lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 13 October 2011 18:09 (thirteen years ago)

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

horseshoe, Thursday, 13 October 2011 18:09 (thirteen years ago)

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

lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 13 October 2011 19:42 (thirteen years ago)

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.

curmudgeon, Thursday, 13 October 2011 20:01 (thirteen years ago)

oh douchehatpaws

unorthodox economic revenge (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 13 October 2011 20:22 (thirteen years ago)

more like Ross don'tdouthat amirite

unorthodox economic revenge (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 13 October 2011 20:23 (thirteen years ago)

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

ice cr?m, Thursday, 13 October 2011 20:29 (thirteen years ago)

lol

unorthodox economic revenge (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 13 October 2011 20:33 (thirteen years ago)

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

lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 13 October 2011 20:36 (thirteen years ago)

two months pass...

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

s.clover, Wednesday, 4 January 2012 02:57 (thirteen years ago)

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.

lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 4 January 2012 02:59 (thirteen years ago)

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??

call all destroyer, Wednesday, 4 January 2012 03:32 (thirteen years ago)

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

jhøshea nrq (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 4 January 2012 03:38 (thirteen years ago)

and you found a few islands of common ground

Sometimes he sounds just like Tom Friedman

curmudgeon, Wednesday, 4 January 2012 05:18 (thirteen years ago)

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.

Nicole, Wednesday, 4 January 2012 14:37 (thirteen years ago)

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

Nicole, Wednesday, 4 January 2012 14:37 (thirteen years ago)

one month passes...

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.

s.clover, Tuesday, 14 February 2012 18:08 (thirteen years ago)

He really is such a dunce.

Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 18:33 (thirteen years ago)

what the hell's he talking about

demolition with discretion (m coleman), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 20:29 (thirteen years ago)

yogurt, I think

max buzzword (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 21:51 (thirteen years ago)

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

curmudgeon, Tuesday, 14 February 2012 22:17 (thirteen years ago)

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

jaymc, Wednesday, 15 February 2012 14:15 (thirteen years ago)

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

curmudgeon, Wednesday, 15 February 2012 16:18 (thirteen years ago)

more like Roast in Piss

happiness is the new productivity (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 16:22 (thirteen years ago)

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.

curmudgeon, Wednesday, 15 February 2012 21:11 (thirteen years ago)

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

lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 February 2012 21:14 (thirteen years ago)

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

lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 February 2012 21:15 (thirteen years ago)

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.

Spleen of Hearts (kingfish), Friday, 17 February 2012 21:59 (thirteen years ago)

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

the fading ghost of schadenfreude whiplash (Hunt3r), Friday, 17 February 2012 22:24 (thirteen years ago)

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.

curmudgeon, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 19:20 (thirteen years ago)

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

max buzzword (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 19:28 (thirteen years ago)

a few generations ago, interracial marriage was against the law

max buzzword (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 19:28 (thirteen years ago)

a few generations ago, bestiality was legal in Florida

ENERGY FOOD (en i see kay), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 19:36 (thirteen years ago)

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....

everything else is secondary (Lee626), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 19:41 (thirteen years ago)

beyond self-parody at this point

ploppawheelie V (k3vin k.), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 00:26 (thirteen years ago)

Ok can this just be a thread about Davis Brooks ffs

mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Thursday, 25 January 2024 03:35 (one year ago)

thanks map :heart:

Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 25 January 2024 03:38 (one year ago)

I'm still waiting for the announcement of his demise.

immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 25 January 2024 16:46 (one year ago)

Grim Reaper doesn't want to go near him

Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Thursday, 25 January 2024 17:04 (one year ago)

thanks map :heart:

― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, January 25, 2024 3:38 AM (seventeen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

you're welcome babe

ꙮ (map), Thursday, 25 January 2024 21:33 (one year ago)

two weeks pass...

Doth he not have feels.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/opinion/trump-republicans-immigration.html

Ned Raggett, Friday, 9 February 2024 16:30 (one year ago)

Down at the bottom: "READ 1230 COMMENTS"

No, I don't think I will.

Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Friday, 9 February 2024 16:33 (one year ago)

He thought he was beyond shockable

symsymsym, Friday, 9 February 2024 16:39 (one year ago)

"are we the baddies????"

Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 9 February 2024 16:41 (one year ago)

My progressive readers are now thinking: Have you not been paying attention? Donald Trump has owned this party for years. If he told them to kill the immigration compromise because he needed a campaign issue, they were going to kill that proposal.

To which I respond: I don’t think you quite understand what just happened.

Do go on.

Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Friday, 9 February 2024 17:05 (one year ago)

"Let me recount my dinner conversation with my wife, who I think, as I told her at the time, doesn't quite understand what just happened"

Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 9 February 2024 17:37 (one year ago)

this man is a walking definition of fatuity

more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 9 February 2024 20:24 (one year ago)

They have to mouth the Trumpian prejudices to survive in this era, but somewhere deep inside, the party of Reagan still lives in their souls.

Uff da

Rich E. (Eric H.), Friday, 9 February 2024 20:31 (one year ago)

it doesn't matter a damn what's deep inside their souls because they sold their souls to Trump and are no longer in possession of them

more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 9 February 2024 20:35 (one year ago)

"souls"

poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 9 February 2024 20:57 (one year ago)

lol the party of Reagan is where the problems really started, asshole

Surfin' burbbhrbhbbhbburbbb (sleeve), Friday, 9 February 2024 22:03 (one year ago)

when will this fucker really die, c'mon 2024

Surfin' burbbhrbhbbhbburbbb (sleeve), Friday, 9 February 2024 22:03 (one year ago)

seriously, thread lets me down time and again

mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Friday, 9 February 2024 23:23 (one year ago)

LOL I know. Every damn time.

Seriously, "the party of Reagan." I spent the Reagan years protesting his illegal wars, go fuck yourself.

immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 9 February 2024 23:37 (one year ago)

Spouse suggested that I love to hate on DB the way I watched 60 Minutes to hate on Andy Rooney back in the day, but it is truly a different thing with me and Brooks

mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Saturday, 10 February 2024 03:52 (one year ago)

two months pass...

Ugh, he's definitely more smug than Rooney was. I haven't read him in awhile and then I saw this annoying bit--

Last fall I argued that Joe Biden was the Democratic Party’s strongest 2024 presidential nominee. I believed that for two reasons: He has been an effective president, and he is the Democrat most likely to appeal to working-class voters.

I still believe Biden is the party’s strongest candidate, but I’m getting more pessimistic about his chances of winning.

The first reason is not political rocket science: Voters prefer the Republicans on key issues like inflation and immigration. Most Donald Trump supporters I know aren’t swept up in his cult of personality; they vote for him because they are conservative types who like G.O.P. policies and think Trump is a more effective executive than Biden.

"Most Donald Trump supporters that I know" ...

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/24/opinion/thepoint?searchResultPosition=1#biden-poll-young-voters

curmudgeon, Friday, 26 April 2024 00:33 (one year ago)

and think Trump is a more effective executive than Biden.

Brooks is huffing something if he takes this at face value.

more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 26 April 2024 01:13 (one year ago)

every single trump supporter david brooks knows supports trump because he'll lower their taxes and/or abandon all regulation of them or their businesses

that is what being 'effective' means

mookieproof, Friday, 26 April 2024 02:12 (one year ago)

yes, but that was amply covered by "prefer the Republicans on key issues". I perfectly understand that the the follow-on reference to "inflation and immigration" was just camouflage for lower business, personal, and capital gains taxes combined with reckless deregulation, both of which Trump leaves entirely to his minions in Congress to make happen. He has no interest in such petty details as writing and passing legislation. He just likes to sit in the big chair and give orders.

more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 26 April 2024 02:43 (one year ago)

*reads* this guy is the most dangerous bastard in the public discourse because people don't realize or won't admit how motherfucking dishonest and/or deluded and stupid he is.

schrodingers cat was always cool (Hunt3r), Friday, 26 April 2024 03:49 (one year ago)

eleven months pass...

In which Our David quietly has a nervous breakdown:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trumpism-maga-populism-power-pursuit/682116/

the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 7 April 2025 15:13 (two months ago)

gtfo with this "to be sure" graf

Of course, the left made it easy for them. The left really did purge conservatives from universities and other cultural power centers. The left really did valorize a “meritocratic” caste system that privileged the children of the affluent and screwed the working class. The left really did pontificate to their unenlightened moral inferiors on everything from gender to the environment. The left really did create a stifling orthodoxy that stamped out dissent. If you tell half the country that their voices don’t matter, then the voiceless are going to flip over the table.

jaymc, Monday, 7 April 2025 15:16 (two months ago)

Those grafs at this point are AI-generated.

the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 7 April 2025 15:16 (two months ago)

I love the image of young classy nice David in 1986 discussing Burke and Oakeshott over beers with bros while Reagan vetoes anti-apartheid legislation and AIDS victims die.

the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 7 April 2025 15:19 (two months ago)

pontificating to your moral inferiors about apartheid and epidemic deaths

Iza Duffus Hardy (President Keyes), Monday, 7 April 2025 15:22 (two months ago)

Watching his little segments on the PBS NewsHour has been hilarious the last few weeks. He seems on the verge of tears.

Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Monday, 7 April 2025 15:22 (two months ago)

As always with these Times weirdos, it all goes back to who the cool kids were in (their elite Ivy) college.

Crack's Addition (Boring, Maryland), Monday, 7 April 2025 18:08 (two months ago)

The MAGA elite rode to power on working-class votes, but—trust me, I know some of them—they don’t care about the working class.

this made me lol

also "real conservatives read burke"

doe on a hill (Deflatormouse), Monday, 7 April 2025 19:16 (two months ago)

he gave a speech to some group in San Francisco last week that I had on in the background, and it was pretty good actually.. I think he's a better speaker than a writer

Andy the Grasshopper, Monday, 7 April 2025 19:18 (two months ago)

I loathe this guy already but if I ever see him write “pontificate” unless it is self referential. . .

I cannot make anything approaching objective assessment so can someone please tell mw if this guy has ever displayed anything resembling a sense of humor?

mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Monday, 7 April 2025 20:13 (two months ago)

it's so obvious how all of his hand-wringing about elite liberal snobbery is just projection and weird sublimated class guilt. i think that he really thinks he has this ability to access how working class people think and feel, and that his horrid columns are some kind of megaphone for their interests, but he doesn't realize it's just the idle delusions of a racist wet fart who has never contributed anything of value of society

budo jeru, Monday, 7 April 2025 20:48 (two months ago)

I don’t know why I do this to myself but if I have to know about it so does the rest of ilx: https://weavers.org/about/

mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Tuesday, 8 April 2025 04:30 (two months ago)

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

papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, 8 April 2025 04:31 (two months ago)

Dude probably thinks of himself as some sort of Robin Hood, taking money from Bezos and Walmart to fund his little Aspen Institute vanity project.

mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Tuesday, 8 April 2025 04:32 (two months ago)

It's like what if you did politics, without getting your hands dirty

Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 8 April 2025 11:45 (two months ago)

Or: what if you did politics, but with a much younger spouse and a glassful of overpriced airport scotch

the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 8 April 2025 11:58 (two months ago)

Milo, my first thought was the Pete Seeger group

Crack's Addition (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, 8 April 2025 12:49 (two months ago)

If the same affluent families come out on top generation after generation, then no one should be surprised if the losers flip over the table.

In other words, a civic uprising has to have a short-term vision and a long-term vision. Short term: Stop Trump. Foil his efforts. Pile on the lawsuits. Turn some of his followers against him. The second is a long-term vision of a fairer society that is not just hard on Trump, but hard on the causes of Trumpism — one that offers a positive vision. Whether it’s the universities, the immigration system or the global economy, we can’t go back to the status quo that prevailed when Trump first rode down the escalator.

I’m really not a movement guy. I don’t naturally march in demonstrations or attend rallies that I’m not covering as a journalist. But this is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.


He’s so guileless that I’m sure this isn’t the first time this has been said, and when you scratch beneath the surface his vision of what this actually looks like is silly, but David Brooks welcome to the resistance?

Lavator Shemmelpennick, Saturday, 19 April 2025 10:55 (one month ago)

I'm s till not over Bill Kristol posting "Abolish ICE" this week

symsymsym, Saturday, 19 April 2025 14:29 (one month ago)

Kristol defended trans rights a couple months ago!

the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 19 April 2025 14:31 (one month ago)

werent all the og neocons (incld bill's dad) disillusioned former leftists anyway? probably just running home after their ideological chickens have come to roost

kendrick lamaze "to push a baby out" (m bison), Saturday, 19 April 2025 18:23 (one month ago)

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wRXEk7su62w/sddefault.jpg

jaymc, Saturday, 19 April 2025 18:25 (one month ago)

I don't think Brooks was ever a neocon: too young and too Reaganite.

the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 19 April 2025 18:28 (one month ago)

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.

― Aimless, Saturday, January 19, 2013 9:56 AM (twelve years ago)

It's been interesting to watch this man screaming as he flies through the air, anticipating the pavement.

more difficult than I look (Aimless), Saturday, 19 April 2025 18:49 (one month ago)

I don't think Brooks was ever a neocon: too young and too Reaganite.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, April 19, 2025 1:28 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah that "og" adjective is doing a lot of heavy lifting, i mean the guys who went right in the 50s and 60s who woulda predated brooks

kendrick lamaze "to push a baby out" (m bison), Saturday, 19 April 2025 19:25 (one month ago)


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