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More on David Brooks

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IMG_8830Apropos punching David Brooks in the face: you could do that, or you could read Timothy Burke accomplishing the same thing with words. Or you could do both. But regardless of whether you think the keyboard is mightier than the fist, you should really read Tim’s post.

A sample:

I think the thing I hate most about most mainstream punditry, liberal and conservative, but especially David Brooks, is a brutal combination of two connected syndromes: complete lack of self-reflection and a relentless moving of goalposts to conform to the conventional wisdom of the week. It is what betrays most of them as being people without abiding values, and it is what underscores how little any of them talk with people outside their own protected worlds. When I say “hate”, in a few cases I really mean it. David Brooks most of all: I think he now belongs in a select rank of the most noxiously sanctimonious American essayists in the country’s history. Whom, I might add, are hard for anyone but historians and literary specialists to name, because they are so forgettable once their era passes.

The commentary is never about the “I” that is writing. So today Brooks is his usual self: the marches were very nice, you see, but they’re about the wrong thing. And also it’s the wrong time–it’s always the wrong time, strangely enough, for this kind of politics, according to Brooks, except at some point in the past that Brooks usually knows almost nothing about. (Protip hint, should he ever grow curious: there has never been a social movement in this country or any other which included everyone in all segments of society. Every “success”, like the civil rights movement, the favorite of sanctimonious pundits, had numerous enemies and was socially divisive.)

Anyway, here’s a true story. Sometimes, when I was sitting in the carpool line waiting to pick up my daughter from school, I’d see Brooks park and run inside. And I’d think, “oh, yeah. Brooks is a parent at one of the most über-liberal, LGBTQ-friendly, teach about social-justice-y-things schools in Washington, DC.”

That’s it.

I didn’t say that it was a good story.

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