David Brooks has Gone Completely Mad

I sincerely hope this was an attempt to insult some friend of his.

To consider otherwise turns me melancholy.

Dead accurate assessment.

How dead? I couldn’t finish it.

But I did find this interesting sentence before I quit it:

He alone can captivate a gathering, while men hang eagerly on his words and women undress him with their eyes.

Brooks apparently learned female sexuality from dime novels. I suspect he once beat off furiously to Harold Robbins. Maybe still does.

In summary: Wholly wretched–the misshappen thing should have been condemned to a condom.

I actually think it’s kind of funny, though I really do wonder if this is the best he can do with the NYT Op-Ed real estate.

He’s just phoning it in. And when someone’s bad when he’s on form, that doesn’t make for a satisfying read.

The guy needs a career change. He’s dipping his toes into the shallow pool of supermarket paperback literature.

The pundit should allow a forgiving smile to play upon his lips before riposting, “Yes, I can see why you would have thought that, but the campaigns’ private polling suggests otherwise.”

References to the private polling are like the neutron bombs of political discourse – quiet but devastating.

One expects a candle-lit assignation, a provocative description of lingerie, and a vague evocation of some sort of climax.

Is it true that “during the cold war, only 38 percent of voters knew that the Soviet Union was not a member of NATO”?

It’s not working. Why can’t we have a constitutional monarchy like Kuwait or Jordan instead of all this nonsense? King Abdullah looks like a decent and smart guy.

I’ve read many a more sensible and entertaining Maureen Dowd column, and that’s a fancy way of saying it sucked. ass.

Art Buchwald was actually sometimes funny.

Indeed. I rarely read Brooks (the glosses from blogs seem to be enough), but the Nietzsche reference peaked my interest. Much to my chagrin, not only was the Nietzsche reference completely gratuitous, but it was whole column about how other people understand polling better than he does. Therefore, polls are worthless. And he gets paid for this? B-list bloggers do a better job.

I think it’s a fine column. Especially considering the alternatives for partisans this week. For example, Dionne’s column in the WaPost, combining “insights” from polling data with “arguments” for his chosen position. It isn’t persuasive in the least, and doesn’t even attempt to make me smile.

…and his shock at discovering he was on a tv set and not a ship

Nah, this is a malicious smear. The king is smart and merciful and gentle. His kingdom is peaceful and prosperous, his subjects are happy.

And it’s utterly disgusting that they didn’t allow him to have any lines in that show – what harm would that do? Wasn’t a member of the guild. Bastards.

Or even better—how about the best of all possible worlds: a brute with a democratic mob behind him, and behind them, a secret council of plutocrats pulling everyone’s strings?

That was the most concise summary of the Republican Party’s 2004 election platform I’ve seen so far.

Brooks is wrong from the very first sentence:

Deep at the end of every election campaign, after all the issues have been beaten to death, when only the blowhards are still thundering, attention turns to the outcome. Who is going to win this thing already?

Attention is obsessively focused on the outcome from the get go. If he is going to write drivel, he can at least make it jibe with reality.

When Nixon nominated the unimpressive Judge Harrold Carswell to fill a seat on the Supreme Court, Senator Hruska offered the following ringing endorsement: “Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Cardozos, and Frankfurters, and stuff like that there.”

So give the guy a chance. We can’t have all Krugmans, and, er, Krugmans, and Krugmans.