“He says”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/opinion/05brooks.html?ex=1275624000&en=8d105859570ef902&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss:
Entering the world of the Higher Shamelessness, they begin networking like mad, cultivating the fine art of false modesty and calculated friendships. The most nakedly ambitious – the blogging Junior Lippmanns – rarely win in the long run, but that doesn’t mean you can’t mass e-mail your essays for obscure online sites with little ‘Thought you might be interested’ notes.
They create informal mutual promotion societies, weighing who will be the crucial members of their cohort, engaging in the dangerous game of lateral kissing up, hunting for the spouse who will look handsomely supportive during some future confirmation hearing, nurturing a dislike for the person who will be the chief rival when the New Yorker editing job opens up in 2027.
He concedes it’s a “normal stage of life,” which maybe shows that (like Gollum) some shred of his former self remains. But honestly: do we really need prim little essays on climbing the greasy pole from someone who’s worked his way on to the Op-Ed page of the _New York Times_? What next? Contempt for authors who undertake book tours? Sneers for those who finagle visiting fellowships at Yale? Scorn for people with little or no insight into themselves or their own career paths?
{ 19 comments }
Barry 06.06.05 at 9:07 am
“…who’s worked his way on to the Op-Ed page of the New York Times? ”
And not through success at another endeavor, like some distinguished economist/NYT columnist whom I’ll not name (to preserve his privacy). AFAIK, Brooks’ only claim to fame as a columnist is being a columnist.
I’ve had a law of right-wing freudian projection for a while (I stole it from somebody in Salon’s TableTalk): right-wingers never criticize others for doing things, unless they’ve already done it much more themselves, or are planning to do so as soon as they can.
I haven’t had a day go by for the last few years without another confirmation of that law. I’ve promoted it to ‘Iron Law’, and am searching for a higher level. Any suggestions? ‘Steel Law’ doesn’t sound romantic enough. ‘Titanium Law’ is to technoid.
P ONeill 06.06.05 at 9:29 am
Yes it’s projection or its close equivalent, broad statements about the world based on introspection — that close study of the lives of people in Bethesda Md. and Ardmore Pa. can be a source of insight (and books, and columns).
josh 06.06.05 at 9:48 am
Ouch, and ouch! Still, while this may be a bit hard to stomach coming from Brooks, I think he should get some credit for actually writing a fairly insightful and accurate, if typically impressionistic and somewhat cartoonish, analysis. I often have the urge to scratch my head and wonder what reality Brooks is writing about; but in this case what he describes is all too familiar, and I could put faces and names of people I’ve encountered (not any of my blogging friends, of course) to his description of ‘Junior Lippmanns’.
The column might’ve been more winning if he had been a bit more wryly self-critical — if he had added, after the description quoted, some acknowledgment that he knew whereof he spoke because he had engaged in these follies himself. That would have made the column, I think, both incisive, and charming. Still, one has to respect someone who shows so much self-insight — Higher Shamelessness captures it well — even if he doesn’t realise that it’s self-insight.
As it is, I suggest that Brooks should from this point forth be refered to as ‘Junior Lippmann’.
Andy Vance 06.06.05 at 10:07 am
He concedes it’s a “normal stage of lifeâ€
Actually, he writes, “This is now a normal stage of life.” And earlier in the column he qualifies “[In] places like Washington and New York,” i.e., where elitist blue blood has spilled into the bobo-oisie.
See, in the Red States, you can succeed with good, old-fashioned ‘Murican values faith, merit and hard work.
A. 06.06.05 at 11:14 am
True, but this sentence does capture something: “It isn’t about Nixon and the cover-up anymore. It’s about Woodward and Bernstein.”
abb1 06.06.05 at 11:17 am
Come on, take it easy – the guy just needs to cough up a column twice a week to maintain his lifestyle. He has to write something about something, what do you want from him?
roger 06.06.05 at 12:50 pm
Obviously, you guys need to see All About Eve. You climb up the greasy pole precisely so you can sneer, kick at other climbers, and in general enjoy the benefits of nouveau elite-hood. Why shouldn’t you? Those who don’t enjoy that — who want to remain humble, sincere, and dedicated to the higher moral things — shouldn’t be climbing the greasy pole in the first place — far better for them to hang around the Unitarian Church’s after sermon potlucks, looking for similar of their earnest ilk. The last shall not be first in this millenium, just like the last millenium, unless they adopt the habits of the first.
Kieran Healy 06.06.05 at 1:24 pm
Obviously, you guys need to see All About Eve
Actually, it’s one of my favorite films. I see Brooks as Eve. But who’s going to waltz up to him and say “And don’t worry about your heart — you can always put that award where your heart ought to be”?
roger 06.06.05 at 1:30 pm
Kieran,
Alas, Betty Davis parts among the rightwing punditocracy are very few. George Will?
Jeremy Osner 06.06.05 at 3:10 pm
She’s got, George Will eyes…
Nah, doesn’t work…
Dan Kervick 06.06.05 at 3:28 pm
I think Josh puts it well. By neglecting to mention his own youthful personal experiences with what he calls “starting gate frenzy”, Brooks sets himself up as someone who might be above the fray he analyzes. Nevertheleless, his analysis does seem to have captured something about the contemporary blogging hustle, and the more general extra-blogospheric phenomenon it is a part of. He has definitely struck a few nerves, and as a result provoked a few tu quoque attacks.
Barry 06.06.05 at 4:04 pm
Oh, ‘tu quoque’. I guess we lost, then.
jim 06.06.05 at 5:17 pm
I guess it also means no-one will now email him blog entries with a note that they “thought you might be interested.”
josh 06.06.05 at 6:19 pm
‘I see Brooks as Eve. But who’s going to waltz up to him and say “And don’t worry about your heart—you can always put that award where your heart ought to beâ€?’
Umm, William Safire, maybe?
Rob Rickner 06.06.05 at 6:37 pm
Really, this piece misses the most amusing part of the “greasy-pole”. Those who try, but are doomed to fail – take my law school classmate’s remarkable attempt at partisan ass-licking:
http://www.debatepolitics.com/archive/index.php/t-65.html
I had to take con-law with this guy…
Jerry 06.06.05 at 8:55 pm
Given the brown nosing that goes on in the academy to gain tenure — the submission to queer theory and other examples of affirmative action, not to mention outre feminist scholarship — why the outrage?
Winston Smith 06.07.05 at 9:37 am
“right-wing freudian projection”
Man, that captures it perfectly.
Adam Kotsko 06.07.05 at 12:24 pm
I thought it was funny that Matt Yglesias felt as though it was directed at him personally. I don’t have all the information; maybe that actually is the case. Still, it resulted in a funny post.
TomWatcher 06.07.05 at 5:02 pm
The silliest part of this column is that Brooks seemed to be implying that Woodward and Bernstein were both prototypical greasy poll climbers. Are we really supposed to believe that kissing ass and adopting an “ironic, self-deprecatory, postpubescent fatalism” is “the legacy” of Watergate?
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