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Hertzberg is Very good

Writing political opinion for The New Yorker magazine cannot be easy. That journalistic cliche "Hot Off the Press" just doesn't apply at The New Yorker. The longer lead time that the magazine requires between the writing of an article and its arrival on the newsstand means that the opinion will never be the most current nor fresh. But when Hendrik Hertzberg is the author, it will often be the best.
Writing of the looming Senate vote on the bill outlawing Desecration of the Flag, Hertzberg explains why its passage would be "almost utterly dispiriting." He ends his piece brilliantly:

"Providence," Lord Bryce,... "has under its special care children, idiots, and the United States of America." The kids are still all right, but unless thirty-four senators hold firm Providence may no longer be able to indulge the second without harming the third."

Hertzberg would never be so inelegant as to call U.S. Senators idiots. Everytime you read one of his pieces, your conclusion the childish spittle spewed by a David Brooks is just a waste of paper and ink, can onlky be reinforced.

 

Brooks Slimes Kos

David Brooks once again demonstrates his nasty, jealous, petty soul in his piece today about Kos.  Saying that Tom Delay is Kos' moral doppelganger is patently absurd - unless Mr. Brooks knows about some indictments of which I'm unaware. The article is essentially a series of smears.
Unfortunately, Kos often does display an arrogance that makes him an easy target. His comments on Maureen Dowd, and his interview with Brian Lehrer during his book  tour come to mind.
Still to ignore the fact of Kos' remarkable acccomplishment is grossly unfair. It's also interesting to note that while Mr. Brooks is free to comment or post at the Daily Kos, Kos is not free to do so on Mr Brooks' forum.

No More Excuses.

Bush lovers are really desperate people. For proof of this, please look at David Brooks' op-ed in today's NY Times, entitled "No More Excuses". He's so  proud of the newest accomplishments of this administration, you'd think that his son, W., had just been bar mitzvahed.
Having called Iran called Iran a part of the axis of evil, and having watched them pursue the possession of a nuclear bomb for five years, our government has announced that we will talk to Iran. Iran has wanted to talk to us for years, but Bush has always refused.
Brooks would have you believe that this is a brilliant strategic move, or a "gutsy maneuver" as he put it. As Iran was continuing to develop a bomb, the Bush/Rice team "quickly" "agreed upon a course of action that was neither passivity, nor bombing."
They decided to use diplomacy.
That's right: Brooks is impressed that the President and the Secretary of State decided to use diplomacy. (Under other Presidents diplomacy was actually a part of the Secretary of State's job description.) Working with our allies, an agreement was reached on possible sanctions: "Reaching [it] was no easy task"  according to Brooks. Normally getting allies to agree is not something to rave about; that's why they're called allies.
He writes that "the accomplishments over the past few weeks have been impressive. Bush and Rice have created a coherent policy." (Yep, - a coherent policy is an impressive achievement - for this administration.)
He concludes by writing that "this display of competence" causes him to remember other things that the administration has recently done "well;"  the appointments of Hayden and Paulson. Actually promoting the head of the NSA to the be head of the CIA was never considered the equivalent of brain surgery, and hiring a Wall Street Big Shot to head up the Treasury Dep't wasn't viewed as a successful heart transplant. But we are talking about this administration. 
BoBo's next piece is entitled "No More Mishaps" and will note the triumph of Bush's failing to fall of his bike for ten days straight!
I'd hate to have to call BoBo unfair because of "the soft bigotry" of his "low expectations."

The Highs and Lows of Dishonesty

The Op-Ed page of the NY Times publishes pundits with very different points of view. Normally, they carefully ignore each other. In the last two weeks a subtle spat has broken out between Paul Krugman and David Brooks.

• May 4, Brooks: "The Paranoid Style" made fun of the "conspiracy theories of Kevin Phillips, calling his work "intellectual dishonesty on stilts." He concluded that some Americans "are willing to believe any whacked-out theory, so long as it focuses hatred on Bush."
• May 8, Krugman:  "Who's Crazy Now?" agrees that conspiracy theorists indeed exist, and gives as examples Bill O'Reilly and Sen. James "The Hoax" Inhofe.  He goes on to explain that "many of the administration supporters can't handle the truth", and so "have consistently questioned the sanity of Bush critics. But now those harsh critics have been vindicated."  The real conspiracy theorists, on the right, will continue to blame every failure of this administration on others.
• May18, Brooks: "Sir Galahad of the G.O.P." discusses how the G.O.P. "base suddenly turn[ed] carnivorous and out for your flesh" when the issue is immigration. He wrote that "they lashed out in ways identical to the Bushophobic left." He ends on a note of hope that a new immigration reform constituency is growing based on the "overwhelmingly positive response to the President's speech."

The spat is sort of fun, but the height of intellectual dishonesty reached by Brooks has to be described as "stilts on steroids."

He continues to call critics of this administration Bush haters, and questions their sanity by using words like "Bushphobic." He forgets that the 'crazy hate filled left' wished so much for Bush's success that he was given the highest approval rating that any President has ever recorded the history of the Gallup organization. (Sept 24, 2001, 90% Approval) No phobia forced his poll numbers down to levels that may break another record: his performance did that. It wasn't the right who contributed to making the response to the speech "overwhelmingly positive:" it was the 'crazy, reflexive Bush hating whackos' of the left.

The truth is that Bush's party is a  party based on hatred and polarization.  Bush has done his share in continuing this legacy of hate, but he didn't start it. The Republicans have been doing it for decades - from the "Southern Strategy", to Nixon's dirty tricks; from Reagan's speech on States Rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi to Lee Atwater and H.W.'s Willy Horton ads; it is how the GOP wins elections. By cynically using 9/11 and the war as weapons with which to bludgeon political opponents, George and Karl have reached new depths, but it's not a new direction.

Brooks' duplicity reaches new heights because he well knows that it's a party built on anger and hatred. He has seen and written about what the conservatives did with Harriet Miers' nomination.  He also wrote how McCain's compromising to create the Gang of 14 was condemned as a "betrayal" and a "private surrender"  by the grand old party base.

In spite of Krugman's not so subtle request that the sanity of Bush critics not be questioned, Brooks went straight ahead and wrote of the left's Bushphobia even in a piece devoted to the anger of the right. So please Mr. Brooks, let's not have any more lectures on intellectual honesty, or civility - especially when you applaud the  entrance of Giuliani onto the national political scene, a man who is potentially even more divisive than Bush.

Brooks Attacks Bush, again

While Maureen Dowd prepares for her trip to Stockholm where she'll collect her justly awarded Nobel Prize,we have to ask:  Isn't there a candidate for the prize in medicine who wants it badly enough to discover how to reverse the lobotomy that David Brooks received in his youth?

Since readers of the New York Times appear to be stuck with his idiocy until the paper is bankrupt or the Rapture arrives, we really need someone to do something.

Today, this ardent Bush supporter, M. David Brooks, wrote of his concern that:

• This country's educational system does not sufficiently use insights garnered by a European immigre,an Ivy League  Psychology Professor who studied learning and self control in 4 year olds. Brooks implies that tragically, the knowledge gained by this sort of research is valued by our Republican adminsitration, but rejected by teacher's unions. The studies were done at about the same time as Bush was an undergraduate at Yale, so we can sure that he is aware of them. Of course.
• The failure to integrate this knowledge into our educational system hinders our ability to engender greater levels of self control in more of our kids - which translates into better life outcomes.  What the test looked at was how long a 4 year old could refrain from eating an available marshmallow, knowing that by waiting a bit longer, he would get additional marshmallows. How long does anyone think that W. would have waited? The Study's findings? Those with less self control were more likely to be addicts and bullies and have poor impulse control. Addictions? Impulse Control?: How about the night he drunkenly smashed up the car and then offered to fight his father "mano a mano"? Bully? How about blowing up frogs?

  "'We were terrible to animals,' recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out. 'Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them,' Mr. Throckmorton said. 'Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.'"

If the Times is going to persist in publishing Brooks, the least that they can do is to make some grants to some brain surgeons. Bush needs no more friends like Brooks.

P.S "Put firecrackers in the frogs"

Our Miss Brooks- Your Mr. Chips

David Brooks has actually had some reasonable columns recently. Today wasn't one of them. Lately, he's had some intelligent, if inconsistent, comments on immigration reform, as well as calling for Rumsfeld's head on a platter. Good Stuff.

In his most recent effort, Brooks calls upon Moses and Martin Luther King Jr in an attempt to defend our nation's blighted Iraq policy. As powerful as those individuals are, they can not conquer reality.

A good editorial writer is able to synthesize some of the conflicting bits of data that constantly bombard us into an integrated understanding of events.  Like his colleague at the Times, Tom Friedman, Brooks sees the goal of synthesis as being synonymous with the yearning for simple-mindedness.  It ain't the same.

Lurching backwards to the intellectual level of a Mr. Rogers viewer, Brooks reported today on a conversation between "Mr. Past" and "Mr Future."

"Mr. Past" could just as easily be named Mr. Negative - this Meany believes that great historical problems cannot be fixed, and that we are doomed by our flaws, just as the hamster is doomed to repeatedly, futilely run round and round on its treadmill.

"Mr Future," on the other hand is in fact the spawn of "Miss Pollyanna." He like, George W. Bush, Martin Luther King and Moses, understands that cultures and societies can be transformed. They all realize that change can take generations to occur, and that sacrifice is required, but that in the end it is all that is worthwhile.

Of course this is a dishonest dichotomy. It is the right who  believe that humans cannot bind together to improve anything.  Everyone is corrupt in their world, and the world's recognition of this  'fact,' and it's realization that self-interest, as reflected in the marketplace, is the only possible orgainizing principle; is all that separates us from slavery or anarchy.

The article might, just might, make sense if Brooks had left Bush and his Iraq adventures out of it.  Moses asked his people to take enormous risks and to make huge sacrifices. King was repeatedly jailed, and in the end lost his life to his cause. This isn't the way Bush "leads." Neither Moses nor King suggested that the path they fought for would be easy, while knowing otherwise.

Sadly, Brooks lacks the honesty necessary to examine the issues he writes about.  Reminiscent of a Tweedy Teacher at one of the North East boarding schools he so admires, his connection to Lofty, Utopian, Classical, ideals stops where the realities of tuition begin.

 

Brooks Forgets.

David Brooks has often written of the glorious world of elitist boarding schools. One  of the things he seems to admire most about them is their distinguished history and their institutional memory.

Diminutive David now thinks memory an ugly word.

In today's Op-Ed for the Times he writes of the "pivotal" week of March 24, 2003.  Brooks heaps praise upon those pundits who understood the reality of Iraq at that point.

He makes an oblique reference to the prescient rag he then edited, The Weekly Standard, "which had been bashing Rumsfeld for years."  But the opinions he himself voiced that week were entirely wrong. I refer to his appearance on NPR's "All Things Considered" on March 28,2003.  In today's paper  he wrote that "Everybody denigrates pundits and armchair generals, but immediately the smartest of them realized that something unexpected was happening: the U.S. was not in the midst of a conventional war, but was in the first days of a guerrilla war."

In his 2003 interview, he's the one doing the denigrating. "I especially like to blame the armchair generals who have been mercurial and bipolar."  Today he wrote that "when you look at the commentary - at least during that week [3/24/03] -  you are struck by how smart it was."  But Brooks himself on March 28 was emphatic: "I agree with the  Bush policy on the war fervently."

He now dares to state that if only adjustments to that policy had been made then, "much of the horror could have been averted."

Brooks is nothing if not dishonest.

At least in today's piece he finally is saying that the administration's policy was a disaster. The fall guy he selected is Rumsfeld.  I don't disagree that Rummy has been a disaster, but last I heard Mr Cheney and Mr Bush were also part of this government.

Brooks & Reality:D-I-V-O-R-C-E

True naked ambition. (well, not actually naked)

(h/t blog.reidreport.com)

When David Brooks takes a break from bragging about his superior education, instructing us on precisely which of Plato's dialogs we should be reading, and asserting his masculinity, he should spend a little time with Rand McNally.

The crumbling edifice of Brooks' brain is in serious need of a reality restoration.

In today's op-ed for the Times, Brooks attacks Hillary for being a "nakedly ambitious demagogue" because of her stance on Dubai operating our ports.  He is happy to report that Hagel and McCain passed the test of character that this issue presents. But Brooks does not seem to know that one of the ports in question is in New York, the state Mrs. Clinton represents.  A cursory glance at a map of the U.S. might remind Mr. Brooks that neither Arizona nor Nebraska have a lot of ports.

He denounces Hillary because her husband's library accepted "up to a million dollars" from the U.A.E., but neglects to mention that George H.W. Bush's library accepted "at least a million."  Generally, "at least" is bigger than "up to" a million. Brooks also complains of money that Bill earned from the U.A.E. in speaking fees, but forgets those collected by the Bush family.

He is even more scornful of Hillary's  playing to the "rawest form of xenophobia." To Brooks, all Arab states are the same. He cannot make even the gross distinctions that Condi Rice's State Department can. Not all Muslim nations have been designated Level III human traffickers. (the worst level) But Dubai has. In not all Arab states are only 10% of the residents considered citizens. But that's how it is in Dubai. 

Her stance reminds him of the "Clinton years at their worst: the me-me-me selfishness." How he can write a sentence like that after years of Republican corruption and thievery is utterly beyond me.

Brooks trashes her Presidential ambition in part because she "is the only presidential candidate who does not offer a break from the current polarization and bitter partisanship." He admits that "a lot of the bitterness would not be her fault," but goes on to say that "she is happy to be a crude partisan." So, who is to be blamed for the bitterness? Brooks fails to ask. Both Hillary and Bill are far closer to the center than the current Republican party. And opposition to Dubai's operating our ports is about as bi-partisan an issue as we have seen in five years of Bush's divisiveness.

His pompous conclusion is that "over the long run, people vote on character." Yes, he wrote that during the second term of George W. Bush's Presidency.

 

 

Brooks on Bush

When David Brooks of The N.Y. Times attacks W., you know something has happened. Just as Grover Norquist and WIlliam F. Buckley recently deserted Team Bush, Brooks has begun taking potshots at our great leader.

Today's piece purports to be about falling standards at elite colleges, but it's really a thinly veiled commentary on the ignorance of Bush.

Brooks lists courses that anyone who wants to be considered educated must take. Bush's behavior gives no hint that he ever learned any of the lessons Brooks considers essential.

One of his suggestions is that a student spend a year abroad. Bush certainly ranks as one of least well traveled Presidents ever inaugurated. A year abroad by the time you're 21? Bush may have spent two weeks abroad by the age of 50.

The requirement that Brooks lists first is that one study the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whom he quotes as writing "The devout would learn that public piety corrupts private faith." Was there ever a President more public with his "piety" than W? Was there ever one more corrupt?

"Read Plato's "Gorgias" - insists Brooks. "You need it to understand the "superiority of philosophy (the quest for wisdom or truth) to rhetoric (the art of persuasion in the cause of victory)...rhetorical skills are dangerous, potentially soul-imperiling,gifts." Two Words: Karl Rove.

"Take statistics", "Take a course in neuroscience," "Take a course in ancient Greece," are more Brooks recommendations. Is there any reason to believe Bush absorbed one scintilla of knowledge from any study that he might have done in any such course? (Assuming he ever took one.)

To be fair Brooks also says that you should "learn a foreign language," and it seems that Bush can speak a form of Spanish. But still, we have to give Bush a failing grade on this instruction. According to Brooks the purpose of learning another's language  is for one to "annex a another culture and discover unseen sides to themselves." I doubt that Bush would be able to recognize a single side to himself, let alone plural sides.

His Op-Ed today is subtle, especially for the heavy hand of David Brooks, but undoubtedly an attack, and a fair one, on George W. Bush.

Brooks & Tierney: Not Completely Wrong

The Times' conservative columnists actually made some sense this week - not much, but some.
John Tierney's piece was the weaker of the two. In Saturday's paper he had some cute  comments on celebrity and privacy. But he started the thing off by making fun of the press' handling of l'affaire de Cheney, and how they were too aggressive in actually trying to find out the truth.  Mr. Tierney does not seem to understand that when you shooot someone in the face, you have some explaining to do. The outrage is not in what the press did to our secretive V.P. - it is in what they failed to do.
David Brooks in today's paper has a shockingly interesting (for David Brooks) column. He takes some silly potshots at the E.U. and the U.N., by using their "weakness" as proof that the world is increasingly divided. In fact the mere existence of these institutions proves the opposite. His comments on what we spend on education and on aid are equally off the mark. As always, he just makes up some things and then proceeds as if they were established fact: " In the U.S. highly educated voters are more polarized than less educated voters."  But you can't really blame him for the obligatory swipes at what his base consider "liberal" positions. Because the thrust of his  piece argues that the "market" is not God. Finally, some one on the right understands that not all is determined by a Darwinian, Economic model.  He takes a route that is curiously negative about the human race to get there; but I consider it a triumph that he gets there at all.  Two points for Brooks!