Just a few reminders.
Daily Howler, TOLD BY AN IDIOT? I may be an idiot, David Brooks says. But that's just the innocent explanation, December 11, 2004
TOLD BY AN IDIOT: "I may be a complete idiot," David Brooks says near the end of this morning's column. But that would be the innocent explanation. Stupid--or storebought? You be the judge as Brooks types the Requisite Script:
BROOKS (12/11/04): Plans to create private Social Security accounts aren't sops to the securities industry. They use the power of the market to solve an otherwise intractable problem.
The outline of the problem is clear. When the Social Security program was created, there were 42 workers for each retiree. Now there are about three workers per retiree, and in 2030 there will be two.
Without the use of private accounts, Social Security presents an "intractable problem," Brooks says. And, to help readers see how intractable it is, he provides the Requisite Scripted Scare Story--the story every good boy know to type. Back in 1935, he says, there were 42 workers for every retiree!!! And soon, the ratio will be 2-to-1!!! How could the system survive it?
Is Brooks just an idiot, as he suggests? Or is he engaged in deliberate misdirection?
Marc Schmitt, Brooks Channels Disinformation, May 2, 2005
I'll admit, David Brooks' claim today that Senator Reid had offered Frist a secret codicil to his deal on judges, under which he agreed that the Democrats would not filibuster a Bush Supreme Court nomination, gave me a second's pause in my assessment of Reid's tactical genius. (Brooks claims to have been "reliably informed" that Reid told Frist he would deliver the three or four votes necessary to overcome a filibuster on a Supreme Court nominee, but wouldn't put it in writing because the liberal interest groups would get hold of it, and that Frist ignored the offer. Brooks maintains his above-it-all stance by gently scolding Frist for not taking the deal.)
But then I remembered that when I said something nice about Brooks, I was bombarded with e-mails and comments attempting to demonstrate his essential dishonesty. I think this is proof of that -- either dishonesty or simply gullibility in channeling plain old disinformation....
If Reid were forced to actually deliver on such a promise, it would not just be an ill-advised squishy compromise, it would be the end of his leadership of the Democratic minority, and a debacle for the party.
As disinformation, however, it makes sense. It undermines Reid at a moment when he's riding high. It helps spin the rightwing storyline that the Democratic Party is in thrall to interest groups that take a harder line than the elected members do. And it helps stir up tensions between those outside groups and the congressional party.
It's an interesting tactic, worthy of the master, but Brooks either should have been able to see through it, or chose not to.
Jack O'Toole, Sweden?, June 2, 2005:
You know, this standard-issue conservative horse manure from David Brooks wouldn't irritate me nearly so much if he hadn't rather gratuitously tossed Sweden into the mix:
Over the last few decades, American liberals have lauded the German model or the Swedish model or the European model. But these models are not flexible enough for the modern world. They encourage people to cling fiercely to entitlements their nation cannot afford. And far from breeding a confident, progressive outlook, they breed a reactionary fear of the future that comes in left- and right-wing varieties - a defensiveness, a tendency to lash out ferociously at anybody who proposes fundamental reform or at any group, like immigrants, that alters the fabric of life.
As anyone who's the least bit familiar with recent Swedish history could tell you, Brooks isn't just exaggerating up there -- he's lying, at least by implication. Jesus. Can't the NYT get their crack web team to teach that guy how to Google before he picks up his pen?
Ezra in the comments from Mark Schmitt's David Brooks is Forgiven Some Sins, April 5, 2005
The frustration with Brooks is his endless style of gimmicks, of simply inventing wholecloth these demographic archetypes or trends -- and then having them picked up by mainstream commentators or otherwise intelligent people who should know better. I don't think it makes him interesting -- just more annoying.
The media/PR structure of the right -- the message machine -- is certainly not monolithic. But there is an echo chamber, and there is a basic process through which ideas are advanced. These ideas are not 'who's your favorite philosopher' -- they are 'truths' that gain currency through this promotion and repetition. Largely these 'truths' are not philosophical arguments, but metaphors and characterizations and generalities -- exactly the kind of yarn that Brooks loves to spin.
Armando (Daily Kos) Brooks Lies Again and Again, April 20, 2005:
Tomorrow's lie is this:
Every few years another civilizing custom is breached. Over the past four years Democrats have resorted to the filibuster again and again to prevent votes on judicial nominees they oppose. Up until now, minorities have generally not used the filibuster to defeat nominees that have majority support. They have allowed nominees to have an up or down vote. But this tradition has been washed away.
This is a bald faced fucking lie. And Brooks knows it. A deliberate lie. One of many. The fact is that the Senate never required the actual invocation of the filibuster very often precisely because Senators could stop a nomination, either secretly in committee, or before the nomination was brought to a vote.
Armando (Daily Kos), David Brooks Opposes Frist's Nuclear Option, May 5, 2005:
In a revolting display of ignorance, mendacity and distortion, David Brooks tops even himself, all while coming out, in a whisper, against Frist's nuclear option.
The title I chose here does to Brooks' column what Brooks has done to Lincoln's views on religion and government. From the column:
Abraham Lincoln gathered his cabinet to tell them he was going to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He said he had made a solemn vow to the Almighty that if God gave him victory at Antietam, Lincoln would issue the decree. Lincoln's colleagues were stunned. They were not used to his basing policy on promises made to the Lord. They asked him to repeat what he'd just said. Lincoln conceded that "this might seem strange," but "God had decided the question in favor of the slaves."
. . . Today, a lot of us are stuck in Lincoln's land. We reject the bland relativism of the militant secularists. We reject the smug ignorance of, say, a Robert Kuttner, who recently argued that the culture war is a contest between enlightened reason and dogmatic absolutism. But neither can we share the conviction of the orthodox believers, like the new pope, who find maximum freedom in obedience to eternal truth. We're a little nervous about the perfectionism that often infects evangelical politics, the rush to crash through procedural checks and balances in order to reach the point of maximum moral correctness.
And Brooks, as is his wont, slyly tries to juxtapose the abolitionist movement of the antebellum period with the antiabortion movement of today. More Dred Scott talk. Does he mention Dred Scott or Roe? Of course not, that would be too honest an approach for this dissembler. But his allusion is all too apparent.
The rankest lie Brooks perpetrates is his couching of the dispute over Frist's nuclear option as one pitting "militant secularists" against the devout. This is a foul lie. It is no such thing. While the question of religion in government is part of the dispute, it is the extreme Religious Right of Dobson and Robertson that declares this a war of faith.
Media Matters, David Brooks repeated false GOP spin that Wilson claimed Cheney sent him to Niger, July 15, 2005
Remarking on the controversy surrounding senior White House adviser Karl Rove, New York Times columnist and National Public Radio (NPR) commentator David Brooks echoed the false GOP talking point that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV claimed that Vice President Dick Cheney sent him to Niger.
Armando (Daily Kos), Compassionate Conservatism, September 25, 2005:
. . . Brooks and his fantasy world. Back to "Bush the Compassionate Conservative" and the failed poverty policies of the Left. And it is just so dishonest. Brooks of course avoids the elephant in the room - Bush's tax cuts and the proposal to end the estate tax. In June 2002, the Brookings Institution provided this analysis:
President George W. Bush signed the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA). This policy brief provides an assessment of the tax cut. Our findings suggest that EGTRRA will reduce the size of the future economy, raise interest rates, make taxes more regressive, increase tax complexity, and prove fiscally unsustainable . These conclusions question the wisdom and affordability of the tax cut and suggest that Congress reconsider the legislation, especially in light of the economic downturn and terrorist attacks that have occurred since last summer.
Of course this has proven more than correct. And since then Iraq, Katrina, etc. have made the situation that much worse. What kind of "compassionate conservative" makes these tax cuts central to his Administration policy?
David Brooks discusses none of this. He prefers to discuss the "failed policy of the Left." We are 5 years into a Bush Administration that has been an abject failure. When does Mr. Brooks have a thought on that?
Media Matters, Brooks repeated falsehood that investigations cleared Bush administration of misusing intelligence data on Iraq, November 21, 2005
During the November 18 edition of PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, New York Times columnist David Brooks falsely claimed that the Bush administration has been exonerated by "commission after commission" of allegations that it manipulated prewar intelligence.
alivingston (MyDD), The Maturing of David Brooks, June 24, 2006:
When his first book "Bobos In Paradise" was published in 2000 as a sociological journalism book, a sharp and enterprising reporter named Sasha Issenberg ("Boo Boos in Paradise", Philadelphia Magazine) thought the data cited rang false. SheHe decided to do a little of her his own research. What she he found was that David Brooks wrote a book of made-up-facts, known by those outside the public intellectual pantheon as fiction.
What has been amply demonstrated is David Brooks' willingness to lie about anything and everything to serve his Republican masters. Nothing he writes is to be taken seriously or believed. He just does not tell the truth.
Update [2006-6-25 23:12:24 by mcjoan]: I am informed that Sasha Issenburg is a man.