For two days running, David Brooks has continued to insult the intelligence of most Americans, via his columns in The New York Times. I shudder to think what Jim Lehrer will let him get away with tonight.
Brooks is really on a rampage. He needs a serious timeout, as do many other pundits and media types.
It's true that this campaign has gone on waaaaaaaay too long. Everyone is getting really tired and fed up with the same old trivia and gotcha tactics. It's appalling how low journalism has sunk in this country. However long the campaign, that does not excuse the nastiness and complete fabrications that the press and TV opinionators are spewing lately. It's a pretty pathetic picture to see the moderators of the 21st Democratic Presidential Debate booed at the end.
Having joined the ranks of "People Who Are Totally Fed Up", I submit my letter to David Brooks upon reading today's column: "How Obama Fell to Earth". I encourage others to do the same. He needs to be bombarded with some sense of truth and decency!
Mr. Brooks,
With all due respect, you are in a pundit bubble and need a serious time out.
Yesterday, you called the debate debacle "superb". You gave ABC an A, going agaginst the almost unanimous assessment that this was the worst presidential debates since 1960. Today, you continue your merciless, irrelevant, and erroneous attacks on Barack Obama in your column: "How Obama Fell To Earth". Let me tell you one thing that most Americans know. They know who the real elitists (in its twisted meaning) are in this country. It's the powerful and the rich: the Bushes, Cheneys, McCains &, yes, the Clintons, the big corporations, and the Wall Street group who own & run this country. It is surely not Barack Obama, no matter how hard you and your conservative friends try to project that onto him.
You should know better! What comes through in your desparate attacks is that you, and many others in D.C., just don't get it-----that ordinary people are fed up with the D.C. crowd and its pompous punditry. Admit it. With Clinton almost surely losing the nomination, you are afraid of Barack Obama and what he has to offer. The latest "bitter" dustup, for example, did not affect his favorability ratings, something you did not report. In fact, they are going up, particularly with white women. He's so much smarter than John McCain, it's almost frightening. So, what do you do? Straight out of Karl Rove, you attack him on his strengths: his superior intelligence and his strong commitment to change the unbalanced distribution of wealth in this society. He's not out of touch, you are out of touch. It's truly pathetic to throw in really trivial items to try and damage him with the very voters he is trying to win over---i.e. his poor bowling skills (I wish FDR were around to read that one), his Chicago neighborhood, (and by the way, just what is wrong with an academic and liberal place?),and other stupid so-called "cultural issues", the very cards that Bush played to death to win over conservatives.
Now, there, Mr. Brooks, is your Ur-Elitist-- George W. Bush! His handlers did a terrific job of hiding his aristocratic roots. How many of your "values voters" know that Papa Bush paved every step of the way in his son's undistinguished, even profligate, life? His son was born into wealth & privilege in genteel CT, grandson of a senator, who easily gained admission into Ivy League schools. Most egregious, his father craftily orchestrated his son's presidency right up to the grand finale, with Papa's injection of his old pal Jim Baker, to make sure that Al Gore didn't win.
John McCain is also an elitist, a member of the miliary and senatorial class,and a very wealthy man who enjoys the company of lobbyists in his campaign. He may be a military hero, but in his private life, he has at least one big skeleton in his closet. Why isn't anyone attacking his values? He married his heiress wife, Cindy, very shortly after he divorced his former wife who was lying on her deathbed with cancer at the time. If you want to harp on "values", doesn't this behavior merit some attention from the media?
To sum up, most of the voting populace is not as dumb as you pundits think! We know the truth, no matter how hard you try to turn Up Into Down and Right Into left. The fact is, most voters I know DO NOT want, in your words, "a president who basically shares their values and life experiences". What if their values are horrible? Most of us want, if I may use the word in its correct meaning: A True Elitist, someone who is not exactly like us, but someone who is, hopefully, wiser and smarter than us: a very intelligent person with great leadership skills, who can take us out of the swamp we are currently in and move this country forward to right its economic woes, find a way out of the debacle in Iraq, and regain our repsect in the world.
Go to your dictionary, Mr. Brooks. The meaning of the word "elite" is right there: "The best or most skilled members of a given social group." Sounds like a good recipe for the leader of the free world to me!