I have a confession to make. By day I am a conservative columnist for the
New York Times, defending the administration and its apparatchiks. By night, I log onto prominent liberal blogs to voice my anger at the fools who are running the country. I use various names: "Lenin Lives," "Pinko Partyer," and my personal favorite, "Mark Shields."
I know what you're thinking: "If this is true, David, why did you write that column a week ago--the one that stupidly said that all the liberal bloggers are followers of Markos." In reality, I'd sooner call George W. Bush an intellect (which--forgive me, Pat Moynihan--I've probably done) than Markos a kingpin.
Well I've got an answer for you. The devil makes me do it. To be more specific, Ken Mehlman makes me do it. He makes me write and say all kinds of stupid things. Ken got all worried about the bloggers after Yearly Kos and told me that I'd better do something in my column to discredit you. I mean us. God help me, I'm so confused.
It's hard--I am a smart man, a thinking man. I drank the Kool Aid, but I don't like Kool Aid. I prefer Mike's Hard Lemonade. But Ken is so intimidating--he calls, he faxes, he e-mails. (If more Republicans knew how to e-mail, things in this country would be even worse.) And when I don't respond, he threatens to sic Cheney on me. And that is the last thing anyone wants--trust me on that one.
But just between you and me, sometimes I just let it out. (I get in such trouble, but you need to know that they own me. It's like the mafia. Just when you think that you're out, they pull you back in.) Remember after Hurricane Katrina what I said to Jim Lehrer:
This is--first of all it is a national humiliation to see bodies floating in a river for five days in a major American city. But second, you have to remember, this was really a de-legitimization of institutions.
Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the first in the past three years--this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate scandals, the media scandals.
We have had over the past four or five years a whole series of scandals that soured the public mood. You've seen a rise in feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.
And I think this is the biggest one and the bursting one, and I must say personally it is the one that really says hey, it feels like the 70s now where you really have a loss of faith in institutions. Let's get out of this mess. And I really think this is so important as a cultural moment, like the blackouts of 1977, just people are sick of it.
Cheney was all up in my grid about that one. I also told Jim Lehrer that I liked Kerry's Democratic convention speech--they almost took me out over that one. I had to do a 180 in my column a few days later.
Well, now you know why David Brooks has these lapses. It's because I too am a rabid lamb, one of the many. You people know the names of the other ones, so I don't really have to tell you, but there may be a lot of more of us on the payrolls of newspapers, magazines, and cable news stations than you ever realized. (I am talking to you, Joe Klein.)
So please, just ignore me. Go about your normal business. Do not go gentle into that good night. We only write this stuff because we are scared of you. Fight, fight, fight--your country needs you. And you are so much braver than I am.
I need another Mike's.
