Well, somehow, I didn't get the nod to be supreme court justice, so I guess I'll apply to be a New York Times columist. I can write pablum!
But can you write irrational libel?
Maybe he's tired of it and is trying to get fired.
TimesSelect is the best thing ever to happen to David Brooks. Please don't spoil his blossoming readerlessness.
Can they get fired? I figured Brooks's continued presence there constituted proof that op-ed writer is a tenured position. I mean, it's long been apparent that he has the intelligence of a colostomy bag, but is less useful.
It wasn't very funny satire, I grant you that. But making fun of the mentally ill is fun, and you all are killjoys.
I'm sorry, baa. I always ruin the good-natured jocularity of the New York Times.
Did anyone else see his book review today? He discusses the alleged fact that Jews are taking over America (this sentence is true, but perhaps uncharitable).
Actually, I think the money sentence from that review -- the one that screams "David Brooks-brand NYT hogwash alert" -- is
Those old WASP bluebloods may have been narrow and prejudiced, but they did at least have a formula for building character.
Followed by:
Today we somehow sense that character matters
or, "I'm still trying to find some excuse for having voted for Bush!"
Reading Brooks is the worst kind of experience. He often reminds me of the sniveling tag-along I was in early high school, when I bought so deeply into the mythic superiority of the kewl kids. Brooks has the same kind of hard-on for the WASPy elite; witness the statement cited by slol, or his prior admiration for Bush's purported "never explain, never complain" ethic. It's embarrassing to be reminded of the idiot I was at 15; it's worse too see a man of 44 behave the same way.
OTOH, he may motivate me to read Portnoy's Complaint.
Um, you do know that you can read most of the Times Select columnists' complete pieces at truthout.org, right? (This Brooks column isn't there; but most of the pieces usually are.)
David Brooks is not a NYTOECILF, that's for sure.
(Just wanted to use that acronym.)
Yglesias, always the contrarian, "I liked David Brooks' review of Jerome Karabel's book, The Chosen..."
Brooks on the late Marjorie Williams was excellent. But that's because of Williams, an outstanding writer for the Wash Post who died of cancer earlier this year.