Having a President with only a few hours a day (at best!) of sentience is totally fine and requires not a word of protest. Having someone who is making some tough (and perhaps wrong) choices calls for a revolution, though.
"Sitting in Tom Friedman's lap" absolutely best take down of Brooks I've ever heard. What Brooks et al don't understand is that the "revolution" he's calling for is taking place right now and he's one of the elites quivering inside the palaces of the rich.
"We don't get to choose our change agent." Burn that into our brain pans.
Glenn Reynolds promotes Matt's piece - appending his own 2016 seminal piece entitled:
"How David Brooks Created Donald Trump" written when Glenn was still a Trump skeptic.
"...One of the most famous things about the Tea Partiers was that — as befits a relentlessly bourgeois protest movement — they left things cleaner than they found them. Rich Lowry reported from Washington, DC: “Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them. This was the revolt of the bourgeois, of the responsible, of the orderly, of people profoundly at peace with the traditional mores of American society. .. In San Francisco, too, tea party protesters met pro-Obama activists and picked up their trash. "John," author of The City Square blog wrote: “As Obama supporters moved along in the line to get into the fundraiser, they left behind an impressive amount of trash. Tea Partiers shouted ‘pick up your garbage’ and ‘this is San Francisco, what about recycling?’ There was no response. They chanted ‘Obama leaves a mess.’ Still no response. Eventually, a tea partier (wearing the black cowboy hat) crosses over and starts to pick up the trash on his own. Other tea partiers join him. Another manages to find a trash bag. Soon the trash is being collected.” Yet the tea party movement was smeared as racist, denounced as fascist, harassed with impunity by the IRS and generally treated with contempt by the political establishment — and by pundits like Brooks, who declared "I'm not a fan of this movement." Trump’s ascendance is a symptom of a colossal failure among America’s political leaders, of which Brooks’ mean-spirited insularity is only a tiny part.” Read the whole thing.
That was really interesting. I don’t,t see Brooks as mean-spirited though, quite the contrary. I think he has been, perhaps from his childhood, infatuated with what passed for NE “upper class," but I don’t,t think he ever understood its arrogance, snobbery, pretension, and shallow polish. He may have taken on some of the region's insularity, but he seems to me a very nice person who tries hard to be tolerant and kind (sometimes he misses but most of us do). He really doesn't fit the NE mold at all although he has done his best to fool himself.
Agreed. But he's still wrong and humorously missed the point. We had the civil uprising and that's how Trump, in spite of everything done to prevent it, got elected. Like Mitt Romney, there's a lot of self awareness missing in Mr. Brooks.
Lol - gotta say I've never noticed a lot of self-loathing.
People can use position well (some do, some don’t), but great wealth does seem to carry more than its share of great arrogance. Of course it has also funded great public benefits.
I agree with you on the idea that he is infatuated with the upper class, but not sure I'm on board with "nice". Often the "nice" people I know can be kind of passive aggressive. Underneath the "nice" facade there is an anger that occasionally flares up. Thomas Sowell says that "social justice" is just a new term for "envy". I think there is envy involved.
There is probably always a smidge of envy involved in social infatuation. Maybe he,s passive aggressive, don't know. I've never seen him ugly, though i only read the occasional pieces a friend sends me. I certainly don't know the man. I do have a pretty good nose for passive-aggressives - i've run into a lot of them, especially online, and think they are best avoided. Brooks doesn't seem angry and mean to me, just out of his depth.
Ah, yes! I can buy "out of his depth". So often, because I hang around with smart people, I forget that an explanation for off behavior is that they have middling brains, but pose as experts or actually think their education makes them elite. Might be elite, but not necessarily smart. Thanks!
I'm sorry to hear that. I've only read the occasional columns a friend has sent me over the years. Trump seems to have pushed a lot of semi-rational liberals off the deep edge. His revolution of the elites fantasy sounds completely nuts.
100%. The decade plus of zero interest rates that Krugman championed and they embraced let to the biggest wealth transfer in my lifetime. And the appeasement through market access for China has quite literally been the most naive and worst foreign policy of the last century. Even the Iraq war seems like a stroke of genius by comparison, As long as he's making himself comfortable in Friedmans lap he should sit on it and rotate as we used to say.
I’ll admit, I voted for him, but Mike Dukakis was the perfect candidate for these folks. Grow Swiss chard instead of tobacco is exactly the type of answer that would have been conceived, born, burped, and set loose by the Davos Dick-fer-brains.
It's important to be clear-eyed about Trump as well, though. He's a magnificent boot down the door of the status quo, but he makes mistakes too, and is almost as old as Biden was. It's important to keep the actual objectives in mind - the welfare of the average non-bobo American, the destruction of the poisonous ideologies seeping out of the elite colleges and institutions, and the revitalization of the economy-of-things in preference to email jobs and "knowledge work" - and not get lost in the memes.
We have had a growing problem for years that no one seems willing or able to address: how to keep employed the people who are not employable (whether by talent or education) in a sophisticated knowledge-based economy. I am not in the least convinced that the manufacture of mass-market consumer goods is a viable way forward. I am convinced that we need to reassert the home-manufacture of such things as medicines, armaments, electronic components
Yes, I'm perfectly fine with China making Christmas ornaments and Halloween decorations. Neither of those are particularly necessary for our economy or our security. Let's focus on making those things you suggest... ...and making them very well.
We shouldn't be talking top down. There are capitalists out there that will employ low skill workers making mass market stuff tomorrow if they know they won't get killed by unfair trade from China or SE Asia. The capitalists will make some money, and more importantly their workers will have a job and a little dignity that derives from working. And the satisfaction of bitching about wages and working conditions.
Mass market stuff is already overpriced. Maybe American manufacturers can make a profit charging more for American-made junk to sell to all the poor people we've imported from cheap-labor countries. I don’t,t like to guess how it will all turn out.
We need to restart home manufacture of everything you missed during the supply chain disruptions of 2020. China clogged the ports (because China still controlled the ports of Long Beach/Los Angeles, control Bill Clinton signed over to them in 1997) and the ships sat off shore for months loaded with critical supplies. That should have been a huge wakeup call.
I did not personally miss anything. I do agree that we absolutely need to supply/manufacture what we can't survive without.
If Lawyers Guns and Money is right, and he sure sounds like he knows what he,s talking about, large-scale manufacturing can work for us again, and I'm all for it. Globalism has been a self-inflicted disaster for the US in many ways.
One thing this thread leaves out is the role of tax havens. The way this works is that something manufactured here is exported with a transfer price just high enough for there to be little profit earned here, but then further processed or even only packaged in a country with little or no tax on business profits. I know through an acquaintance (who had worked there) of a company that manufactured a drug in punch bowl sized batches, which were flown in a small plane to South Carolina and then to another country with an incredibly low tax on profits. The drug was packaged into single doses there and virtually all the profits earned by the subsidiary in that country. Through my wife’s retail business (we are now retired) I learned about a bra that was manufactured in several countries. The last step was shipping bulk loads overseas for packaging.
I think this is why President Trump wants to replace income taxes with tariffs.
We do need to re-onshore a lot of industry, for both economic and strategic reasons. However, I will caution that people should not get their hopes up about mass employment in the sector. Manufacturing doesn't require as many people as it used to. "The plant" that comes to town with 2000 jobs just isn't a thing anymore.
Yes for sure. Also armaments and electronic components. And while we're at it, quit selling our agricultural land and young people's minds to hostile powers.
Some people on both sides would be. The Left (cult of Dem) thinks he's Satan, while his "loyalists" think he's Superman. As we all know, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Trump is a successful businessman who is not as great a liar as someone like Dave Chappelle would make him out to be.
Satan's acolytes can be cleansed of their sins by opposing Trump. In the same way, former Saints of Liberalism can be cast into eternal damnation by embracing Trump.
Agree 100%. Stephen Kotkin gets the prize for clarifying all this. His Vienna lectures on youtube just nail it. His thesis is that this whole mess is a textbook polulist backlash (as opposed to totalist authoritarianism as the bobo's claim) and while populism plays an important role in democracy (ie keeping elitism in check) it is unfortunately the case that populists are great at breaking things but generally are not able to fix anything. check it out. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHFGB5X7R8&t=6291s
I was thinking that Ezra Klein as I was listening to him on his book promotion tour was putting himself into the running for one of these types if he is not already there. How do you know someone is a vegan? Don't worry they'll tell you. AKA Ezra Klein.
04/22/25: You must have asbestos eyes and ears. Ezra Klein wrote himself into the loony bin quite some time ago and since that time has wasted no time in perfecting his derangement. Watch for his mental disorientation in 2025-26 to match Mark Zuckerberg's.
Yeah it's really crazy. Your take is spot on. They are so busy conflating populism with Totalism they somehow failed to understand that they themselves sparked the current populist backlash.
I have to disagree. If it weren't for the elites, I wouldn't have my cell phone (and 12-hour minimum-wage shifts in Amazon warehouses, Depends strapped to my butt because the bathroom is a football field away), and would instead be stuck on my family farm, tending the land, participating in community, playing with the family dog by the reservoir on long slow Friday evenings with family. Do you see the problem? No cell phone!!!
Could there be anything better than the mentioning of "Perkins Coie" as casually as if, of course, we all must not only know about its existence but be in deep sympathy with its quest to survive - whatever?
Make no mistake, Matt protesteth too much. He’s working overtime to show us his every man bona fides. Matt, do you know the origins of the word Bobo in Italian, as in Bobo the Clown? It translates to silly, daft, or a fool, but it can also be a polite way to call someone dumb. Brookes was taking the piss and ridiculing the self importance of that generation, obviously. You either know this and want to do battle with a straw man so you can avoid writing about our current wanna be dictator and how he is trampling civil liberties (the most likely explanation), or you’ve lost a few steps as you approach old age. But of course you are that generation yourself. Like Oedipus you futilely try to escape your fate. After all, you went to Concordia Prep, the Harvard of prep school (tuition $86k and endowment of $100 million). You lived a charmed life in post Cold War Moscow frequenting dives and ogling escorts trying to make a living in the aftermath of the Soviet Union. Your dad paid your exorbitant tuitions, that 95% of America can’t afford, by working in the same legacy media you now want to slay. Maybe David Brookes deserves your poison pen, but no straw men please.
Brooks was not “taking the piss” in that book, which is 250 pages of absolutely sincere ogling. Just read the opening section where he details how he indulges in the common “weekly obsession” of elites and “would-be Balzacs”: the reading of the Times wedding page, affectionately known as the “mergers and acquisitions “ section. A consistent theme with Brooks is admiration for people who can overcome their sexual urges; just read how he praises the young newlyweds who controlled themselves en route to advantageous matches:
“Even though you want to hate them, it’s hard not to feel a small tug of approval at the sight of these Résumé Gods. Their expressions are so open and confident; their teeth are a tribute to the magnificence of American orthodonture; and since the Times will only print photographs in which the eyebrows of the bride and groom are at the same level, the couples always look so evenly matched. These are the kids who spent the crucial years between ages 16 and 24 winning the approval of their elders. Others may have been rebelling at that age or feeling alienated or just basically exploring their baser natures. But the people who made it to this page controlled their hormonal urges and spent their adolescence impressing teachers, preparing for the next debate tournament, committing themselves to hours of extracurricular and volunteer work, and doing everything else that we as a society want teenagers to do.”
A person who writes unironically about how upper classes represent the “magnificence of American orthodonture” is not taking the piss. He really admire all this and the whole book is about how wonderfully tasteful and inoffensive he fins the ruling caste.
As for the rest of it, don’t you people ever get tired of this? Yes, I went to a prep school, and I had parents who paid for college. Does that mean I’m obligated to agree with David Brooks? It’s precisely because I’ve seen more of the world than he has and know how royally the policies devised by the “Bobos” missed that I find him so objectionable. He was in Moscow at the same time I was, for a while, and got it completely wrong, thinking the privatizations were working when they were corrupt and a disaster. He suffered from the same problem everyone else did in the press: he didn’t leave his bubble. He was uninterested in life outside it, always has been. Now he needs people outside the bubble, and I’m not going to apologize for laughing about it.
However ineptly, he was OBVIOUSLY taking a humorous tone. Which you can see from your quote where he marvels at their teeth. Just calling them Bobos should be a tip off, no? That doesn’t mean he isn’t making underlying points that are objectionable, but why are you pretending this is a straight sociological treatise? Regardless, why do you get a pass when it comes to your Exiles collection? Why do you get to say that your depiction of remarkably realistic first person accounts of you and your co author’s drinking and sexual binges in Moscow—in a perfect imitation of the Ugly Americans— while Russia was in complete free fall … why do you get to say that was all humor and parody after you were severely criticized for the content? Also, Taylor Lorenz? Really? Now David Brooks? It seems like low hanging fruit, no? Who will you go after next? Ellen De Generis? Your vast talents seem wasted, no? This is the new media you extol? And you’ll have us believe the ‘legacy media’ is irrelevant?
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Teddy Roosevelt.
Ha! The problem in your argument is you’re wrong and Matt’s right. Matt’s bona fides are he has unshackled himself from the Left (you?), gone toe to toe with them in court and Congress. Brooks never needed to be unshackled. He’s always loved the elitist “chains” he wore under his clown suit.
I hadn’t noticed. Every time Brooks opens his mouth about populism and populists, crap pours out of the apposite orifice… rather than his mouth. People need to smell the **** to realize how far out to lunch he is about people outside his ruling class. “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” by Sir Elton comes to mind… Brooks has already sunk into the deep end of the river, clinging to his stocks and gilts (bonds paying your HP demands). Gilts are for the richest of the rich that live on the interest of their interest on their principal. Marie Antoinette, who was a privileged twit but Austrian, not French, simply could not understand the suffering going on under the Ancien Regime. Her mother was the most powerful woman in Europe… Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria… and her “Thaler” (silent “h”) was the inspiration for our “dollar” as well as prices in “bits”, which were 1/8th of a Thaler in Europe and 1/8th of a dollar in America. The Empress was a brilliant woman, intensely disliked Marie’s cluelessness and meant to insult France by sending her to be the Dauphin’s wife. I am sure Marie had an adequate dowry… the Empress was fabulously wealthy and she wasn’t out to to start a war with France, which had happened earlier in the 18th Century when Louis XIV and the Bourbons were out to put one of their own on the Spanish throne… but Marie was lamentably clueless.
Ha! The problem in your argument is that Matt is either too tone deaf to recognize the irony in Brooks’ Bobo parody or he is being lazy and engaging in straw man arguments. This is not a defense of Brooks but rather calling out Matt’s shallow tactics.
Matt’s “shallow” tactics? You mean the shallow tactics he used to fight censorship and suppression of speech, encountering vile, salacious insults and fallacious accusations, so you could continue to dole out petty criticism of him? Those shallow tactics?
Your faith in Brook's wit is not supportable - his decades of meaningless copy designed to sound smart while hitting word count quotas may have stumbled across the French term (Bourgeois bohemian: bobo) much like a thousand monkeys pounding typewriters but there is little to no evidence that bobo has any common meaning in Italian. https://www.etimo.it does not recognize the term at all while AI tells us "In Italian, "bobo" is not a commonly used word with a specific meaning."
As for your belief in a mythological "wannabe dictator", its as invalid as your belief in an Italian bobo.
Bobo in Tuscan vernacular means simple-minded, naive, or a fool. It also exists in Spanish and Portuguese, ergo, our Bobo the Clown. I don’t consider Brooks a wit, and I don’t care much for his prose, but I do think he was obviously engaged in parody and sarcasm, while trying to make general points. You’d never know it from Matt, who treats this like a sociological treatise. Ironically, Matt was none too happy with the critical reception of his book Exile — recounting the sexual and drinking exploits of a young American reporter just like him earning greenbacks in post Soviet Russia. At the time, he admonished critics for being reductive and told us he was merely writing parody.
Bobo in the Spanish sense of fool, is a great word for someone too blind to realize that Trump aspires to be an American Putin.
Anyone who can't acknowledge that his initial post was clearly and literally wrong (Italian is not Portuguese or Spanish) and even remotely suspects that Brooks has the capacity to engage in anything deliberately humorous is one whose judgement is too faulty for further consideration No one cares what you think of Matt's earlier works (or behavior) and anyone with a 3 digit IQ finds the entire Trump = Putin/Hitler/Nazi/fascist meme to be utterly childish.
That actually makes sense (the irony). i haven't read the book, only Matt's description which didn't altogether feel right to me. Brooks is naive, but he,s not a fool.
I hadn’t noticed. Every time Brooks opens his mouth about populism and populists, crap pours out of the apposite orifice… rather than his mouth. People need to smell the **** to realize how far out to lunch he is about people outside his ruling class. “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” by Sir Elton comes to mind… Brooks has already sunk into the deep end of the river, clinging to his stocks and gilts (bonds paying your HP demands ). Such bonds are for the richest of the rich that live on the interest of their interest on their principal. Marie Antoinette, who was a privileged twit but Austrian, not French, simply could not understand the suffering going on under the Ancien Regime. Her mother was the most powerful woman in Europe… Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria… and her “Thaler” (silent “h”) was the inspiration for our “dollar” as well as prices in “bits”, which were 1/8th of a Thaler in Europe and 1/8th of a dollar in America. The Empress was a brilliant woman, intensely disliked Marie’s cluelessness and meant to insult France by sending her to be the Dauphin’s wife. I am sure Marie had an adequate dowry… the Empress was fabulously wealthy and she wasn’t out to to start a war with France, which had happened earlier in the 18th Century when Louis XIV and the Bourbons were out to put one of their own on the Spanish throne… but Marie was lamentably clueless.
I'm puzzled by such virulence towards a man who tries to understand what he doesn,t understand. Unlike a lot of his profession, he is not motivated by meanness. As far as the ruling class is concerned, I,m not of the opinion that commentators do much ruling. This is sounding a lot more like class envy than political argument. I think that is non-productive and I don’t,t find it interesting. If you do, have at it.
I haven't read Bobos in Paradise since the time it was written, but it seemed to me, too, at the time to be an inept attempt at mild sarcasm, unfortunately authored by a person too close for comfort in every way to the people he was treating with light condescension.
Humor me here Matt, but he’s obviously taking on — however ineptly— a humorous tone when he extols the quality of their teeth. You’re being reductive and choose to read this book as a straight sociological treatise. But how is that any different from those
who slammed you for your ‘fictional’ account of sexual escapades, lascivious encounters w sex workers and drinking yourself to oblivion in Moscow in what was a remarkably realistic portrayal of the ugly American? You seem to protest that that was merely parody. Why do you get a pass?
What does the following mean- that a “second-wave fascism” to follow the first of Céline and Ezra Pound would come when “Walter Kirn writes another novel.” He’s become what he used to satirize, not realizing it.- I’m puzzled?
But to be honest the only way for that to happen (IMO) is for a mlitary coop to remove the vermin in the white house followed by restabilization followed by deep thinking and debate as to who we are as a nation and our place in the writ world at large. So let's bring in on Brooks...I'm with ya.
"Restabilization?" Are you kidding? There was no one in charge for the previous four years. It seemed to be a bunch of pierced, non-binary, green-haired 25 year olds running the place. It certainly wasn't Biden the Zombie or Harris the Script Reader. I like Trump's "wreck everything and put it back together better" approach. If it works.
Our "elites" radiate the paranoia and condescension of colonial administrators alienated from the local culture. These people are utterly clueless, utterly incapable of understanding that their cultural socialism and metropolitan insularity and boutique activist bullshit continue to fuel widespread disconnect, creating a vacuum that populist insurgents fill.
Wrong, with respect, Brooks et al are flunkies and factotums for the real "elites." The very rich understand exactly what's taking place which is why they're working to take down Trump from the inside. Brooks effectively has an audience of zero.
Brooks is whining to the choir. He wouldn't dream of rolling up his sleeves even to clean his own sink and just about everybody knows it.
Agree, so I don’t understand the hatred. He doesn,t influence anyone or anything. His columns reduce to some kind of weirdly eccentric spiritual memoir and not applicable to anything real. He really hits a nerve here though and I just don't get it.
I like a lot of your comments here, but perhaps you might want to dig a little deeper.
He's obviously been making a large number of people identifying as"conservatives" unhappy. My own antipathy towards Brooks resides in the fact that he's clearly a dunce who talks down to large swathes of the public.
He may be "likeable" enough, but his job is produce work similar to that of Matt, or Glenn Reynolds, or anyone who's slightly skeptical and curious. I bear the man no personal ill will.
I think I understand the miscommunication, then. I'd not ever in a million years take his social-political commentary seriously. I'm conservative, the old-fashioned kind in almost every way. In that I think he,s interesting at all, it's like an interest I might take in a slight acquaintance, or a character in a book, who is clearly flailing towards a dead end. i don’t think he's a dunce, only that's he,s wrong, and I don't think he realizes that he,s talking down ( in this, he resembles a lot of people I know, friends actually, who would deny it hotly). I suppose I,m just used to keeping a tin ear when the situation seems to call for it.
All elites are contemptuous of those they rule. Homo homini lupus. All previous elites have been cautious about revealing this.
Ours is the first to imagine that they can dispense with hypocrisy, that their authentic selves could inspire anything other than hostility.
This mistake is matched by the stupidity of thinking that people steeped into the most transactional culture in human history would be fooled by advertising/PR.
Don Quixote's relative realism compares favourably to the collective delusions of the bobos.
"All previous elites have been cautious about revealing this."
That's likely because most successful previous elites (the tippy-top level philosopher/influencers) were grounded in the recognition that they were really no better their underlings. They appreciated the strong/weak men + good/bad times historical cycles. This one's different. Hmm, why is that? Hmmm...
Matt— once again you've put your finger directly on my pulse. Thanks for putting so gloriously into words that which eludes my less restless and creative mind. How many of us are out here who believe, as you seem to, that we are being trolled by astroturfed theater kids acting out their frustration on a genuine movement to transition the country from the past to the future? It's not really MAGA, not quite 60s bohemia, certainly not the Bernie left or the John Thune right. For people who follow you and Walter and others who hate the establishment magpies, but don't really trust the religiously Trumpian zealots either, where do we stand on the spectrum? Are we growing or shrinking? Where does our vision of America's future lead?
This is exactly where I am. To me the basic problem is nationalists (populists) versus globalists (necessarily elites) everywhere in the Western world. This seems to satisfy Occam's razor since it is the simplest explanation that explains everything, to me at least. So, I'm a Nationalist = anti-globalist. I would welcome knowing any exceptions.
or Populists versus the managerial class which rule corporations, government and media according to Sam Francis' "The Leviathan". I've been listening to the young techies like Aurun Macintyre and Moment of Zen. Their battle as with Elon is with bureaucrats. Bobos (theatre kids) like Brooks and Doug Murrays etc are part of the establishment. I'm just starting to read these people and trying to find my way in this time and place. Tim Dillon said that we need to concentrate on trying to define what a country is. And he doesn't think it is an economic zone. It's not nationalism or anything to do with race. It's a feeling . I get it when I watch shows like 1923.
Your comparison to a ruling class and the lower natives is apt. I hadn’t thought of it that way, and I think it’s helpful when trying to figure this out. Thanks!
Our elites resemble colonial administrators is a great line. You should develop it. Maybe call them the cultural Raj. And the Tesla vandals are cultural sepoys. Do you have your own substack?
Eric Kaufmann coined the term "cultural socialism," Michael. I just provided you with a link to an hour long video of him explaining it, along with a link to his book.
Hey Mike, no where above did Brad type the three consecutive words you and quotation marks now want him to define. Then, your least-apt move: pressing "reply" on the original post a second time! Perhaps you need to turn off your devices for the rest of the day: clearly, you are declining.
I've been thinking about your comment all day and have to write to acknowledge that this is the truest description of the democrats that I have ever read. Calling them "colonial administrators" is so on target. Great comment.
correct. I think yourself and matts general readership has a better understanding of this than any other group i can find. are there any other communities of readers and thinkers I should know about to find other similarly intelligent life?
Our elites hogged all the assets, then they hogged all the power, and then they hogged all the virtue.
This is why they refuse to look in the mirror and see just another grubby aristocracy like the same aristocracy societies always cough up, but have a desperate neurotic need to be seen and acknowledged as cool, hip, edgy, wise, compassionate—an intellectual, political and moral elite who have the same divine right to rule as any pharaoh ever did, except that they deserve this because of "merit", i.e. being good at school, social climbing, jargon mastery and ass kissing.
We're just about at the 10-year mark of their nonstop histrionic meltdown over the MAGA Peasants' Rebellions and it's melted almost every brain and warped every soul from Brookline to Brooklyn to Berkeley, and there's nothing that they won't say, do or burn down to get back that rosy feeling of being god's chosen ones.
It drives them absolutely mad that those of us outside their virtual Versailles don't have the same exalted opinion of them as they do. What's the point of getting all those As and mastering all those markers of social superiority if the lower classes refuse to worship and obey?
Beautiful summary. The “nothing they won’t …do” may well include inviting a nuclear exchange. The fact that most media elites (think lyin’ Brian Williams) probably underestimate the explosive power of just one modern H-bomb by a factor of 1000 is hardly cause for optimism.
Clever Pseudonym, as often, nails it. Right now we see them screaming because, in their best analysis, they’re not getting the symbolic obeisance they deserve.
But that’s nothing. Wait until their chosen perches can no longer pay their inflated salaries. Which for much of this ridiculous class, especially those in media, will come soon enough.
Just too bad this particular assclown, being at NYT, has a wide moat around him. He’ll very possibly be able to huff and whine and double-deal until retirement.
Haha real old-fashioned aristocrats have no interest in virtue (beyond philosophy, if that), or the scorn of lesser beings. Virtue is the modern add-on, the true sign, that these people wouldn't know an aristocrat if one fell on them.
True. Genuine blue-bloods are fixated with the transmission of power and privilege generation after generation by whatever means necessary. The idea that aristos are exemplars of idealism and public service that is common with so many Trads is naive to the point of brain damage.
The elites are hyenas who mistake themselves for leopards. Instead of reading Brooks, they should have read Lampedusa. This is what poor choices in reading gets you.
True. But, nonetheless, I suspect that Netflix would inevitably adapt it: the Risorgimento portrayed as an Italic civil rights uprising, Tancredi played as a sexually conflicted community organiser in love with a feisty girl from the Global South, the Prince of Salinas a proto-Boomer in awe of the wisdom of the young...
Reading has become as archaic as Sicily under the Bourbons.
The cast would have to be inclusive. Papuans, Tamils and Filipinos all welcome. Ditto troons and furries. The casting couch must be decolonised so that it affirms everyone who identifies as an actor can reclaim their power. Every entertainment must become a struggle session. Blend the sensibility of Fellini with Brecht and the early John Waters.
Most of them don't even have to ass kiss bc mommy and daddy already did it for them. You can always tell who is an "elite" by their expectations for their adult male children. Elites essentially treat them the same as they would their daughters-and it shows.
that's a very good take. I grew up playing D&D but I somehow escaped the mental cage. I suppose my personal reform started when I finally saw through Chomsky. Painful process but well worth the effort.
D&D was an escape from the construction of current society that demanded conformity. Other indicators were ball caps worn backwards, holes in jeans, and inventing new words like gnarly. Chomsky was hard to shake but eventually the real hidden USG atrocities of the 20th century came to light and the D&D players were the first to expose them.
My reference “no idea who they even are” was about having knowledge of people like Brooks. They were in a different sphere of influence then D&D players.
beautiful. "Our elites hogged all the assets, then they hogged all the power, and then they hogged all the virtue." Can I please steal this and use it royalty free?
Wow, this is some great writing! Clever, succinct, and apt.
My reply, not so much. By saying this last sentence, or rather by typing it, I am seeking to imitate the false humility mask of the self identified elites.
Maya Angelou famously said "People will forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel." So for Brooks and his cadre of dilletante bobos, they are learning that it is impossible to un-shit on people. The classes of people that comprise MAGA will never forget how they were simultaneously ignored and ruined by an insufferable elite culture. There just aren't enough aging hippies left to form a mass movement.
I can't believe they call themselves bobos. All I can think of is Bobo the Clown. My autocorrect keeps changing it to bozos, further cementing that opinion.
Google the name Mike Bobo. He is among the most reviled men in the great state of Georgia. I have Bobo derangement syndrome. I wake up screaming FIRE MIKE BOBO.
Perhaps not. Hippies never embraced politics in their youth. It was all about 'being free' ( there is a slogan along those lines. Someone may remember it).
I'm a boomer who was and is politically active (trust me not for dems and never for republicans).
Taibbi at his best. A total takedown of the classic Philadelphia Mainline, Brooks Brothers clad, smirkfest pontificating as David Brooks. The guy is worse than tone deaf, he’s annoying. Like the kid in school, last period Friday just before dismissal, reminding the teacher they forgot to assign weekend homework.
There is no more pathetic pair of "freedom fighters" than Brooks and Capehart. They've never fought for freedom, they've only enjoyed the freedoms that others have fought for them.
Bobos like David Brooks are squawking like headless chickens. I saw one of these "civic uprising" 50501 protests and it looked like an angry nursing home. Keep an eye on color revolution subversion agent Norm Eisen, who wrote a "Democracy Playbook" that is full of hilarious double-speak: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/norm-eisen-color-revolution-playbook
Spot on comment, was at a traffic light during one of the protests and they were ridiculously silly. Engaged some with why are you here and why do all of your signs look like, did the same person made them.
Reminded me of the No Nuke’s Concerts, where everyone took hot showers, blew dryer their hair drove to the concert, got gas in their cars went into a massive stadium full of electricity to light and operate the whole concert, then they drove back home and watched themselves on their color TV’s protesting against the life the were enjoying.
The recent protesters looked lost but happy to be outside it didn’t seem to matter to them that they were a collective group of we use to be for something but don’t ask me, I forgot.
Old protesters but still carrying the torch of We The People, that was nice to see.
I agree— I drove past a couple of those recent protests and thought they looked like assisted living home outings. Amazing. And I am close in age to them and know these people. They are so convinced or brainwashed —it’s impossible to speak with them.
The funniest thing to me is the Jezebel headline describing Brooks as a "NYT centrist". To paraphrase something my dad once said: an NYT centrist is like a virgin prostitute; there's no such thing.
“I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant," Brooks says, "and I'm thinking, a) he's going to be president and b) he'll be a very good president."
Last night during MSNBC's Potomac Primary coverage, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann were discussing Barack Obama's speech. Matthews — who, in the past, has both cried over an Obama speech and compared him to Jesus — described exactly what happens to him when Obama speaks:
I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often.
Matthew’s swooning is yet another example of an adoring blowhard political hack succumbing to the masterful grooming of the media by a silver tongued cult leader bathed in elitist slobber
Wander if Chris had the same thrill, watching Obama with a $75 million dollar real estate portfolio, lecture people attempting to live on $45K a year , before Biden's inflation raised the cost of living in the US by $13K, they were racists and sexists, if they didn't elect Harris, and request more of the same.
“A bulge, well rounded, yet not overstated. But I knew with great certainty that if circumstance called for it, this sleeping bulge could quickly become an intimidating monument of extraordinary length and girth able to crush armies of brave men.”
Matt is the only writer that I read whose work I eagerly anticipate and read with enjoyment and a small amount of sadness knowing I will shortly finish.
I’m looking forward to the David Brooks "freedom march" joining hands with the likes of Dick and Liz Cheney, Larry Fink, Jamie Dimon and Bill Ackman and all the other billionaire hedge fund managers who have experienced the kind of suffering the working class can never understand over the past 3 weeks.
Proving their working class bona fides by blasting Bruce Springsteen music.........
I just got majorly projectile shit on by a goose while helping a friend (who is in an arm cast right now) medicate it. I had to hose myself down with cold water to drive home. I'm in no mood for pretentious yuppie scum right now. I am finding no use for people who need to dine at Fouchette 110. I am glad that as punks in the 80's, we used to press our faces up against the Sharper Image windows and make faces at the pretentious twats. I'm all out of shits to give.
Bertold Brecht up to 11? The people have disappointed the elites, so the elites must overthrow the people, not just replace them... (And they'll call it their "democracy.")
The most embarrassing Brooks column was at the beginning of the Obama Administration when he wrote a laudatory article that consisted of listing all the Harvard and Yale degrees Obama's people had.
**Obviously** they were going to be successful running things.
He obviously never read "The Best and the Brightest", and who exactly got us into the Vietnam War. (Hint: Harvard graduates.)
It's weird that Brooks considers himself part of the cognitive elite, when he has a mere BA from the downmarket University of Chicago.
Reporters, esp columnists know who to try and make friends with. If he writes about the Harvard pukes that he so idolizes, he figures he'll get invited to their parties and since he's not one of them... that's as close as he'll ever get.
Not to be supportive of Brooks, the little snot, but Chicago is, or at least used to be, a rigorous, demanding university with excellent standards. Often more rigorous than Harvard.
Having a President with only a few hours a day (at best!) of sentience is totally fine and requires not a word of protest. Having someone who is making some tough (and perhaps wrong) choices calls for a revolution, though.
Thanks, “elites”!
"Sitting in Tom Friedman's lap" absolutely best take down of Brooks I've ever heard. What Brooks et al don't understand is that the "revolution" he's calling for is taking place right now and he's one of the elites quivering inside the palaces of the rich.
"We don't get to choose our change agent." Burn that into our brain pans.
Glenn Reynolds promotes Matt's piece - appending his own 2016 seminal piece entitled:
"How David Brooks Created Donald Trump" written when Glenn was still a Trump skeptic.
"...One of the most famous things about the Tea Partiers was that — as befits a relentlessly bourgeois protest movement — they left things cleaner than they found them. Rich Lowry reported from Washington, DC: “Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them. This was the revolt of the bourgeois, of the responsible, of the orderly, of people profoundly at peace with the traditional mores of American society. .. In San Francisco, too, tea party protesters met pro-Obama activists and picked up their trash. "John," author of The City Square blog wrote: “As Obama supporters moved along in the line to get into the fundraiser, they left behind an impressive amount of trash. Tea Partiers shouted ‘pick up your garbage’ and ‘this is San Francisco, what about recycling?’ There was no response. They chanted ‘Obama leaves a mess.’ Still no response. Eventually, a tea partier (wearing the black cowboy hat) crosses over and starts to pick up the trash on his own. Other tea partiers join him. Another manages to find a trash bag. Soon the trash is being collected.” Yet the tea party movement was smeared as racist, denounced as fascist, harassed with impunity by the IRS and generally treated with contempt by the political establishment — and by pundits like Brooks, who declared "I'm not a fan of this movement." Trump’s ascendance is a symptom of a colossal failure among America’s political leaders, of which Brooks’ mean-spirited insularity is only a tiny part.” Read the whole thing.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/03/20/donald-trump-political-establishment-elites-tea-party-bourgeois-working-class-column/82047484/
The elites just don't get it. And I don't think they ever will.
It's not just the elites. It's the people who identify with and parrot the elites. I know some of them and I see their Facebook posts every day.
That’s EXACTLY correct. Insecure people who think parroting the Elite makes them smart and sophisticated. They are nearly the entire Democrat base.
Exactly. Get out while you still can! I’d guess most of us here are former Dems.
God save us from the people who parrot "our betters"
They will only "get" explanations that turn a life of comfort and power over others into a virtue.
They don't care to
That was really interesting. I don’t,t see Brooks as mean-spirited though, quite the contrary. I think he has been, perhaps from his childhood, infatuated with what passed for NE “upper class," but I don’t,t think he ever understood its arrogance, snobbery, pretension, and shallow polish. He may have taken on some of the region's insularity, but he seems to me a very nice person who tries hard to be tolerant and kind (sometimes he misses but most of us do). He really doesn't fit the NE mold at all although he has done his best to fool himself.
Agreed. But he's still wrong and humorously missed the point. We had the civil uprising and that's how Trump, in spite of everything done to prevent it, got elected. Like Mitt Romney, there's a lot of self awareness missing in Mr. Brooks.
From my experience, people of wealth and position are breathtakingly lacking in self-awareness. It's cultivated as a way to ward off self-loathing.
and there's the whole "we are doing this for their own good" thing
Lol - gotta say I've never noticed a lot of self-loathing.
People can use position well (some do, some don’t), but great wealth does seem to carry more than its share of great arrogance. Of course it has also funded great public benefits.
Agree completely with this, and Romney is exactly the same - well-meaning, smart, naively principled, insular, a little “stunato."
I agree with you on the idea that he is infatuated with the upper class, but not sure I'm on board with "nice". Often the "nice" people I know can be kind of passive aggressive. Underneath the "nice" facade there is an anger that occasionally flares up. Thomas Sowell says that "social justice" is just a new term for "envy". I think there is envy involved.
Yes!
There is probably always a smidge of envy involved in social infatuation. Maybe he,s passive aggressive, don't know. I've never seen him ugly, though i only read the occasional pieces a friend sends me. I certainly don't know the man. I do have a pretty good nose for passive-aggressives - i've run into a lot of them, especially online, and think they are best avoided. Brooks doesn't seem angry and mean to me, just out of his depth.
Ah, yes! I can buy "out of his depth". So often, because I hang around with smart people, I forget that an explanation for off behavior is that they have middling brains, but pose as experts or actually think their education makes them elite. Might be elite, but not necessarily smart. Thanks!
I think he is mean-spirited.
He's disappointed me so often in that way that I won't read him anymore.
I'm sorry to hear that. I've only read the occasional columns a friend has sent me over the years. Trump seems to have pushed a lot of semi-rational liberals off the deep edge. His revolution of the elites fantasy sounds completely nuts.
I feel so many liberals were unbalanced before Trump entered their cancel culture arena
Now John Kerry is an example of NE arrogance, mixed with a bit of climate change cronyism and state rationing for good measure-
Not to be mean, but I couldn't stand that guy.
I hope I'm not mean but I can't stand him either. Self important prig
Newsflash: snobbery is definitionally mean-spirited.
Lol Brooks would probably agree with you
Yeah man. Note perfect comment. And their failure to accept culpability in creating Donald Trump is going to drag the entire country down with them.
Thanks for this- enlightening!
Great stuff, Paul.
It's strange, but Brooks et al don't seem to comprehend that they're the Baddies.
Thanks to Yuri Bezmenov - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
LOL
Exactly. The Uprising already happened/is happening. That's why Trump won.
🤣 That was hilarious. Very appropriate here. Lol
friggin hysterical!
100%. The decade plus of zero interest rates that Krugman championed and they embraced let to the biggest wealth transfer in my lifetime. And the appeasement through market access for China has quite literally been the most naive and worst foreign policy of the last century. Even the Iraq war seems like a stroke of genius by comparison, As long as he's making himself comfortable in Friedmans lap he should sit on it and rotate as we used to say.
I'm 100% too, in retrospect. I am wondering when you saw this coming - Nixon in China, or later?
I wont be satisfied until I see the bobos running for their lives.
I’ll admit, I voted for him, but Mike Dukakis was the perfect candidate for these folks. Grow Swiss chard instead of tobacco is exactly the type of answer that would have been conceived, born, burped, and set loose by the Davos Dick-fer-brains.
It's important to be clear-eyed about Trump as well, though. He's a magnificent boot down the door of the status quo, but he makes mistakes too, and is almost as old as Biden was. It's important to keep the actual objectives in mind - the welfare of the average non-bobo American, the destruction of the poisonous ideologies seeping out of the elite colleges and institutions, and the revitalization of the economy-of-things in preference to email jobs and "knowledge work" - and not get lost in the memes.
We have had a growing problem for years that no one seems willing or able to address: how to keep employed the people who are not employable (whether by talent or education) in a sophisticated knowledge-based economy. I am not in the least convinced that the manufacture of mass-market consumer goods is a viable way forward. I am convinced that we need to reassert the home-manufacture of such things as medicines, armaments, electronic components
Yes, I'm perfectly fine with China making Christmas ornaments and Halloween decorations. Neither of those are particularly necessary for our economy or our security. Let's focus on making those things you suggest... ...and making them very well.
We shouldn't be talking top down. There are capitalists out there that will employ low skill workers making mass market stuff tomorrow if they know they won't get killed by unfair trade from China or SE Asia. The capitalists will make some money, and more importantly their workers will have a job and a little dignity that derives from working. And the satisfaction of bitching about wages and working conditions.
Mass market stuff is already overpriced. Maybe American manufacturers can make a profit charging more for American-made junk to sell to all the poor people we've imported from cheap-labor countries. I don’t,t like to guess how it will all turn out.
We need to restart home manufacture of everything you missed during the supply chain disruptions of 2020. China clogged the ports (because China still controlled the ports of Long Beach/Los Angeles, control Bill Clinton signed over to them in 1997) and the ships sat off shore for months loaded with critical supplies. That should have been a huge wakeup call.
I did not personally miss anything. I do agree that we absolutely need to supply/manufacture what we can't survive without.
If Lawyers Guns and Money is right, and he sure sounds like he knows what he,s talking about, large-scale manufacturing can work for us again, and I'm all for it. Globalism has been a self-inflicted disaster for the US in many ways.
One thing this thread leaves out is the role of tax havens. The way this works is that something manufactured here is exported with a transfer price just high enough for there to be little profit earned here, but then further processed or even only packaged in a country with little or no tax on business profits. I know through an acquaintance (who had worked there) of a company that manufactured a drug in punch bowl sized batches, which were flown in a small plane to South Carolina and then to another country with an incredibly low tax on profits. The drug was packaged into single doses there and virtually all the profits earned by the subsidiary in that country. Through my wife’s retail business (we are now retired) I learned about a bra that was manufactured in several countries. The last step was shipping bulk loads overseas for packaging.
I think this is why President Trump wants to replace income taxes with tariffs.
Interesting, thanks!
We do need to re-onshore a lot of industry, for both economic and strategic reasons. However, I will caution that people should not get their hopes up about mass employment in the sector. Manufacturing doesn't require as many people as it used to. "The plant" that comes to town with 2000 jobs just isn't a thing anymore.
We need industry of our own, to make our own things or the people that do will own us.
I agree, depending on the industry.
medications?
Yes for sure. Also armaments and electronic components. And while we're at it, quit selling our agricultural land and young people's minds to hostile powers.
yeah, he can make mistakes and will do so, but its still immeasurably better than somone bobo brooks would be slobbering over.
In essence, Brooks fellated the previous Administration's Gods like Brandon. To me, that's enough to permanently discredit him.
Paid party operative.
Great perspective on Trump’s bumbles here this a.m. "Imagine if Kamala Harris had won." https://open.substack.com/pub/sashastone/p/no-we-dont-regret-our-vote-for-trump?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=4eh3p
Trump is human. Are we surprised?
Some people on both sides would be. The Left (cult of Dem) thinks he's Satan, while his "loyalists" think he's Superman. As we all know, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Trump is a successful businessman who is not as great a liar as someone like Dave Chappelle would make him out to be.
I guess Dick Cheney isn't Satan anymore, since the Progressive Democrats have embraced him and his daughter, Li'l Satan.
Satan's acolytes can be cleansed of their sins by opposing Trump. In the same way, former Saints of Liberalism can be cast into eternal damnation by embracing Trump.
🎯
Agree 100%. Stephen Kotkin gets the prize for clarifying all this. His Vienna lectures on youtube just nail it. His thesis is that this whole mess is a textbook polulist backlash (as opposed to totalist authoritarianism as the bobo's claim) and while populism plays an important role in democracy (ie keeping elitism in check) it is unfortunately the case that populists are great at breaking things but generally are not able to fix anything. check it out. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHFGB5X7R8&t=6291s
The "elites" have shown us that most of their expertise lies in breaking things as well.
The "elite" break things for their own benefit. They seem to be doing just fine themselves.
I'm not convinced populist breakage, which seems rather indiscriminate, will benefit the populous but we,ll see.
My laptop won’t let me like your comment but I do!!!
Have you tried burping your laptop? If not, fling it over your shoulder and keep patting it; you will hear it ......
Now THAT'S funny!
04/21/24: Brooks and Andersen are full of sh*t. Next case, please.
I was thinking that Ezra Klein as I was listening to him on his book promotion tour was putting himself into the running for one of these types if he is not already there. How do you know someone is a vegan? Don't worry they'll tell you. AKA Ezra Klein.
04/22/25: You must have asbestos eyes and ears. Ezra Klein wrote himself into the loony bin quite some time ago and since that time has wasted no time in perfecting his derangement. Watch for his mental disorientation in 2025-26 to match Mark Zuckerberg's.
Actually, a five-year fraud on the American people. You have a generous spirit.
Yeah it's really crazy. Your take is spot on. They are so busy conflating populism with Totalism they somehow failed to understand that they themselves sparked the current populist backlash.
To the establishment, Biden's senility and limited work hours were the main reason to vote for him.
I have to disagree. If it weren't for the elites, I wouldn't have my cell phone (and 12-hour minimum-wage shifts in Amazon warehouses, Depends strapped to my butt because the bathroom is a football field away), and would instead be stuck on my family farm, tending the land, participating in community, playing with the family dog by the reservoir on long slow Friday evenings with family. Do you see the problem? No cell phone!!!
Could there be anything better than the mentioning of "Perkins Coie" as casually as if, of course, we all must not only know about its existence but be in deep sympathy with its quest to survive - whatever?
PerkinsCoie!PerkinsCoie!PerkinsCoie!
A rallying cry for us.
Make no mistake, Matt protesteth too much. He’s working overtime to show us his every man bona fides. Matt, do you know the origins of the word Bobo in Italian, as in Bobo the Clown? It translates to silly, daft, or a fool, but it can also be a polite way to call someone dumb. Brookes was taking the piss and ridiculing the self importance of that generation, obviously. You either know this and want to do battle with a straw man so you can avoid writing about our current wanna be dictator and how he is trampling civil liberties (the most likely explanation), or you’ve lost a few steps as you approach old age. But of course you are that generation yourself. Like Oedipus you futilely try to escape your fate. After all, you went to Concordia Prep, the Harvard of prep school (tuition $86k and endowment of $100 million). You lived a charmed life in post Cold War Moscow frequenting dives and ogling escorts trying to make a living in the aftermath of the Soviet Union. Your dad paid your exorbitant tuitions, that 95% of America can’t afford, by working in the same legacy media you now want to slay. Maybe David Brookes deserves your poison pen, but no straw men please.
Brooks was not “taking the piss” in that book, which is 250 pages of absolutely sincere ogling. Just read the opening section where he details how he indulges in the common “weekly obsession” of elites and “would-be Balzacs”: the reading of the Times wedding page, affectionately known as the “mergers and acquisitions “ section. A consistent theme with Brooks is admiration for people who can overcome their sexual urges; just read how he praises the young newlyweds who controlled themselves en route to advantageous matches:
“Even though you want to hate them, it’s hard not to feel a small tug of approval at the sight of these Résumé Gods. Their expressions are so open and confident; their teeth are a tribute to the magnificence of American orthodonture; and since the Times will only print photographs in which the eyebrows of the bride and groom are at the same level, the couples always look so evenly matched. These are the kids who spent the crucial years between ages 16 and 24 winning the approval of their elders. Others may have been rebelling at that age or feeling alienated or just basically exploring their baser natures. But the people who made it to this page controlled their hormonal urges and spent their adolescence impressing teachers, preparing for the next debate tournament, committing themselves to hours of extracurricular and volunteer work, and doing everything else that we as a society want teenagers to do.”
A person who writes unironically about how upper classes represent the “magnificence of American orthodonture” is not taking the piss. He really admire all this and the whole book is about how wonderfully tasteful and inoffensive he fins the ruling caste.
As for the rest of it, don’t you people ever get tired of this? Yes, I went to a prep school, and I had parents who paid for college. Does that mean I’m obligated to agree with David Brooks? It’s precisely because I’ve seen more of the world than he has and know how royally the policies devised by the “Bobos” missed that I find him so objectionable. He was in Moscow at the same time I was, for a while, and got it completely wrong, thinking the privatizations were working when they were corrupt and a disaster. He suffered from the same problem everyone else did in the press: he didn’t leave his bubble. He was uninterested in life outside it, always has been. Now he needs people outside the bubble, and I’m not going to apologize for laughing about it.
However ineptly, he was OBVIOUSLY taking a humorous tone. Which you can see from your quote where he marvels at their teeth. Just calling them Bobos should be a tip off, no? That doesn’t mean he isn’t making underlying points that are objectionable, but why are you pretending this is a straight sociological treatise? Regardless, why do you get a pass when it comes to your Exiles collection? Why do you get to say that your depiction of remarkably realistic first person accounts of you and your co author’s drinking and sexual binges in Moscow—in a perfect imitation of the Ugly Americans— while Russia was in complete free fall … why do you get to say that was all humor and parody after you were severely criticized for the content? Also, Taylor Lorenz? Really? Now David Brooks? It seems like low hanging fruit, no? Who will you go after next? Ellen De Generis? Your vast talents seem wasted, no? This is the new media you extol? And you’ll have us believe the ‘legacy media’ is irrelevant?
Hey look, a genuine concern troll in the wild.
“To every toady a critic is a troll” - attributed to Lao Tzu
Also, you're the one toadying up to Brooks and the legacy media, here.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Teddy Roosevelt.
Until you get off your knees at the altar, you'll see everything exactly the way you want to see it, and OBVIOUSLY.
feeling every word
and wishing I'd said it
Ha! The problem in your argument is you’re wrong and Matt’s right. Matt’s bona fides are he has unshackled himself from the Left (you?), gone toe to toe with them in court and Congress. Brooks never needed to be unshackled. He’s always loved the elitist “chains” he wore under his clown suit.
I hadn’t noticed. Every time Brooks opens his mouth about populism and populists, crap pours out of the apposite orifice… rather than his mouth. People need to smell the **** to realize how far out to lunch he is about people outside his ruling class. “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” by Sir Elton comes to mind… Brooks has already sunk into the deep end of the river, clinging to his stocks and gilts (bonds paying your HP demands). Gilts are for the richest of the rich that live on the interest of their interest on their principal. Marie Antoinette, who was a privileged twit but Austrian, not French, simply could not understand the suffering going on under the Ancien Regime. Her mother was the most powerful woman in Europe… Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria… and her “Thaler” (silent “h”) was the inspiration for our “dollar” as well as prices in “bits”, which were 1/8th of a Thaler in Europe and 1/8th of a dollar in America. The Empress was a brilliant woman, intensely disliked Marie’s cluelessness and meant to insult France by sending her to be the Dauphin’s wife. I am sure Marie had an adequate dowry… the Empress was fabulously wealthy and she wasn’t out to to start a war with France, which had happened earlier in the 18th Century when Louis XIV and the Bourbons were out to put one of their own on the Spanish throne… but Marie was lamentably clueless.
Ha! The problem in your argument is that Matt is either too tone deaf to recognize the irony in Brooks’ Bobo parody or he is being lazy and engaging in straw man arguments. This is not a defense of Brooks but rather calling out Matt’s shallow tactics.
“Tone death”?
Matt’s “shallow” tactics? You mean the shallow tactics he used to fight censorship and suppression of speech, encountering vile, salacious insults and fallacious accusations, so you could continue to dole out petty criticism of him? Those shallow tactics?
Yes ‘tone deaf’ — Matt should acknowledge Brookes’ parody, however inartfully done. Again, I think the man has lost a few steps, or sold out.
It’s “Tone deaf”, a musical reference. But maybe you meant “death”, no idea.
By the way, it’s Bobo Brooks, no e.
Your faith in Brook's wit is not supportable - his decades of meaningless copy designed to sound smart while hitting word count quotas may have stumbled across the French term (Bourgeois bohemian: bobo) much like a thousand monkeys pounding typewriters but there is little to no evidence that bobo has any common meaning in Italian. https://www.etimo.it does not recognize the term at all while AI tells us "In Italian, "bobo" is not a commonly used word with a specific meaning."
As for your belief in a mythological "wannabe dictator", its as invalid as your belief in an Italian bobo.
Bobo in Tuscan vernacular means simple-minded, naive, or a fool. It also exists in Spanish and Portuguese, ergo, our Bobo the Clown. I don’t consider Brooks a wit, and I don’t care much for his prose, but I do think he was obviously engaged in parody and sarcasm, while trying to make general points. You’d never know it from Matt, who treats this like a sociological treatise. Ironically, Matt was none too happy with the critical reception of his book Exile — recounting the sexual and drinking exploits of a young American reporter just like him earning greenbacks in post Soviet Russia. At the time, he admonished critics for being reductive and told us he was merely writing parody.
Bobo in the Spanish sense of fool, is a great word for someone too blind to realize that Trump aspires to be an American Putin.
Anyone who can't acknowledge that his initial post was clearly and literally wrong (Italian is not Portuguese or Spanish) and even remotely suspects that Brooks has the capacity to engage in anything deliberately humorous is one whose judgement is too faulty for further consideration No one cares what you think of Matt's earlier works (or behavior) and anyone with a 3 digit IQ finds the entire Trump = Putin/Hitler/Nazi/fascist meme to be utterly childish.
That actually makes sense (the irony). i haven't read the book, only Matt's description which didn't altogether feel right to me. Brooks is naive, but he,s not a fool.
I hadn’t noticed. Every time Brooks opens his mouth about populism and populists, crap pours out of the apposite orifice… rather than his mouth. People need to smell the **** to realize how far out to lunch he is about people outside his ruling class. “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” by Sir Elton comes to mind… Brooks has already sunk into the deep end of the river, clinging to his stocks and gilts (bonds paying your HP demands ). Such bonds are for the richest of the rich that live on the interest of their interest on their principal. Marie Antoinette, who was a privileged twit but Austrian, not French, simply could not understand the suffering going on under the Ancien Regime. Her mother was the most powerful woman in Europe… Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria… and her “Thaler” (silent “h”) was the inspiration for our “dollar” as well as prices in “bits”, which were 1/8th of a Thaler in Europe and 1/8th of a dollar in America. The Empress was a brilliant woman, intensely disliked Marie’s cluelessness and meant to insult France by sending her to be the Dauphin’s wife. I am sure Marie had an adequate dowry… the Empress was fabulously wealthy and she wasn’t out to to start a war with France, which had happened earlier in the 18th Century when Louis XIV and the Bourbons were out to put one of their own on the Spanish throne… but Marie was lamentably clueless.
I'm puzzled by such virulence towards a man who tries to understand what he doesn,t understand. Unlike a lot of his profession, he is not motivated by meanness. As far as the ruling class is concerned, I,m not of the opinion that commentators do much ruling. This is sounding a lot more like class envy than political argument. I think that is non-productive and I don’t,t find it interesting. If you do, have at it.
Who keeps putting nickels in you?
I haven't read Bobos in Paradise since the time it was written, but it seemed to me, too, at the time to be an inept attempt at mild sarcasm, unfortunately authored by a person too close for comfort in every way to the people he was treating with light condescension.
You are at once reptilian and a bad speller.
Humor me here Matt, but he’s obviously taking on — however ineptly— a humorous tone when he extols the quality of their teeth. You’re being reductive and choose to read this book as a straight sociological treatise. But how is that any different from those
who slammed you for your ‘fictional’ account of sexual escapades, lascivious encounters w sex workers and drinking yourself to oblivion in Moscow in what was a remarkably realistic portrayal of the ugly American? You seem to protest that that was merely parody. Why do you get a pass?
What does the following mean- that a “second-wave fascism” to follow the first of Céline and Ezra Pound would come when “Walter Kirn writes another novel.” He’s become what he used to satirize, not realizing it.- I’m puzzled?
I'm all in on revolution a reboot of america.
But to be honest the only way for that to happen (IMO) is for a mlitary coop to remove the vermin in the white house followed by restabilization followed by deep thinking and debate as to who we are as a nation and our place in the writ world at large. So let's bring in on Brooks...I'm with ya.
Refuse fascism
Oppose Oppression
Champion DEI
Don’t try that in Texas. It’ll be the worst hour you’ve ever spent.
We already have Beto the Clown. We don't need any more.
You are the failure of American institutions. Clearly the product of the failed Department of Education.
"Restabilization?" Are you kidding? There was no one in charge for the previous four years. It seemed to be a bunch of pierced, non-binary, green-haired 25 year olds running the place. It certainly wasn't Biden the Zombie or Harris the Script Reader. I like Trump's "wreck everything and put it back together better" approach. If it works.
Our "elites" radiate the paranoia and condescension of colonial administrators alienated from the local culture. These people are utterly clueless, utterly incapable of understanding that their cultural socialism and metropolitan insularity and boutique activist bullshit continue to fuel widespread disconnect, creating a vacuum that populist insurgents fill.
The elites suck at cosplay.
The last two words of your comment are superfluous.
Point taken! ☺️
The last four😊.
Wrong, with respect, Brooks et al are flunkies and factotums for the real "elites." The very rich understand exactly what's taking place which is why they're working to take down Trump from the inside. Brooks effectively has an audience of zero.
Brooks is whining to the choir. He wouldn't dream of rolling up his sleeves even to clean his own sink and just about everybody knows it.
Agree, so I don’t understand the hatred. He doesn,t influence anyone or anything. His columns reduce to some kind of weirdly eccentric spiritual memoir and not applicable to anything real. He really hits a nerve here though and I just don't get it.
I like a lot of your comments here, but perhaps you might want to dig a little deeper.
He's obviously been making a large number of people identifying as"conservatives" unhappy. My own antipathy towards Brooks resides in the fact that he's clearly a dunce who talks down to large swathes of the public.
He may be "likeable" enough, but his job is produce work similar to that of Matt, or Glenn Reynolds, or anyone who's slightly skeptical and curious. I bear the man no personal ill will.
I think I understand the miscommunication, then. I'd not ever in a million years take his social-political commentary seriously. I'm conservative, the old-fashioned kind in almost every way. In that I think he,s interesting at all, it's like an interest I might take in a slight acquaintance, or a character in a book, who is clearly flailing towards a dead end. i don’t think he's a dunce, only that's he,s wrong, and I don't think he realizes that he,s talking down ( in this, he resembles a lot of people I know, friends actually, who would deny it hotly). I suppose I,m just used to keeping a tin ear when the situation seems to call for it.
fair play and good point.
brad for the win!
All elites are contemptuous of those they rule. Homo homini lupus. All previous elites have been cautious about revealing this.
Ours is the first to imagine that they can dispense with hypocrisy, that their authentic selves could inspire anything other than hostility.
This mistake is matched by the stupidity of thinking that people steeped into the most transactional culture in human history would be fooled by advertising/PR.
Don Quixote's relative realism compares favourably to the collective delusions of the bobos.
Paragraghs 2 and 4 are hilarious!
Great comment!
"All previous elites have been cautious about revealing this."
That's likely because most successful previous elites (the tippy-top level philosopher/influencers) were grounded in the recognition that they were really no better their underlings. They appreciated the strong/weak men + good/bad times historical cycles. This one's different. Hmm, why is that? Hmmm...
Matt— once again you've put your finger directly on my pulse. Thanks for putting so gloriously into words that which eludes my less restless and creative mind. How many of us are out here who believe, as you seem to, that we are being trolled by astroturfed theater kids acting out their frustration on a genuine movement to transition the country from the past to the future? It's not really MAGA, not quite 60s bohemia, certainly not the Bernie left or the John Thune right. For people who follow you and Walter and others who hate the establishment magpies, but don't really trust the religiously Trumpian zealots either, where do we stand on the spectrum? Are we growing or shrinking? Where does our vision of America's future lead?
This is exactly where I am. To me the basic problem is nationalists (populists) versus globalists (necessarily elites) everywhere in the Western world. This seems to satisfy Occam's razor since it is the simplest explanation that explains everything, to me at least. So, I'm a Nationalist = anti-globalist. I would welcome knowing any exceptions.
or Populists versus the managerial class which rule corporations, government and media according to Sam Francis' "The Leviathan". I've been listening to the young techies like Aurun Macintyre and Moment of Zen. Their battle as with Elon is with bureaucrats. Bobos (theatre kids) like Brooks and Doug Murrays etc are part of the establishment. I'm just starting to read these people and trying to find my way in this time and place. Tim Dillon said that we need to concentrate on trying to define what a country is. And he doesn't think it is an economic zone. It's not nationalism or anything to do with race. It's a feeling . I get it when I watch shows like 1923.
second.
Your comparison to a ruling class and the lower natives is apt. I hadn’t thought of it that way, and I think it’s helpful when trying to figure this out. Thanks!
Our elites resemble colonial administrators is a great line. You should develop it. Maybe call them the cultural Raj. And the Tesla vandals are cultural sepoys. Do you have your own substack?
https://www.euphoricrecall.net/?utm_content=comment_metadata&utm_source=substack-feed-item
Hey Brad!
Please provide an example or two of "elite cultural socialism".
Seems like a bit of contradiction there.
American "culture" generally comes across as "moronism for the masses" because the "elites" who make it think of the masses as morons.
https://manhattan.institute/multimedia/beyond-wokeness-cultural-socialism-and-its-impact-eric-kaufmann
https://www.amazon.com/Third-Awokening-12-Point-Progressive-Extremism/dp/B0D459XT8N
lol... they don't let you khaki dockers and white polos think for yourselves?
Q: What did the Louboutins say to the Manolo Blahniks?
A: Choos will not replace us!
Eric Kaufmann coined the term "cultural socialism," Michael. I just provided you with a link to an hour long video of him explaining it, along with a link to his book.
Stop with the cerebral speed bump shtick.
Hey Brad!
Please provide an example or two of "elite cultural socialism".
Seems like a bit of contradiction there.
American "culture" generally comes across as "moronism for the masses" because the "elites" who make it think of the masses as morons.
Hey Mike, no where above did Brad type the three consecutive words you and quotation marks now want him to define. Then, your least-apt move: pressing "reply" on the original post a second time! Perhaps you need to turn off your devices for the rest of the day: clearly, you are declining.
Some of them are "elites" because they don't ride the subway.
Some of them are pitching to the people who do. These "elites" don't much care about anything but profit.
identity politics?
A classic distraction, not a core belief.
At least they have something to look down their nose at.
Wow! Well stated, Brad!
I've been thinking about your comment all day and have to write to acknowledge that this is the truest description of the democrats that I have ever read. Calling them "colonial administrators" is so on target. Great comment.
correct. I think yourself and matts general readership has a better understanding of this than any other group i can find. are there any other communities of readers and thinkers I should know about to find other similarly intelligent life?
Nailed it!
Oh yes.
Nailed it.
Well said!
Brad,
Bingo, Bulls Eye, Bravo you nailed it.
The tl/dr summary of post-Cold War America is:
Our elites hogged all the assets, then they hogged all the power, and then they hogged all the virtue.
This is why they refuse to look in the mirror and see just another grubby aristocracy like the same aristocracy societies always cough up, but have a desperate neurotic need to be seen and acknowledged as cool, hip, edgy, wise, compassionate—an intellectual, political and moral elite who have the same divine right to rule as any pharaoh ever did, except that they deserve this because of "merit", i.e. being good at school, social climbing, jargon mastery and ass kissing.
We're just about at the 10-year mark of their nonstop histrionic meltdown over the MAGA Peasants' Rebellions and it's melted almost every brain and warped every soul from Brookline to Brooklyn to Berkeley, and there's nothing that they won't say, do or burn down to get back that rosy feeling of being god's chosen ones.
It drives them absolutely mad that those of us outside their virtual Versailles don't have the same exalted opinion of them as they do. What's the point of getting all those As and mastering all those markers of social superiority if the lower classes refuse to worship and obey?
Hell hath no fury like an aristocrat scorned!
Beautiful summary. The “nothing they won’t …do” may well include inviting a nuclear exchange. The fact that most media elites (think lyin’ Brian Williams) probably underestimate the explosive power of just one modern H-bomb by a factor of 1000 is hardly cause for optimism.
So true and not considered enough.
They weren't math majors
they may not be math majors but they seem to have mastered "sadistics".
Clever Pseudonym, as often, nails it. Right now we see them screaming because, in their best analysis, they’re not getting the symbolic obeisance they deserve.
But that’s nothing. Wait until their chosen perches can no longer pay their inflated salaries. Which for much of this ridiculous class, especially those in media, will come soon enough.
Just too bad this particular assclown, being at NYT, has a wide moat around him. He’ll very possibly be able to huff and whine and double-deal until retirement.
or maybe someone like David DePape will smack him in the head with a hammer.
The peasants are revolting!
They certainly are!
Yeah they are; they stink on ice!
It’s a Marx Brothers reference. I couldn’t resist.
I went with the Mel Brooks retort to Harvey Korman.
Y'all. 👏
Best comment on this piece and topic, hands down @cleverpseudonym — thank you!
Thanks! much appreciated
Well said.
Haha real old-fashioned aristocrats have no interest in virtue (beyond philosophy, if that), or the scorn of lesser beings. Virtue is the modern add-on, the true sign, that these people wouldn't know an aristocrat if one fell on them.
True. Genuine blue-bloods are fixated with the transmission of power and privilege generation after generation by whatever means necessary. The idea that aristos are exemplars of idealism and public service that is common with so many Trads is naive to the point of brain damage.
The elites are hyenas who mistake themselves for leopards. Instead of reading Brooks, they should have read Lampedusa. This is what poor choices in reading gets you.
Everyone should read Lampedusa
True. But, nonetheless, I suspect that Netflix would inevitably adapt it: the Risorgimento portrayed as an Italic civil rights uprising, Tancredi played as a sexually conflicted community organiser in love with a feisty girl from the Global South, the Prince of Salinas a proto-Boomer in awe of the wisdom of the young...
Reading has become as archaic as Sicily under the Bourbons.
Don't forget a racially diverse cast, Sicily is pretty close to Africa!
The cast would have to be inclusive. Papuans, Tamils and Filipinos all welcome. Ditto troons and furries. The casting couch must be decolonised so that it affirms everyone who identifies as an actor can reclaim their power. Every entertainment must become a struggle session. Blend the sensibility of Fellini with Brecht and the early John Waters.
Nice!
Very good CP
thx!
In other words, "you want me to adore you because you think you're one of the cool ones but in reality you're just a c*nt"
Nice!
Most of them don't even have to ass kiss bc mommy and daddy already did it for them. You can always tell who is an "elite" by their expectations for their adult male children. Elites essentially treat them the same as they would their daughters-and it shows.
What if they were to find out that the Nazis with the power now spent their youth playing D and D and have no idea who they even are?
that's a very good take. I grew up playing D&D but I somehow escaped the mental cage. I suppose my personal reform started when I finally saw through Chomsky. Painful process but well worth the effort.
D&D was an escape from the construction of current society that demanded conformity. Other indicators were ball caps worn backwards, holes in jeans, and inventing new words like gnarly. Chomsky was hard to shake but eventually the real hidden USG atrocities of the 20th century came to light and the D&D players were the first to expose them.
My reference “no idea who they even are” was about having knowledge of people like Brooks. They were in a different sphere of influence then D&D players.
"an intellectual, political, and moral elite"
Or as I like to call it, Hermès Trismegistus.
beautiful. "Our elites hogged all the assets, then they hogged all the power, and then they hogged all the virtue." Can I please steal this and use it royalty free?
Feel free!
Thanks
Wow, this is some great writing! Clever, succinct, and apt.
My reply, not so much. By saying this last sentence, or rather by typing it, I am seeking to imitate the false humility mask of the self identified elites.
THANK YOU.
Great comment. Nailed it
thx!
Maya Angelou famously said "People will forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel." So for Brooks and his cadre of dilletante bobos, they are learning that it is impossible to un-shit on people. The classes of people that comprise MAGA will never forget how they were simultaneously ignored and ruined by an insufferable elite culture. There just aren't enough aging hippies left to form a mass movement.
“It’s impossible to Un-shit on people”could have replaced this whole column.
And even if he could, would Brooks really want to??
I know a few aging hippie MAGA. They are pretty angry and several actually have disposable income and time to write nasty letters.
and disposable diapers
This. " it is impossible to un-shit on people."
Hippie walker brigade
Golf Carts
I hope you comment here more often, if this is an example of the quality of your writing and thinking.
Thank you, you're very kind.
I can't believe they call themselves bobos. All I can think of is Bobo the Clown. My autocorrect keeps changing it to bozos, further cementing that opinion.
Google the name Mike Bobo. He is among the most reviled men in the great state of Georgia. I have Bobo derangement syndrome. I wake up screaming FIRE MIKE BOBO.
Perhaps not. Hippies never embraced politics in their youth. It was all about 'being free' ( there is a slogan along those lines. Someone may remember it).
I'm a boomer who was and is politically active (trust me not for dems and never for republicans).
Taibbi at his best. A total takedown of the classic Philadelphia Mainline, Brooks Brothers clad, smirkfest pontificating as David Brooks. The guy is worse than tone deaf, he’s annoying. Like the kid in school, last period Friday just before dismissal, reminding the teacher they forgot to assign weekend homework.
And played the tuba.
Not sure Brooks could carry a tuba
Some shlub probably got paid to do that for little Master David.
Nah, the clarinet.
Pan flute 🪈 was second
HaHaHa!
There is no more pathetic pair of "freedom fighters" than Brooks and Capehart. They've never fought for freedom, they've only enjoyed the freedoms that others have fought for them.
This is a perfect statement about the situation. Thank you!
Bobos like David Brooks are squawking like headless chickens. I saw one of these "civic uprising" 50501 protests and it looked like an angry nursing home. Keep an eye on color revolution subversion agent Norm Eisen, who wrote a "Democracy Playbook" that is full of hilarious double-speak: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/norm-eisen-color-revolution-playbook
"Angry nursing home", you guys are killing me.
you laugh but have you ever seen what happens when the Tapioca runs out????
Not pretty
🤣🤣🤣
Spot on comment, was at a traffic light during one of the protests and they were ridiculously silly. Engaged some with why are you here and why do all of your signs look like, did the same person made them.
Reminded me of the No Nuke’s Concerts, where everyone took hot showers, blew dryer their hair drove to the concert, got gas in their cars went into a massive stadium full of electricity to light and operate the whole concert, then they drove back home and watched themselves on their color TV’s protesting against the life the were enjoying.
The recent protesters looked lost but happy to be outside it didn’t seem to matter to them that they were a collective group of we use to be for something but don’t ask me, I forgot.
Old protesters but still carrying the torch of We The People, that was nice to see.
Freedom of speech and expression. 🇺🇸
I agree— I drove past a couple of those recent protests and thought they looked like assisted living home outings. Amazing. And I am close in age to them and know these people. They are so convinced or brainwashed —it’s impossible to speak with them.
Got mashed potatoes, ain’t got no T-bone.
Yes, he does seem to be a concerning driving force Globalist. Very clever and devious. Definitely not an oblivious David Brooks type.
The Buzz Word Bible.
The funniest thing to me is the Jezebel headline describing Brooks as a "NYT centrist". To paraphrase something my dad once said: an NYT centrist is like a virgin prostitute; there's no such thing.
A NY Times centrist calls for the imposition of Marxism by stealth instead of violent revolution.
😂😂😂
I knew a girl in Bostonwho was famous for giving the best backstage beaners” to vis
This is Betty Ford, drinking mouthwash for the alcohol content. It's time for Brooks to get help.
🤣 quit, I can't breathe.
Like + 50
To me David Brooks will forever be the rump swab who praised the crease in Barrack Obama’s pants.
Beat me to it:
“I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant," Brooks says, "and I'm thinking, a) he's going to be president and b) he'll be a very good president."
I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
I guess this would bring on a full upchuck….
Last night during MSNBC's Potomac Primary coverage, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann were discussing Barack Obama's speech. Matthews — who, in the past, has both cried over an Obama speech and compared him to Jesus — described exactly what happens to him when Obama speaks:
I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often.
My understanding is that Joe B. considered Barack an exceptional colored person.
He said he was clean
Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Matthew’s swooning is yet another example of an adoring blowhard political hack succumbing to the masterful grooming of the media by a silver tongued cult leader bathed in elitist slobber
Wander if Chris had the same thrill, watching Obama with a $75 million dollar real estate portfolio, lecture people attempting to live on $45K a year , before Biden's inflation raised the cost of living in the US by $13K, they were racists and sexists, if they didn't elect Harris, and request more of the same.
Think you folks ruled out that he played the Tuba in college!
I don't think they were "sitting on his couches"; I think Obama was sitting at a table and that Brooks was under the table.
I feel bad for laughing, Billamo, but spot on. Bravo.
🤣
Heterosexual men don’t notice other men’s pants.
Thanks I couldn’t recall the exact quote but the image won’t leave my mind.
Sounds like Brooks was creepily panting over another man’s pants.
Oh! I thought that was a figure of speech!
if there were justice in the world, i giant fist would have appeared and smashed his face in when he said that.
He does have a most punchable face, hasn't he?
He would have praised the bump in his boxers given the opportunity to see it.
“A bulge, well rounded, yet not overstated. But I knew with great certainty that if circumstance called for it, this sleeping bulge could quickly become an intimidating monument of extraordinary length and girth able to crush armies of brave men.”
David Brooks, Romance Novelist
Matt is the only writer that I read whose work I eagerly anticipate and read with enjoyment and a small amount of sadness knowing I will shortly finish.
I absolutely agree. Because of this, I would suggest you consider looking up Jeff Childers substack.
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/
And James Kunstler 👍 same thing they are like crack you want more, thank goodness for Substack.
Everyone’s comments are equally entertaining.
Yes, I enjoy his acerbic, slashing writing.
I’m looking forward to the David Brooks "freedom march" joining hands with the likes of Dick and Liz Cheney, Larry Fink, Jamie Dimon and Bill Ackman and all the other billionaire hedge fund managers who have experienced the kind of suffering the working class can never understand over the past 3 weeks.
Proving their working class bona fides by blasting Bruce Springsteen music.........
😂👍 I'll bring the🍿
Brooks lives in that pallid world of soft-handed people who stand with, and for, nothing in particular.
"Soft handed people", I'm dying over here.
That's a classic definition of "moderate".
I just got majorly projectile shit on by a goose while helping a friend (who is in an arm cast right now) medicate it. I had to hose myself down with cold water to drive home. I'm in no mood for pretentious yuppie scum right now. I am finding no use for people who need to dine at Fouchette 110. I am glad that as punks in the 80's, we used to press our faces up against the Sharper Image windows and make faces at the pretentious twats. I'm all out of shits to give.
Cast thine eyes upon my field of fucks and see that it is barren!
Always hold geese with the barrel pointing away from anything you're not willing to destroy.
Like cattle, when they get upset there's a fountain of green shooting out the back end.
I realize it now. I've had chickens but they do not cannonade like that...LOL
You only make that mistake once.
Treat every goose as if it's loaded.
I will file that vital nugget of advice away for for possible, if unlikely, use. One just never knows.
Certainly rewritten the definition of getting, “Goosed”!
It’s now clearly a double no thank you for me.
Bertold Brecht up to 11? The people have disappointed the elites, so the elites must overthrow the people, not just replace them... (And they'll call it their "democracy.")
The most embarrassing Brooks column was at the beginning of the Obama Administration when he wrote a laudatory article that consisted of listing all the Harvard and Yale degrees Obama's people had.
**Obviously** they were going to be successful running things.
He obviously never read "The Best and the Brightest", and who exactly got us into the Vietnam War. (Hint: Harvard graduates.)
It's weird that Brooks considers himself part of the cognitive elite, when he has a mere BA from the downmarket University of Chicago.
Reporters, esp columnists know who to try and make friends with. If he writes about the Harvard pukes that he so idolizes, he figures he'll get invited to their parties and since he's not one of them... that's as close as he'll ever get.
Not to be supportive of Brooks, the little snot, but Chicago is, or at least used to be, a rigorous, demanding university with excellent standards. Often more rigorous than Harvard.
@ Random "It's weird that Brooks considers himself part of the cognitive elite, when he has a mere BA from the downmarket University of Chicago."
Um, you're sounding more like a (credulous) fanboy of Harvard than a savvy judge of elite universities. Chicago towers.
I have a graduate degree from the University of Chicago.
It's just that in Brooks' world, the UofC has nowhere near the exclusive social weight as Harvard/Yale/Princeton in the halls of the Elite.
Excellent point
...and a chip on his shoulder.