Can’t remember which commentor first linked to this, but if you’re reading this, thanks again:
__
__
In a far less salubrious vein, I poach one of DougJ’s favorite deceased equines. Bobo Effin’ Brooks pinches out a column “rebuking” (i.e., salaciously rubbernecking) the Evil Modern Celebrity Narcissist:
… And the sad fact is that Gibson is not alone. There can’t be many people at once who live in a celebrity environment so perfectly designed to inflate self-love. Even so, a surprising number of people share the trait. A study conducted at the National Institutes of Health suggested that 6.2 percent of Americans had suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, along with 9.4 percent of people in their 20s.
__
In their book, “The Narcissism Epidemic,” Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell cite data to suggest that at least since the 1970s, we have suffered from national self-esteem inflation. They cite my favorite piece of sociological data: In 1950, thousands of teenagers were asked if they considered themselves an “important person.” Twelve percent said yes. In the late 1980s, another few thousand were asked. This time, 80 percent of girls and 77 percent of boys said yes.
__
That doesn’t make them narcissists in the Gibson mold, but it does suggest that we’ve entered an era where self-branding is on the ascent and the culture of self-effacement is on the decline.
To recycle an old Alphonse D’Amato insult, being called narcissistic by David Brooks is like being called ugly by a frog.
Yutsano
Ribbit.
Is it just me or is it oddly quiet this eve?
Oh, resignation letter for the old job goes on my boss’s desk tomorrow afternoon. Ironically enough I had to do an employee survey today, one of the questions was “I am likely to leave the company within the next twelve months.” I tried not to laugh too hard when I read that. I thought about sending a huge diatribe in the final comments section listing every reason why I was departing, but I just said fuck it. Walking away and not looking back will be the best method of communicating they are teh suxxors.
stuckinred
It’s not “eve” in these parts.
Econwatcher
Wow, that clip was great! Who is that guy? Has he done other stuff?
Nethead Jay
Good video. And the old D’Amato insult is just dead on being applied to Brooks.
fucen tarmal
sounds more like a deflation in the concept of “important”. as in, the 50s were a much more hierarchical time. people knew who amongst teens was “important”, and who amongst parents were “important” as in prominent, wealthy, respected, well-connected, talented, or some popular measure of status. by the 80s, the notion of being important changed to something more like matters, has a place in the world. they are using the same word to compare two different ideas.
that said, so people when they are young are self-involved huh? shiver me timbers. i’m sorry, i think society’s construct of narcissism has changed more than people have become epidemically more self involved. particularly to the degree that it becomes a disorder. let’s be honest, if you give narcissism its own disorder(beyond very extreme cases) everyone will want to have it, because it will be cool.
Bill E Pilgrim
Yes, Mel Gibson’s rage and pathological abuse shows that we’re all full of narcissistic abusive rage, because everyone I know is exactly like Mel Gibson. And since Homer described these traits thousands of years ago, that proves that they’re something new and specific to our age.
Watching David Brooks take the wheel of some sociological research and drive it into a conservative ditch is like watching a circus dog walking on its hind legs- it’s not that it’s done well, you’re just amazed that they pay him for it.
MikeJ
A great video that addresses the favorite topic of debate at Balloon Juice: do we try to win or do we do what makes us feel good?
4tehlulz
America was a better place before the proletariat discovered they have self-worth.
This obviously is psychiatry’s fault. L RON HUBBARD WAS RIGHT
henqiguai
And aside from the evolution of society (fucen tarmel #5) as well as the definition of the term, a casual stroll down the business, as well as self-help, isles in most book stores will show a disturbing number of books on self-esteem and self-branding. It’s not a cultural bug, it’s a feature.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
… is like being called racist by Mark Williams!
.
JGabriel
David Brooks:
Damn, that sounds painful.
.
Bill E Pilgrim
This anti-self-esteem tack is something conservatives have been on for a while, Camille Paglia writes columns about how young African American males who end up in trouble suffer from elevated levels of self-esteem, not the opposite. So in other words she’s claiming that someone joining a gang and selling drugs is doing so because he has a such a high sense of self-worth.
There’s nothing accidental or random about this, keeping poor people feeling small and powerless is the best way to ensure lots of cheap labor at crap-mart or factories. And keeping everyone marginal and poor except the top few percent is the other goal.
I’d love to see David Brooks write a column about how the robber barons suffered from narcissistic personality disorder, or more recently, the masters of the universe on Wall Street. Tom Wolfe actually did, to his credit, which is what makes him slightly more interesting than your average conservative.
WereBear (itouch)
Perhaps if Bobo is truly worried about Us All Becoming Mel Gibson, he could do a column on how an atmosphere of prejudice and hatred (the one Gibson was raised in) corrodes the soul and can destroy talent and accomplishment.
But he already had his chance to deserve the label of “thinking writer.”
MikeJ
@Bill E Pilgrim: Also too, see the panic over children being acknowledged for participating in activities even when they don’t win. They seem to really hate that.
cleek
damn kids today don’t know their place.
how is thinking you’re important equivalent to self-branding ?
sounds like Brooks is mistaking quasi-reality shows for real life.
cleek
@Bill E Pilgrim:
it’s not even anything new. this is the same complaint conservatives made against kids in the 50s and 60s.
i don’t read him, but i’ll assume Brooks has already complained about “that noise they call music today” and the length of girls’ skirts. and what ever happened to Benny Goodman ?! now there was some good music!
Honus
@Bill E Pilgrim: Because those who exploit markets and have accumulated huge wealth without producing anything deserve a high sense of self-worth.
Bill E Pilgrim
@MikeJ: I know, this obsession with winning often puzzles me in the case of conservatives calling it a “war on terror”. I often ask my god, you’re admitting that we’ve waged a war that we can’t win after almost ten years? You’d think that they’d be the ones rushing to downgrade it to a police action out of fear of having to admit that.
It’s like a tension between the craving for permanent war and the drive to win. By definition the one excludes the other.
Bill E Pilgrim
@cleek: That’s more George Will territory, Brooks is more the wanna-be psychologist/sociologist side. His columns are usually more along the lines of “I read a book the other day about evolution that, the authors would be astonished to hear, actually proves that trickle-down economics is wise” or something.
Will did a whole column about the demon blue jeans. It was great.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
I’m a maverick mama grizzly hockey mom!
S. cerevisiae
Is there a pool on the first wingnut to blame the DC earthquake on God being pissed at Obama? Paging Pat Robertson…
MikeJ
@S. cerevisiae: If He’s only pissed 3.6 worth I’d say Obama’s doing pretty well. I’d guess most people wouldn’t even notice one that small.
geg6
Well, I’ll probably get flames for this and it kills me to even seem to be agreeing with Bobo about anything, but I’m of the anti-too-much-self-esteem persuasion. I see and deal with the problems caused by everybody getting a trophy, grade inflation, parents who defend the child regardless of behavior and performance, and kids who have never been held responsible for anything every day. I consider this attitude of feeling good about yourself no matter what one the major factors for why this country is as fucked up as it is. People have no shame, feel no personal responsibilty and expect continuous positive affirmation and it poisons our society. It’s not just the students, either; the parents and adults in their lives are just as bad, if not worse. It is certainly not everyone, but definitely more than when I started in this business. I don’t believe it’s a good thing to always feel good about yourself no matter what. Self doubt, facing consequences, and believing you can and must strive to improve are how you grow and improve as a person. Knowing your limitations, which is what failure teaches you, is important. IMHO, the whole Tea Party phenomenon, the Masters of the Universe who took down our entire economy, the idea that voting for a “regular guy” you might have a beer with is what is needed to run a complex nation, and the ridiculous false equivalencies pushed by the MSM are just a few of the direct results of this whole cult of self esteem on the macro level while in the micro level, I get students and parents insisting on a scholarship because the other student they know got one, never mind that the scholarship student has a 3.9 gpa and the non-scholarship student has a 2.3.
I’ve lived all my life with tons of self doubt and fear of failure. My parents made sure we never thought we were perfect or shielded us from the consequences of our actions. I’m happy and grateful for that and sad for those who blithely roll through life thinking they are just the greatest. They are stunted individuals and I fear for our nation because of them.
gnomedad
So Mel Gibson can be blamed on liberal parenting? This will be interesting news for his father. Good to know!
S. cerevisiae
@MikeJ: Good point. I still think one of them is going to make the connection – maybe pastor Swank.
flukebucket
Seems like I remember first seeing it here
But I know how the Internet is. If you hat tipped everybody you would have a blister on your forehead.
Rick Massimo
@geg6: Yeah, but I think there’s a big difference between self-esteem (and too much self-esteem) and simply thinking you’re “an important person,” which I translate as “thinking that the things you do in life affect other people.”
Also too, I’m willing to bet that the 10 or 12 percent of teenagers who thought they were important decades ago were all the children of rich white people, and it can only be good that that’s opened up.
Also also too, it’s only dangerous to have too many people thinking they’re important if you buy the concurrent belief that important people should never pay any price for their mistakes, which I don’t but David Brooks pretty near explicitly does.
El Cid
Frogs aren’t ugly.
Bill E Pilgrim
@geg6: I agree with the other response you got, and add that David Brooks is never writing about what he seems to be writing about, he’s always writing about class and conservativism. He’d argue the other side if it seemed to justify some crackpot conservative theory. He would never, for example, do an examination of the actual economic ruling class, the people who run things, and their narcissism or how good they feel about themselves or not.
On the substance of what you wrote, I’d just add that I actually don’t think that praising a child for failure or for not even trying has the slightest thing to do with building self-worth, which I think comes from a process more like the one you described growing up.
MattF
@El Cid
Thank you. Green, bug-eyed, cold-blooded, looking (but not actually) slimy, disgusting diet, lives in the swamp. And cute, IMO.
Mark
The first time I heard the “being called ugly by a frog” saying was when Jimmy Carter’s press secretary Jody Powell used it referring to well-known Georgia racist and clown (the late) Lester Maddox, who rode a bicycle backwards into the Georgia governor’s office while carrying a pick handle to keep black people out of his restaurant. Maddox called Carter a liar, and Power said, “Being called a liar by Lester Maddox is like being called ugly by a frog.” I assume this is an old, old, ancient saying, and Powell was not the first to say it. But he might have been the first to say it from the White House.
Cat Lady
@geg6:
Sing it sister. When my youngest went off to get her elitist post-secondary education at a fancy elitist institution of libtard artsy learnin’, I was shocked at the parent orientation when the question was asked as to how many of the kids can do their own laundry. In a full auditorium, mine and about 3 other hands went up. I was all WTF, and it kind of all went downhill from there. The infuriating aspect of the whole over entitled kid thing is that I’m quite sure that the parents weren’t brought up that way, and I can’t imagine why they think that’s a good strategy.
Rick Massimo
@Cat Lady: Yeah, but again, “I’m an important person” does not equal “I don’t have to do my own laundry,” except to people like David Brooks.
Kristine
The Daily Caller bought keitholbermann.com. I would ask why they feel the need to mess with Keith in this manner if he is indeed so insignificant, but logic isn’t playing a role in this.
I like Keith. I used to like him more, but he’s too thin-skinned for the online game and there are times when good friends should hide his keyboard. He and Tucker Carlson combined possess the maturity of a kumquat. And that’s an insult to Kumquat Nation.
Neldob
Come on people. You need to be more ‘self-effacing’, maybe even be quiet and go hide in your room. Mostly if you are of the Liberal or Progressive persuasion, and even more if you are gay, you are Not Important. Don’t come out.
Wordsmith
Well…doesn’t this apply to David Brooks all around? Jus’ askin’
monkeyboy
I really can’t understand why celebrities have come to dominate culture – where people think it is reasonable to be obsessed with their personal lives rather than focusing on what they are celebrated for (say particular instances of sports or acting abilities).
From an historical perspective it makes sense to learn about personal details of somebody’s life when those details might be relevant to your life because you might have to interact with them. For examples:
1) Your family lives in a small village so you want to know the character of other families so you know which are good and bad to ally with in doing thing like arranging marriages.
2) You interact with a power structure such a king and his court and knowledge of their characters may aid you in your interactions.
I can’t see how knowledge of a modern celebrities’ morality (both good and bad) is relevant to anybody outside of their industries. Yet it is a mainstay of modern culture particularly among women with their gossip magazines, though men too like their gossip when it has to do with sports figures.
(and by “morality” I just mean things that are used to evaluate someone as being “good” or “bad”, not some religious or philosophical framework)
db
screw that… mark williams is a racist turd
John Bird
Susan Faludi’s “Stiffed” is still a good (if anecdote-based) exploration of this topic from a more informed perspective.
(Hell, if you haven’t read Faludi’s “Backlash”, you may be missing a big chunk of what you need to understand how politics work nowadays, along with Brock’s “Blinded by the Right”.)
But you’re spot on about Brooks: he is an example of what Faludi explores as evidence of the death of hope for many young American men. That is, connections, media presence, and “branding” – resulting in a group of elite rock stars without qualification – have combined with the collapse of American industry to all but annihilate modest means of advancement.
John Bird
@monkeyboy:
It’s pure speculation, but perhaps the advantageous social and biological needs we developed to know about our neighbors’ social lives are somehow now served by gossip, sports journalism, and social networking.
Beej
Sorry, but hypocrisy aside, people today are more narcissistic, especially young people, and much of it can be traced to our public educational system’s preoccupation with “self-esteem”. Until I retired last year, I had taught for 15 years at a 2-year college. Before that, I taught high school English for 20 years. I have watched the evolution of the “I am special and wonderful” idea and its effect on its victims (yes, victims is the right word). I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, my self-esteem got mangled at least once a day by my parents, my teachers, and my peers. And I was not unique. This happened to every kid I knew. We were the “children should be seen and not heard” generation. Funny thing, though, my self-esteem as an adult is just fine, thanks. And it isn’t particularly dependent on what happens around me. I developed it because I found out for myself that I was a competent, accomplished person who could hold my own in any company. Contrast that with the young people of today who are constantly told how wonderful and special they are, who are the product of an educational system which has gone out of its way to avoid any situation which might make them feel negative about themselves, and who have never had to look inside for validation because it has always been coming thick and fast from the outside. What happens to them when they hit the real world and the outside validation stops? Trainwreck. Behold Mel Gibson.
Mark
Ugh. Jean Twenge. That woman has taken her anger at being unpopular in high school and channeled it into a career writing books that appeal to the “goddamned kids these days” market. I’m not surprised Brooks would cite her – she’s the ultimate pop psychologist.
John Bird
@Beej:
That’s strange; the values of self-esteem I was taught in the ’80s and ’90s were very valuable to me as defenses against the celebrity-lust of our current age. I was taught that I had much to offer the world even if I was not a supermodel or born into wealth.
Self-esteem is a psychological model that seems to be far more productive than what preceded it. Much lay criticism of the model appears, to me, to misunderstand it, and ascribe to it all the worst pop-culture, self-help interpretations over the years.
I think it’s very important to teach kids that they’re special individuals with value of their own. Self-hatred is glamorized and encouraged among the young nowadays, especially in online discourse. Not to mention that the value of individual people is debased and dissected by our current labor system.
I’m not overly concerned about “over-medication” or “the pussification of the American male” or “the dangers of self-esteem”; these seem like very easy scapegoats for real social problems. I’m also confused by your Mel Gibson example – as far as I know, he was raised in a strictly reactionary and conservative Catholic ethos.
monkeyboy
@John Bird:
I’m not sure what you are getting at. Let’s say the human brain contains a “gossip organ” developed to serve a real social need. Are you just saying that this organ has been hijacked by celebrity gossip in a way similar to how the “sexual arousal” organ can be hijacked by pornography of people you will never meet in real life?
Or you actually saying that celebrity gossip and pornography serve a real purpose, such a teachings that people can apply to their own life.
fucen tarmal
@Bill E Pilgrim:
and those slaves in the field are singing!
they must love being slaves, it gives them a sense of purpose. i think a lot of what the former teachers are saying, is more a consequence of a lack of self esteem, which leads to parents fighting over trophies, and grades, than it is any sense of being an untouchable elite.
an insecure person will fight for everything they can. a self assured person will let that which does not matter, truly slide.
Sheila
@John Bird:
6.2%? More likely 62%. I do not believe narcissism stems from inflated self-esteem, but rather from its opposite, causing the narcissist to present himself or herself as far more important than he or she truly believes he or she is under the surface. This may partly be because children in this country are pushed to perform in non-childike endeavors far before they are emotionally ready. A childhood with lots of freedom for unstructured play so that the child could learn his or her true strengths would do a great deal to counteract the narcissism we see all around us, as well as a universal respect for each other and our various talents. I like what you write, John Bird, though I am concerned about over-medication and I do not put that in quotes.
gnomedad
This. I don’t disagree with geg6’s points, as clumsy feel-good self-esteem propaganda can be worse than useless. But I think a lot of conservative fulmination against “grade inflation” and the like is due to their concern that society have a sufficient supply of losers against which their awesomeness can be contrasted. As if the purpose of education is not to educate but to separate the sheep from the goats. Imagine the chaos if all or most in school did well. Horrors!
Chris
@fucen tarmal:
Hmm. This immediately brings to my mind two questions…
1: How would David Brooks answer the question “are you important?”
2: Assuming he would say “yes” because he is prominent (by virtue of a regular column if nothing else), how does he feel about being “downgraded” by all those younger people who use a different definition of the word?
Mnemosyne
@Sheila:
This. The inflated sense of self-importance of the narcissist stems from a deep belief that s/he is actually unworthy, unlovable, and untalented, so they have to put up a big front to try and conceal those massive shortcomings from the world.
There have been some very good studies showing that praising kids for their supposedly intrinsic qualities (“you’re so smart”) is much more damaging than praising them for their actions and their process (“that was a nice thing to do” “I know you didn’t win, but you did your best”). Otherwise, kids can become paralyzed trying to live up to the expectations that have been put on them that they always be the best (or appear to be the best) or else they’re total sniveling losers whose parents will never love them.
Also, Anne Laurie didn’t include a link, but did Bobo even mention the fact that Gibson is pretty clearly an abuser, not a garden-variety narcissist? There may be some crossover, but they are not the same thing. At all.
Beej
@John Bird: “Self esteem” as such, is not the problem, and I probably gave the impression that I thought it was, so mea culpa. It is the contortions the educational system goes through in order to worship this concept that really cause the problems. We can’t ever give anyone a bad grade because that might damage their self-esteem. We can’t ever have competitions, because that might damage the losers’ self-esteem. We can’t ever tell a student that they need to do better because. . . . Well, you get the point. Is this the way it’s supposed to work? No. It is a simplistic bastardization of the whole concept of individualization of learning. Unfortunately, it’s what too many of our schools accept as dogma. I’ve seen too many students in college who are absolutely aghast that we actually expect them to read their assignments, attend class regularly, and turn in assigned projects on time. That’s not the way it worked for them in high school. They were given break after break, extension after extension, because nobody was willing to say, “You have to do this on time and within guidelines, or you will receive a failing grade.” and mean it. That is not training for real life. That is victimization.
YellowJournalism
@Sheila:
Preach it. You cannot imagine the damage this is doing to not just the individual child but to society as a whole. These children are not allowed to develop proper social interactions, independent thoughts and actions, or imaginations that allow them to play and function without a schedule or a “script” (ie. consumer-driven media, pushy parents, or teaching to the test). At six, a child may talk and act like a 16-year-old, meanwhile their emotions and ability to handle them are like those of a younger child. It’s a strange, complex thing to witness.
Lack of unstructured play is also at fault for more and more children failing to reach phsyical developmental milestones and a lack of proper motor skills.
@Beej: I get what you’re saying, too. My favorite part is that the people who often complain about grade inflation and kids being passed on to the next grade are the same people who create the environment that encourages it. This goes for many parents and school administrators, as well as both Republicans and Democrats. I really don’t agree with the notion that everyone should go to college, either. I think it takes away needed focus and funding on vocational education (which is a wonderful way to get into quite respectable careers) for those students who are not interested or suited for college. Everyone should have the opportunities available to them if they want to go to college, which is quite different from saying college is a necessity for everyone.
Nancy Irving
Conservatives like David Brooks would like you to think that narcissism comes from “the culture”–that same decadent culture which tries to instill self-confidence in children from poor backgrounds. But it doesn’t.
Narcissism is handed down from parents to children, and incidentally you see it much more in “high achieving” families, like that of David Brooks. Children of such families typically become high-achieving narcissists themselves, because of the expectations, and fear of humiliation, their parent(s) laid on them when they were children.
They in turn bequeath this priceless legacy to their own children. And so it goes, in a never-ending chain of misery.
Which is why Brooks and other conservatives feel nervous when kids from poor families feel good about themselves. (Which is not narcissism, by the way.) It is threatening to them. Only those of us born to the narcissistic purple get to wear it!