Songs of himself
By DougJ, Head of Infidelity April 20th, 2011
I thought some of you would be amused by Bobo’s attempt to speak intellectually about Donald Trump:
First, I think Walt Whitman would appreciate his relentless energy and boyish cravings.
The whole “Conversation” today borders on self-parody, even moreso than usual .
I think Herman Melville would appreciate Michele Bachmann’s obsessive disregard for verifiable reality.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Oh hell no, I’m not clicking on that link until I’ve fully savored this tasty morsel; there are so many complex flavors in this small bite, and I’m determined to identify them all.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Well, I do think Walt understood boyish cravings.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
We should all totally play this non-sequitur dead-person namedropping game. Let me try:
“I think Thomas Holland, the Second Earl of Kent, would approve of his rougish charms and devil-may-care lifestyle”
April 20th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
@Sly:
How can the thread be over so fast? Its like a knockout punch in the first second.
aimai
April 20th, 2011 at 5:33 pm
The “ish” didn’t register on first read. Changes the whole meaning.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
But to prove I’m even more of a Melville Geek I want to rewrite it:
“When MIchelle Bachmann set foot upon the deck…reality outran perception.”
aimai
April 20th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
tolejaso, tolejaso, tolejaso
The Wingularity is near.
Even now it begins to engulf the libertarian leg of the tri-legged conservative stool.
I predict Brooks will be the first to begin to delicately legitimize birtherism.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
@Sly:
Call me Batshit…
April 20th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
i think that carlos estevez would have appreciated his knack for self promotion and increased tv ratings. wait, sheen’s dead, right?
April 20th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
@aimai:
Ouch. The fight crowd would revolt if some world heavyweight bout were to end with the first punch, just as they’re sipping their first beer.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
@aimai: some one linked your post on education reform—I wondered if you had seen the Heckman equation?
April 20th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
@Sly: You win the internets.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
I think Henry Thoreau would appreciate the sociopathic greed of modern Wall Street.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
I think Oscar Wilde would delight in his unique sense of style… shit! I just can’t do it. The idea of associating literary luminaries with such a fucking piece of bottom-feeding scum just sickens me…
April 20th, 2011 at 5:38 pm
@freelancer: Well played.:
April 20th, 2011 at 5:38 pm
I don’t know if I’d put Walt Whitman and boyish cravings in the same sentence.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:38 pm
Leaves of Grass meets The Combover.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:38 pm
I think Gertrude Stein would appreciate the exuberant not-there-ness of his there.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:38 pm
I think Nathaniel Hawthorn would appreciate Sarah Palin’s self-alienating manner and persecution complex.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:38 pm
@aimai: Yeah, this place is brutal. I can’t count the number of times someone won a thread in the first comment.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Bobo’s attempts to speak intellectually about pretty much anything went from amusing to pathetic to roadkill a long, long time ago.
Or, to keep with the theme, let’s say I think Mark Twain would appreciate the opportunity to call Bobo a pseudo-intellectual dipshit.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Bobo might have a point. Of course that whole conversation had more sexual innuendo than an episode of Three’s Company, starting with Bobo reminiscing about “riding in the backseat of a van with some second- or third-tier politicians.”
April 20th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Re Melville: I always thout that first line should have been “Call me fish meal.”
And boy can I recommend getting off the boat this time. Brooks is surpassing himself in self-parody,
April 20th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
@Tom levenson:
One of my favorite personal blogs.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
@Tom levenson: the simpsons (of course) had a taffy shop called “call me delish:mael”. mmmmmmmmm whale taffy.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
@Tom levenson:
Groan.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
“I think Oscar Wilde would appreciate his relentless narcissism and risqué skull-merkin.”
April 20th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
@Omnes Omnibus: My work here is done.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Sez Bobo:
Is this a hint that he’s got some particular candidate in mind?
April 20th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
If H.L. Mencken were still alive, he would find David Brooks an insufferable fool, and savage him so badly that it would make his obituary of William Jennings Bryan look like a mash note.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
Well, Nietzsche would NOT approve of anything about Trump.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Can someone tell me why we care what a gay dead poet thinks of Donald Trump? I’m sure it makes sense in context but I don’t wanna read it.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
@Amir_Khalid: Sorta rules one out, though..
April 20th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
Fail. What a complete fop.
Walt Whitman would probably admire OTHER things about Donald Trump other than his boyish energy alone. But we have to keep this comment thread clean.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:53 pm
@Amir_Khalid:
It’s a hint that if Mitch Daniels or Tim Pawlenty don’t get the nomination, Brooks will inflict a level of feckless hand-wringing upon the NYT readership the likes of which it has not seen since the Old Gray Lady had to do clean-up over Jayson Blair.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
@Tom levenson:
“We’re gonna need a bigger goat.”
April 20th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
Ayn Rand would love to go for a fun-filled roll in the hay with Donald Trump (if she wasn’t dead).
April 20th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
Is there any nutter that Bobo won’t pimp?
April 20th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
You know, just because Walt Whitman was gay doesn’t mean he was necessarily attracted to anyone of the male persuasion, a fat blowhard like Trump in particular.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
Boyish cravings? Does e know something we don’t know?
April 20th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Nope.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Brooks is legitimizing Trump, mainstreaming him.
The Wingularity is Near.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
@Amir_Khalid:
Jeez, who’s been governor of five states?
April 20th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Damn you, DougJ, for tempting me into reading that piece.
Really does make me appreciate your ‘the only good thing that could come out of the Brooks-Collins series is a murder-suicide’ comment.
dms
April 20th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead: This is how we’re handicapping presidential candidates now. What would [Dead Gay Poet] think of [candidate]? Personally, I think Hart Crane would really dig Mitch Daniels, and Reinaldo Arenas would have a surprising affinity for Newt Gingrich.
It’s just a logical extension of Santorum.
Both senses.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
مجد الله. 1 محو صور أسفل مني ديفيد بروكس. وقال ان جهود الضئيلة التي تبدو ذكية تجعل مني أيضا. أنا أكره له تقريبا نفس ابغضت وتبقي جون كول الذي مني السجين.
Tunch
April 20th, 2011 at 5:57 pm
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
How do you mainstream someone in the 21st century with a 19th century poet?
April 20th, 2011 at 5:58 pm
@Sly:
You think more of him than I do. Brooks will perform enough mental gymnastics to justify anything the Republicans do.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:58 pm
One imagines Trump, Whitman, Melville and Bobo at the Appleby’s salad-bar…
April 20th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
@Tom levenson:
Seconded.
My favorite line in the piece has to be this one: “He started talking about how he wanted to take over a disease, the way Jerry Lewis had muscular dystrophy. But he seemed to feel all the good diseases were taken.”
April 20th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
@Amir_Khalid: 6 would have left Bush out, if you can call what the Texas does governor presiding over anything.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
Can’t we go back to ‘you could have a beer with him/her’?
Please?
April 20th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
@MikeJ: Beat me to it. A professional contortionist contorts. News at 11:00.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:01 pm
The NYT shouldn’t call it The Conversation. They should call it Gail Collins Humors A Twit.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:01 pm
@FlipYrWhig: No love for Sappho and a certain half-term governor?
April 20th, 2011 at 6:01 pm
Love the word vulgarians. makes me think of a fish called wanda. “America was built by ambitious vulgarians polite people wouldn’t dine with. The vulgarians offer a nice counterpoint to the excesses of genteel culture. But that doesn’t mean they are fit for statesmanship, or qualified for high office.”
Is this a snarky ref to JC’s shoutout in Krugman’s column?
And a guffaw: @Sly:
April 20th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
@mr. whipple: Pawlenty has already staked his claim to a gay poet(with his let America be America again), BoBo just wants to make sure Trump gets one too.
Bachmann seems a natural for Ginsberg, just for the title “Howl”.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
I guess projecting what dead 19th century poets would think about bankrupt 21st century reality TV stars who run for President is Brook’s way of saying “hey, I am a populist! A man of the people! Someone who hangs out at the salad bar at Applebee’s, creeping random people out with literary quotes. Want to hear me recite some poetry? Tra la la.”
That David Brooks … keepin’ it real in da hood.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
I think Franz Kafka would have appreciated his insectoid carapace.
I think Ionesco would have appreciated his rhinocerotic skin.
I think Pierre Boulle would have appreciated his apelike grammar.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:03 pm
@mr. whipple: Why not both? “I’m voting for Pawlenty, because James Baldwin would probably like to have a beer with him.”
April 20th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Leaving aside the rather obvious point that Trump is no more running for President than Sarah Palin is…
Why would a President Trump be any worse than a President Pawlenty?
April 20th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
Davey Crockett could find common cause with his usage of small mammals as a cranial covering.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
I bet Hemingway would appreciate John Boehner’s prodigious appetite for alcoholic beverages.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
@Davis X. Machina: Don’t you think Sappho has better taste than that?
April 20th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
On the deck satire lies, fallen cold and dead
April 20th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
@noodler:
“You are the vulgarian, you fuck!”
April 20th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
@Bokonon:
Wait a minute, Ayn would have to get her breasts ‘enhanced” before the Donald would even consider a roll with her! (plus a nose job and I’m pretty sure she would need a full body wax as well)
April 20th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Late to the game, but I think Gioachino Rossini would have approved of his tonsorial splendiferousness.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Megalomania?
April 20th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Dead gay poets?
I think Elizabeth Bishop would have appreciated his animalistic freedom from self-consciousness.
I think Federico Garcia Lorca would have appreciated his surrealistic approach to political discourse.
I think Robert Duncan would have appreciated his barbaric willingness to live outside the borders of sense.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
So this is who Bobo’s crushing on these days? Cripes, doesn’t that guy have any standards at all?
April 20th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
@Amir_Khalid: “The Conversation”, in this context, slanders a marvelous film.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:10 pm
@Tunch: “Erase a picture under me David Brooks”?
April 20th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Well, you would start by setting up a chance meeting between the two at an Applebees’ salad bar and then write a column about the boyish cravings that are fulfilled….
April 20th, 2011 at 6:17 pm
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Wow. That’s like the Bluth family holding the benefit fundraiser for TBA. And then doing it again the following year.
Beyond parody.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:18 pm
I think Ron Jeremy would appreciate Trump’s relentless efforts at sucking his own cock.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:22 pm
Walt Whitman, in the preface to Leaves of Grass:
“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks…devote your income and labor to others…have patience and indulgence toward the people…”
Oh yeah. Sure sounds like The Donald to me.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead: Brooks is saying admiring Trump is understandable (ie not crazipants) because insert notable literary figure here________ would have done it.
Remember how i was a conservative at Culture 11?
I saw Palin compared to Boudiccea, to Elle Woods, to Octavia, to Andy Jackson.
I read how Robert Frost and Emily Dickenson would have admired her.
“understandable” == “legitimate”
and the next step is believable.
voila! mainstream.
Just watch.
I predict Bobo will be the first to dip a toe into legitimizing birtherism.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:26 pm
@Culture of Truth:
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Personally, I’d wager that Compulsive Gambling might be a good fit for The Donald.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
@mr. whipple:
Please?
Fine. Coming up with a connection between Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen and Herman Cain can wait. Certainly that’s Bobo will be heading next anyway.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Jager – if Donald Trump rejected Ayn Rand for her appearance, she would be crushed. Crushed! Because she thought Trump would be attracted to her because of her fine mind and personality! And her PHILOSOPHY! Her gorgeous, sexy PHILOSOPHY!
Rejected over a WAX JOB??
In Rand’s ensuing bitterness and disillusionment over her sexual unattractiveness to a real-life Galtian hero, the psycho-sexual basis of her Objectivist philosophy would crumble. And Rand would become a radical feminist, move to Paris, and spend a lot of time smoking cigarettes with Sarte and Camus in Left Bank cafes.
This is an alternative universe, of course.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
@Tunch: الصبر شقيق. إن شاء الله ونحن سوف يغرق الصليبيين في بحيرات من الدم والنار. فسبحان الله الرحيم ورعاية
April 20th, 2011 at 6:34 pm
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I still don’t get it. How does Walt Whitman have anything to do with anything, most especially Donald Trump? If he was alive today, he’d be 192 years old and really freaking scary looking, prolly undead and the likely suspect in many mysterious poetry slam killings and bodily fluid drainings. Who would want that kind of endorsement?
April 20th, 2011 at 6:38 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead: He accepted Gary Busey’s endorsement.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:43 pm
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, nevermind then.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:45 pm
Hermione – hey, I can totally see Brooks trying to legitimize Birtherism. Maybe Brooks will come out with some cutesy, contorted apologist column saying how Birtherism is … just the legitimate voice of scorned working class Americans, trying to score a buck and feeling spurned by the cool arrogance of a President who seems not to feel their pain, or acknowledge their concerns!
Yes. That’s it! Rubbing his hands together, Brooks will write something like, “Lacking any other way to engage this detached and scornful man, the Birthers rise up – like peasants from Chaucer – and they now demand that Obama engage with them, and respect their concerns, show them the attention that he has wilfully denied America’s common man for so long. ‘Show us your birth certificate’, these robust, hearty, proud and rough-handed workers may say, but they really mean ‘Show us some love and respect for our feelings! Tell us you actually care about us!’ ”
April 20th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead: He is simply fantasizing about the three of them having each other for lunch.
Having lunch is done by the serious person.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:48 pm
I’ve always thought that Whitman’s
could stand more use by politicians. It’s at least honest.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
And Hef would have appreciated his collection of ex-wives. A particularly annoying thing is that Brooks and Collins keep referring to the vulgarization of presidential politics, but fail to mention that the vast majority of that vulgarization has occurred on the Republican side. Joke candidates like Trump, Bachman, Fred Thompson and Palin all at some time polled well with Republican voters, in contrast to, say, Mike Gravel’s comparative obscurity on the Dem side (hell, Gravel made jokes about himself).
April 20th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
“H.P. Lovecraft would have appreciated his slavish devotion to the minions of Cthulhu.”
April 20th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
His “boyish cravings”? Gross. (Why am I reminded of his musings on his daughter’s “great rack”?)
April 20th, 2011 at 6:55 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead: Leaves of Grass and Vampires?
April 20th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead: wow…i remember some bubba used Whitman to “celebrate” Palin too.
I have to find that…it will make a nice companion piece.
“Plain American: The Rhetoric of Vernacularity in Modernist American Poetry. hmmm.
@Bokonon: yes! the Peoples Poet!
‘scuze me ima go look for that Palin/Whitman piece.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
This thread has so much win. I need to put my nose to the grindstone and sharpen my wit.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead: at hotair some Palin fanboi wrote a comparison on A Woman Waits For Me.
I cant find it, but this is the part those retards used.
Its part of the whole conservitard fantasy that Sarah was “working class”.
Like when Noonan said she loved that Palin was “working class”.
euwwwwww
Whitman is the Peoples Poet, this is the same bulshytt Brooks is trying on Trump.
Legitimizing him as a a man of the people.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Nooners was engaging in damage control, after she blurted out her true feelings about the bimbo into an open mike in Minneapolis.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
@Villago Delenda Est: yes, true, but this is all part of the same bulshytt meme conservatives always spread—that billionaires are really Joesixpacks underneath…or jillsixpacks in Palins case.
Like that fucking WEC retard Bush cutting brush at his ranch.
It never ends.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:28 pm
Brooksie whines
This is the nub of his wee little effort of the day: that the elite gate-keeping role of being not just a journalist but a van-riding proofer of character, this has been sullied and trodden upon by, ugh (pearl-clutch) videobloggers!
April 20th, 2011 at 7:38 pm
I won’t click through to read it, since my brain don’t work to good anyway.
But, ‘boyish cravings’? Trump is what, 65 years old?
I guess then Brooks will be complemented when I say I appreciate his callow accomplishments.
The Donald is the perfect US President for the GOP. Everything is a ‘sell’ and ‘deal’, nothing more.
‘So, all thah good charidy diseases was taken, so I went innu anothuh line uh charidy.’
Like his response to the Very Serious GOPers concerned about Trump selling the birther schtick: “So I tellum, the GOP loves this birther stuff, they’re eating up like hotcakes. It’s a winner!”
Note that these are sarcastic paraphrases not real quotes. But I think the jist is accurate. As Josh Marshall said in his blog, Trump’s analysis of a constitutional right to privacy seems to stop at a the natural human right be left alone will taking a dump on the can.
But, whatever the gimmick is, can you sell it? Can you deal it?
I guess the Regional Sales Promotion President is the next step after the MBA President. Might work, I guess. And if you don’t think so, why aren’t you rich, huh?
April 20th, 2011 at 8:05 pm
I was just over at Heywood’s place (http://hammeroftheblogs.blogsp.....-card.html) and found this gem:
Not to mention this one, re the Republican prospects for Pres. in 2012:
April 20th, 2011 at 8:19 pm
Whitman was smarter than Bobo and would have seen though Trump in 5 seconds, then composed a great poem.
April 20th, 2011 at 9:19 pm
WW was a humanitarian, a poet laureate, hiked the greenbelt trail. Trump humps greenbacks. No similarity. Also too, a socialist.
Has a building named after him( a school) and a shopping mall- only common thread.
April 20th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
Remember when the GOP stood for balanced budgets, individual freedom and isolationism.
The Republican Party has run up these deficits, we want the federal government to be in our bedrooms and between our women and their doctors, we started two wars instead of ending them like the Korean War and were supposed to stop the Vietnam War the Democrats started. We have lost our way!
So why waste our time with these fools who use their racist rhetoric, like this Marilyn Davenport and Donald Trump with his birther unproven myth, why do we allow our Fox news people to keep talking down our country. Don’t they know we can win the next election with optimism and hope instead of the current rhetoric, that the sky is falling, if we are not careful we will end up like chicken little where no one will listen to us.
April 20th, 2011 at 10:28 pm
[...] working on another volume in my Pequod-like pursuit of Megan McArdle* (see, after what went on here earlier today, I’ve got a Melville mindworm going), but just to show that I’m not dead yet, I thought [...]
April 20th, 2011 at 11:35 pm
[...] working on another volume in my Pequod-like pursuit of Megan McArdle* (see, after what went on here earlier today, I’ve got a Melville mindworm going), but just to show that I’m not dead yet, I thought [...]
April 20th, 2011 at 11:35 pm
[...] working on another volume in my Pequod-like pursuit of Megan McArdle* (see, after what went on here earlier today, I’ve got a Melville mindworm going), but just to show that I’m not dead yet, I thought [...]
April 20th, 2011 at 11:56 pm
I just clicked on and haven’t read the thread, but is Bobo saying that Trump is gay? I believe Whitman was, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
April 21st, 2011 at 12:37 am
I actually like these “conversations” sometimes, mostly because Gail Collins usually is mocking Bobo without him even noticing it.
April 21st, 2011 at 12:49 am
DuPont would have appreciated his drip dry barnet.
April 21st, 2011 at 6:38 am