Charles Pierce Forces Me to Take a Cold Shower
This driftglassian takedown of David Brooks got me all hot and bothered. A sample:
He does, however, interview some very well-spoken poll results, and proceeds to interpret them in ways that make you wonder if he’s dropped in from Alpha Centauri. He notices that poor people are having fewer babies, which makes him sad. But, things are looking up! People have stopped using their “bank-issued” credit cards as much. (These would be the cards they used so as to support the overstuffed suburban lifestyle that David Brooks so celebrated in his earlier, funnier work.) This means, to Brooks, “Quietly but decisively, Americans are trying to restore the moral norms that undergird our economic system.”Jesus H. Christ in a fking Volvo, no, it doesn’t. It means people are broke. People are broke because the end product of 30 years of economic theorizing and political action that you supported has resulted in a shattered middle-class. People are broke because the Wall Street casino that your politics created and celebrated and enabled finally broke the entire country and took the rest of us down with it. People are broke because you and the rest of your “conservative” pals latched onto a crackpot scheme called supply-side economics, married it to a deregulatory frenzy and free trade, and then pitched it to the Bobos as economic liberty. You got rich. You got important. Now people are not using their credit cards because they can’t afford to buy the overpriced, Chinese-made crap that you once proposed as the new staple of American society. That is not a conscious mass moral choice. You’ve got to be on mushrooms to believe that.
The whole thing is beautimous.
You know, that would answer a LOT.
October 18th, 2011 at 11:45 pm
Does Charlie Pierce bake, by any chance?
October 18th, 2011 at 11:46 pm
His take down of Cantor was also tremendous. A sample:
October 18th, 2011 at 11:49 pm
The term ‘Driftglassian’ will, Gawd-willin, make its way into the BJ Lexicon, at some point..
October 18th, 2011 at 11:49 pm
Oh, and another thing. Since the GOP weasels afraid of Grover but aware that they’re fucking up the country want to declare tax deductions to be ‘government spending’, can we get drug tests on anyone who takes one? It’d be WAY too much work to do it for everyone, so let’s just say anyone who takes more than $50K in those ‘government funds’ be subject to them. That seems only fair.
October 18th, 2011 at 11:50 pm
I’ll be in my bunk.
October 18th, 2011 at 11:50 pm
Somewhere in the long dark winter of America’s soul, David Brooks is clapping his little hands and shouting “I believe in confidence fairies”.
October 18th, 2011 at 11:51 pm
Oh, at LEAST.
Pierce bitch slaps him, kicks him in the nuts, and then shoves his boot up his ass. That kind of beatdown would deeply scar a normal human being with any sense of shame, but, sadly, we’re talking Bobo here.
October 18th, 2011 at 11:53 pm
So I’m guessing Bobo didn’t factor in the eleventy-billion bankruptcies (mine among them) when he was talking about the reasons Americans aren’t spending as much as they used to either.
October 18th, 2011 at 11:54 pm
But we still have that awesome fucking salad bar at Applebee’s, right?
October 18th, 2011 at 11:56 pm
Charles Pierce is THE.BEST.READ in town. He’s right on the issues, has a wicked sense of humor, and is a TERRIFIC writer.
I luuuuuuuv him.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:00 am
Based on my reading of the entire piece and some calculations I did on the back of a cocktail napkin, David Brooks now has 13.8 freshly torn assholes scattered across his august person.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:01 am
@BobbyMac: and seriously: how hilariously awesome are his PhotoShops?! holy christ, when i first saw his site, i was in conniptions over the ‘Tom Friedman=’rubber-spoon’’ sampling.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:03 am
@BobbyMac: and seriously: how hilariously awesome are his PhotoShops?! holy christ, when i first saw his site, i was in conniptions over the ‘Tom Friedman=’rubber-spoon’’ sampling.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:03 am
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: That boy may never walk right again.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:05 am
That Charles Pierce piece on Bobo’s latest column that John cited? What a magnificent tour de force. The Pierce piece, that is.
How in Hell does Bobo manage to keep his well-paid job at the NYT? Do the publishers keep him around as an expensive amusement?
October 19th, 2011 at 12:14 am
Pierce is required daily reading.
That is all.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:15 am
@cmorenc: it’s probably a salary cap issue
October 19th, 2011 at 12:17 am
Also too: Pierce taking on Bobo like this and giving him such a vicious beat down is akin to child abuse. Someone call CPS.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:18 am
Between that and the Corey Robin piece from earlier, I feel kind of like I just got laid. Not really the sexy part of getting laid, but the satisfied denouement part.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:18 am
The ultimate irony of the Bobos and Douthats in what passes for conservative intellectualism in America is that they believe they are the Howard Roarks of society, the incorruptible intellectual titans who can dominate men and women alike with their Manly Rape-ray vision. They are not. They are all Ellsworth Tooheys, proud of the attention they get for writing the most trite establishment, corporate vapidisms and bromides, if not outright lies. Like Toohey, they have turned their mediocrity and shallowness and lack of empathy into a strength with which they attempt to manipulate other people and shape public opinion.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:22 am
@cmorenc: I’d bet that the NY Times gets a subsidy from one of the right-wing think-tanks or foundations for printing Bobo’s effluvia.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:31 am
Cantor is a dick. Brooks is a stupid dick. So, what else is new?
Oh, yeah. Cantor is a stupid dick, too.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:32 am
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Can you have .8 of a hole?
October 19th, 2011 at 12:33 am
Over-the-top hyperbole in the service of beating a dead horse?
Yawn.
In the words of a truly great American, “I got a spot that gets me hot/and you ain’t gettin’ to it.”
OTOH, this distributional analysis of 9-9-9 is the best kind of infopr0n known to man.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org.....ocTypeID=2
October 19th, 2011 at 12:37 am
Um, calling David Brooks a dick is how you define yourself as a good American
October 19th, 2011 at 12:43 am
Andrew Sullivan is not capable of destroying this nation, Glenn Beck might be, David Brooks already has
October 19th, 2011 at 12:44 am
@suzanne:
It goes with David Brooks’ 3/5 of a soul.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:45 am
It’s good, but for sheer visceral satisfaction it doesn’t match the goring he gave to Sally Quinn over the weekend. The last line is a true classic.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:46 am
@AA+ Bonds:
Well, then, I must not be a good American, because I don’t think he’s a dick.
He’s an idiot, but not a dick. The distinction is that as far as I can tell, Brooks is not making shit up for the sake of yanking anyone’s chain. It appears to me that he sincerely believes in the truth of what he writes.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:48 am
@burnspbesq:
But . . . but that makes him a total dick, dude
October 19th, 2011 at 12:50 am
Also,
perfectly defines the life of David Brooks.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:51 am
@AA+ Bonds: No. That would make him an ass.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:52 am
@Warren Terra: There is an abundance of great lines in every Pierce post on the first two pages. The Limbaugh dismantling was especially devastating.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:55 am
@Suffern ACE:
Is there some sort of elaborate Seth Rogen movie reference I’m missing in which it matters what swear words we level at this stunted goblin of a man
October 19th, 2011 at 12:57 am
I encourage you to swear at David Brooks if you see him in public, he doesn’t seem like he’d be able to handle it very well. You might get a column about you.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:58 am
By the way Cole, any interesting results from the endorsement you got (of a week-old post) from internet deity Wil Wheaton?
October 19th, 2011 at 12:59 am
@AA+ Bonds:
Nah, let him struggle to come up with something to be stupid about on his own. Don’t make it easy for him.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:00 am
@Hill Dweller: I’ll admit it, I once used to read Eric Alterman. But only for his weekly Pierce report. I guess they had some kind of falling out because Pierce stopped appearing some time back, and then Alterman faded into a sort of limbo from which I believe he still occasionally sends communiques about how great Bruce is.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:02 am
@Warren Terra:
There’s a bunch of new trolls and they’re thriving, that’s pretty cool.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:06 am
People! People! David Brooks can be both an idiot and a dick! Bipartisan compromise, everyone! It’s what the great sociologist himself would want.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:07 am
@Suffern ACE:
Maybe the correct answer is he is both a dick and an ass, at the same time, together in unison? Oh oh , here comes Santorum.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:07 am
People choose their beliefs, in this sense of beliefs, and David Brooks made a selfish choice of moral wrong for which he is fully responsible
October 19th, 2011 at 1:11 am
@gocart mozart:
Let me clarify. I was only concerned that the very moral former Senator from Pennsylvania might be offended by my salty language. that is all I meant to imply. Get your minds out of the gutter.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:11 am
I truly believe that David Brooks is a Burkean conservative, i.e., a paranoid and proud enemy of both democracy and personal liberty. “Burkean” means “anti-American”.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:12 am
Bobo:
Dear Mr. Brooks: at this point I would rather work ANY term for ANY company, because at the rate this rapidly aging freelancer is going my future “freedom and opportunity” is going involve choosing which friend’s couch I will be requesting to live upon.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:22 am
@hhex65: Plus he probably has no trade value.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:25 am
Wait, driftglass is at Esquire?
October 19th, 2011 at 1:25 am
Hey everybody. Long-time listener, first-time caller.
Let’s be fair to mushrooms here. Brooks is just a dipshit. He might actually learn a thing or two from mushrooms.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:31 am
@AA+ Bonds: “stunted goblin” FTW.
Anybody have a link to the polls that supposedly show Perry trailing Santorum in Florida?
October 19th, 2011 at 1:33 am
@burnspbesq:
Yeah, I’m gonna have to go ahead and…..disagree with you there. Brooks is totally full of shit and I think, most of the time, he’s aware of it. Maybe he genuinely believes (without evidence of course) some of this psychobabble he spews about “the American people”, but he certainly doesn’t believe everything he’s saying when he carries water for insufferable, lying assholes like Cantor and McConnell. There’s no way.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:35 am
@West of the Cascades:
trailing Santorum? Really? A bit of a mental image, there.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:42 am
Ahhh, so good to see the BJ Nation getting along. Maybe a burning of Bobo in effigy at an #OWS function would be in order. I hope some obscure commenter at FDL don’t fuck it up.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:42 am
@suzanne:
You can, but it just means you need to keep digging.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:46 am
@burnspbesq: I think perhaps the distinction between lying and bullshit might be germane to the discussion:
“...the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality…
The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him.”
October 19th, 2011 at 1:48 am
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
I bow in your humble presence.
I’m not sure I can do the calculus in my head to arrive at 13.8 assholes, so I’m glad you did it for us.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:54 am
@Turgidson: He has to regularly lie about how no party is advocating X, when often the Democratic party is in fact advocating X. And that finding someone in between the Democrats and the Republicans on X by definition means he is looking for a party platform that specifically does not do what he wants.
But it’s that part about acting like the Dems are just as bad as the GOP that’s all lie. Deliberate lie. That’s what he is paid for after all.
October 19th, 2011 at 1:57 am
@Warren Terra:
AAAAAAAGH!
AAAAAGH!
October 19th, 2011 at 2:01 am
@burnspbesq:
Bobo is trying to stick his dick in your ear by spewing the shit he writes.
That makes him an asshole for trying to fuck you when you don’t want it, it makes him a dick for spewing shit, and it makes him an idiot for doing it so poorly.
October 19th, 2011 at 2:07 am
@Warren Terra: OK, technically I think I read that Perry got 2.9% in the poll and was trailing “no opinion” (and Santorum wasn’t even one of the choices), but can’t find the story. This, btw, is certainly a more evocative headline than “Perry trailing No Opinion in Florida.”
Also priceless Santorum family photo: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LLDt.....Family.jpg
October 19th, 2011 at 2:09 am
@West of the Cascades:
That’s fucking gross dude.
October 19th, 2011 at 2:23 am
@cmorenc: It’s not just the NYT, Bobo gets paid by NPR to blather. That irritates the bejeebus out of me.
October 19th, 2011 at 2:38 am
NYT Op Ed page, less Krugman and Herbert, I’m looking at you, assholes rewarded not for any effort or critical thinking, but for gushing platitudes in support of a vile parasite overclass utterly unworthy of continued exsitence.
October 19th, 2011 at 2:40 am
Holy Christ, pedantry alert.
Dick, schlong, dipshit
October 19th, 2011 at 2:41 am
Holy Christ, pedantry alert.
Dick, schlong, dipshit, fuckface.
Correct answer is all of the above.
October 19th, 2011 at 2:42 am
@Gex:
Agreed. Bobo and other conservative pundits usually argue against their (largely imagined) caricature of the 1972 Democratic Party rather than the one that actually exists today and offers mostly middle-of-the-road policy ideas. And they also continue to pretend/lie about the fact that their heroes, assholes like Goldwater and Bill Buckley, would be drummed out of today’s clown car GOP for being too liberal.
October 19th, 2011 at 2:48 am
@Gex:
Agreed. Bobo and other conservative pundits usually argue against their (largely imagined) caricature of the 1972 Democratic Party rather than the one that actually exists today and offers mostly middle-of-the-road policy ideas. And they also continue to pretend/lie about the fact that their heroes, assholes like Goldwater and Bill Buckley, would be drummed out of today’s clown car GOP for being too liberal.
October 19th, 2011 at 2:48 am
“Second, Americans are trying to re-establish the link between effort and reward.”
In the same sense, perhaps, that someone spluttering and flailing around in water over their head is trying to re-establish the link between aquatic exercise and good muscle tone. Rather than, you know, drowning.
October 19th, 2011 at 2:59 am
@West of the Cascades:
Poll at TPM.
No Opinion comes in at a solid 18.3%, ahead of the Newt at 3 at 11.7%. Looks like Newt might be the next non-Romney when Cain flames out. (Romney 32.6% and Cain 30.2% btw)
October 19th, 2011 at 3:18 am
@Calouste: This graph from TPM cracks me up.
October 19th, 2011 at 3:29 am
Schwing!
October 19th, 2011 at 3:50 am
Michelle Bachmann says “Unined States”.
I knew she had always sounded vaguely like a four-year-old but now watching a clip of the debates at TPM I finally got at least one detail about why.
October 19th, 2011 at 3:52 am
@PeakVT: It gets pretty obvious that they don’t have a viable candidate they give a damn about. Just crossing my fingers now, waiting until the filing dates in the early states pass.
It is too soon to fantasize about a brokered convention and the GOP needing to rehabilitate whoever comes out of such a mess in time for the election. But the GOP convention starts on Aug 27! This allows for stretching out a convention ‘bump’, but not enough time to introduce a new or severely damaged nominee.
October 19th, 2011 at 3:53 am
@PeakVT:
Too bad that it doesn’t go back far enough to show the Trump hump.
I’m wondering, at the moment it looks like there will be 5 primaries in the first 3 weeks of January (IA, NH, SC, NV and FL) and then basically nothing until March. That would leave a nice gap for someone to jump in early January, register in time for the later primaries and ride the anti-Romney wave that every newcomer to the race seems to get to victory. Of course for that gamble to be executed at the right moment to pay off you need an Axelrod-level campaign team to know exactly which states close registration when, which ones have winner-takes-all, which ones have write-ins, etc. etc. Or in other words, competency far exceeding the GOP.
October 19th, 2011 at 3:58 am
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
sigh… Jayne Cobb was great in Firefly. It’s such a shame that Adam Baldwin turned out to be such a wingnut.
October 19th, 2011 at 3:59 am
FYWP just ate a post of mine, so instead here’s a video from Monday of a wild dust storm in NW Texas (scroll down).
October 19th, 2011 at 4:09 am
@BobbyMac: His take downs of David Gregory (“Fluffy”) along with accompanying photo shops are priceless.
October 19th, 2011 at 5:02 am
And another shoutout to our very own bloghost: in the comments thread to the Pierce piece on Bobo, a young woman writes “Mr. Pierce, that is a rant worthy of John Cole on his very best of days.”
October 19th, 2011 at 6:03 am
This is John Cole before he discovered the twitter and stopped loving us.
;)
October 19th, 2011 at 6:09 am
@harlana: It’s football season. He’ll be back after the Stealers lose.
October 19th, 2011 at 6:54 am
Any takedown of Brooks is worth a few minutes of your time; this one should be engraved on a plaque and shot all the way to Alpha Centauri.
October 19th, 2011 at 7:31 am
Couldn’t agree more—except the part about the crap from China being overpriced. Cheap Chinese goods, not Obama, are the only things standing between the banisters and the pitchforks.
October 19th, 2011 at 7:37 am
OT, but Chuck Todd is really execrable. He attributes people’s anger at DC to…Beltway earnings.What a fracking tool.
October 19th, 2011 at 7:49 am
/puts on Carnac the Magnificent robe and turban, holds envelope to forehead…
Answer: David Brooks.
/tears envelope open, pulls out note and reads it…
Question: Who could be mistaken for a low quality douche product if set on a shelf in the Women’s Hygiene section of a supermarket?
October 19th, 2011 at 8:18 am
@Arclite:
I feel the same way about Jerry Doyle, who played Michael Garibaldi in Babylon 5. He ran for office as a Republican in 2000 and he’s apparently got a radio show in California.
October 19th, 2011 at 8:43 am
Mushrooms usually brought be clarity not incoherent deception.
October 19th, 2011 at 10:15 am
it was wonderful
October 19th, 2011 at 10:16 am
@burnspbesq: Good thing Applebee’s went and had all of those salad bars installed, you know, because otherwise, you know, David Brooks would be “making shit up for the sake of yanking anyone’s chain”.
burn, is it even possible for you post something here that doesn’t confirm everyone’s opinion that you are a complete fucking moron? Or is the level effort and thought required simply too much for you to handle?
October 19th, 2011 at 10:22 am
But he forgot the last step without which none of this would have happened: “And the people, blinded by their greed, bought into it.”
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: Yeah, Bill Hicks was 100% right on the mark…
October 19th, 2011 at 10:25 am
@Ben Cisco: Chuck Todd, Mark Halperin, David Brooks—the unholy trinity of douchedom.
October 19th, 2011 at 10:29 am
Charlie Pierce is a treasure. One of the whip smartest and funniest Bostonians ever, imho. His blog is really excellent, very glad he has a more daily blog home these days.
October 19th, 2011 at 10:34 am
Hey, I’m an Adjective.
Yowza!
http://bit.ly/oStWsi
October 19th, 2011 at 10:46 am
@West of the Cascades:
Judging from those facial expressions, Santorum just said something really stupid. Something so stupid it was briefly even worse than going through life (and junior high school) with the last name Santorum.
October 19th, 2011 at 11:06 am
Three people you never want to piss off: Tbogg,Wolcott, and Pierce.
October 19th, 2011 at 11:39 am
Wow, how awesome was this takedown of Brooks by Sasha Issenberg: http://www.phillymag.com/artic....._paradise/
That’s a great link by Charles Pierce to a brilliant article. And Brooks is still doing that same crap.
October 19th, 2011 at 11:44 am
@MTiffany: Damn, I think a portal just opened somewhere.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Driftglass is pure genius, never ceases to AMAZE what level of snark is actually achievable.
Magnificent! [BTW I do think our man John Cole is right up there when it comes to turning a colorful phrase and is the main reason I come here.
Bravo!
October 19th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Oh AYUH.
October 19th, 2011 at 5:09 pm
@burnspbesq: Brooks “sincerely believes in the truth of what he writes”
At any given moment.
October 19th, 2011 at 10:38 pm