I was going to go all, “Look! David Brooks has written an inadvertent autobiography” in this, his latest and perhaps strangest column.
There are some in the Twitterverse who think that the piece, titled “The Thought Leader,” is actually triple-secret irony, with Brooks — that famously introspective savant — fully aware of the self-parody/indictment.
Me? I think Brooks has the self-knowledge of a capybara, and that he is (or was, until this morning’s point-and-laugh-fest) blissfully, almost heroically gifted with false consciousness, of such total potency as to blind him to the utter vacuum that lies at the core of his life and work. It takes a special sort of man to surf past salad bars at Applebees to a self-appointed role as the always-wrong philosopher king of American public discourse.
Anyway, despite the end of term slough of despond/mountain of unchecked papers on which I descend/ascend,* I was all set to do a line by line fisking — until I reflected that in this vale of tears we are yet blessed by the FSM with the existence of Charles Pierce.
He does not disappoint. Admittedly Brooks’ catastrophe of a column is an astonishingly target rich environment — but Pierce rises to the challenge of swatting each and every offering.
For example: here’s Brooks’ lede:
Little boys and girls in ancient Athens grew up wanting to be philosophers. In Renaissance Florence they dreamed of becoming Humanists. But now a new phrase and a new intellectual paragon has emerged to command our admiration: The Thought Leader.
If that’s Brooks’ serve, see in awe Pierce’s return, an untouchable backhand down the line:
Actually, most little boys and girls in ancient Athens grew up wishing they weren’t slaves, and wishing they weren’t chasing sheep across a rocky hillside, and hoping they wouldn’t be dead of cholera before they were 15. In Renaissance Florence, they dreamed of not catching the Black Plague. Brooks seems to believe antiquity was populated entirely by over-educated spalpeens. Who was left to herd the goats, I ask you. And something can’t be both a phrase and a paragon, not even If You Capitalize It. Any little boy or girl in ancient Athens could have told you that.
*Just to show I can butcher metaphors with the best of them…
Image: Thomas Eakins, The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton, 1900.
scav
What a gorgeous painting. I both thank you for it and hold the whift of context you have saddled it with against you.
Amir Khalid
Why do you hate capybaras?
Villago Delenda Est
The world needs ditch diggers, too. And seamstresses. We can’t all be archdruids and ranger generals, you know.
schrodinger's cat
When I read the heading, my first thought was that Brooks must lurk at BJ a lot to write an entire column dedicated to JSF.
handsmile
Tom Levenson:
Using that magnificent portrait to illustrate a post about Bobo is so unfair to the painting. (It receives far greater justice as the cover illustration to the NYRB paperback edition of John Williams’s superb novel, Stoner.)
And with all due respect, you have to do a better job with artists’ names: Eakins! (Mary Cassatt and Aelbert Cuyp were other recent victims.) (so sayeth this art historian)
And now back to the preferred sport of capturing capybaras….
Cacti
Speaking of the annals of right wing thought…
Pat Buchanan posts a love letter to Vladimir Putin on Townhall, declaring him to be “one of us” because he hates teh gayz!
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
So, he’s basically called Putin a Nazi, has he?
Imagine that!
Cervantes
I think you meant “antidote.”
schrodinger's cat
David Brooks seems to be a bit off his game. His two columns last were worse than usual. He was yearning for dictatorship in one and in the second column there was some gibberish about mechanized intelligence. Perhaps the divorce proceedings have been rough on Bobo.
Narcissus
Jesus, that is some column. I’m gonna go have a drink.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
DougJ has hacked Brooks’ computer! That explains much…
max
@Cacti: Pat Buchanan posts a love letter to Vladimir Putin on Townhall, declaring him to be “one of us” because he hates teh gayz!
Yep. That’s Buchanan reflecting the conservative superego (such as it is). The conservative is busy going REAL AMERICA FUCK YEAH, so they’re backing the local neo-nazis against the Ukrainian leader and hoping for a) WWIII and b) that they could have an American Putin. (Whether or not the Putin they perceive is anything like the Putin they want.)
@schrodinger’s cat: When I read the heading, my first thought was that Brooks must lurk at BJ a lot to write an entire column dedicated to JSF.
That was merely the Thought Leader successfully Thought Leading.
max
[‘Brooks was so entranced he wrote an entire column while sitting in front of his bathroom mirror, naked.’]
Tom Levenson
@handsmile: sometimes great art has to serve a sordid purpose. It is a beautiful painting — and you can take it either as a picture of establishment pomposity or as the kind of actual grace-in-thought from which Brooks is forever barred.
Thanks re Eakins. Tired, etc…but I agree, important to get it right.
I hear roast capybara is delicious.
@Cervantes:
There is one in every crowd, isn’t there?
handsmile
Further to my comment (#5) above, you might wish to click onto this link for “Ivan Albright” for more appropriate portrait images of Mr. Brooks.
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ivan+albright&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
ETA: TL (#13): Indeed, how art must suffer for the sins of humanity. This Eakins portrait is in the Metropolitan Museum’s permanent collection – the American Wing – for those besieging the urban hellhole for the holiday season (or thereafter).
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s a good working theory!
Cassidy
OT: I just wanted to announce that despite our various front pager’s, Mandalay’s, Kc’s, Fuckstick’s, and the Texas Chickenshit’s (sorry if I missed anyone) conspiracy addled pronouncements about the death of all the holy baby jeebus freedom in America, today is the same as yesterday and the NSA did not, I repeat, did not subjugate everyone in the middle of the night.
I wasn’t sure if anyone knew that, so I figured a PSA would be useful.
Yatsuno
@Tom Levenson: Capybara defence league on Line One for you Mr Levenson.
At the hospital waiting to get called back. Not really sure why I had to hurry here when it’s just a half hour before my report time. Gotta love modern medicine.
Snarki, child of Loki
What I want to know is: who stole all the mirrors out of Bobo’s house?
Judge Crater
A very bizarre column. Is it a cry for help or an angry retort? He’s dismissive, but of whom? Who does he really hold in such low esteem? Himself? The world?
But, basically who cares. The man, as far as we can tell, and his ideas amount to little. If this is his obituary it is as vapid as his career.
fuckwit
I think it is no accident that the briliant and esteemed Mr. Pierce is Irish-American.
The Irish have a unique way of noticing, and piercing (hah!) with satire, the balloon of unselfconscious privilege. I think it may have to do with that 500 years of oppression by the particularly unselfconscious and pompous British aristocracy.
We are lucky to have Mr. Pierce around. And we can only hope that Bobo’s bizarre column was something of a retirement notice. It’s well past time.
scav
@max: Do you know who else painted himself naked in front of a mirror in the shower?
and what is it with the gooper gravy train substituting paintings to their mandatory pencils when tin-can rattling?! Is the pretext of writing a book (now even a children’s book) too highbrow elitist for them? Even Zimm has gone direct to paint-smearing!
Gin & Tonic
@Tom Levenson: I hear roast capybara is delicious.
They make gorgeous shoes out of the skin. Not joking.
Cacti
I just realized it’s December 17.
Happy Saturnalia, everyone!
Solstice is the reason for the season.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Cacti:
Put Saturn back into Saturnalia….
danielx
Clearly time for another Brooksian road trip to see how teh poors are surviving. Suggested title for resulting book:
A Douchebag At Large: David Brooks Views America
Suffern ACE
I can only guess what prompted Brooks to write this. But it is about the strangest piece of punditry to ever be published in a major US newspaper. What the hell do I care what the life of a pundit is like?
My guess is that he’s swiping at Ezra or Nate or someone like that. Someone much younger than he has taken his place at the table. (Yeah! You’ll grow old and die in obcurity someday too!). Jeebus.
ETA: I mean seriously. It’s like a film critic going to see a movie then writing a review that consists of nothing but 1/2 of a conversation that they had with the person sitting next to them about where to buy the best muffins.
slippytoad
@Suffern ACE: Oh, probably his insufferable need to feel like he matters, which he doesn’t.
I almost can’t read even a takedown of one of Brooks’ columns, just because it reminds me once again that this pinhead intellect is being paid by one of the biggest newspapers to shart in his drawers.
handsmile
@Yatsuno:
[Glad to see your nym here, because neglected to write earlier…]
All best wishes and hopeful thoughts are winging westward through the snow to you on today’s procedure. I’m looking forward to reading your pain-medication-addled comments in the hours and days ahead. Skoal!
cmorenc
@Tom Levenson:
Following hard on Brooks’ observation about what Little boys and girls in ancient Athens and Renaissance Florence grew up wanting to become, is this even more priceless jewel of oblivious drivel:
“Yacht to yacht concept peddler” !!! Wouldn’t you naturally assume this sort of creatively over-the-top line came from Pierce’s parody of Brooks, and not from Brooks himself? Does Brooks not leave a printout of his columns in a drawer overnight before a final proofreading before submission – obviously not, or else he’s even more stupendously oblivious than I heretofore thought.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Maybe Brooks joined a 12 step program and needs to apologize to everyone for everything.
Belafon
We complain about Conservatives having no empathy, but I think Brooks article points to the true symptom: They have reverse empathy. Brook, like Bush, Cheney, Boehner, and any other conservative, sits around imagining that other people think about how great it must be to be them.
shelly
Even the background. All that rich, textured gold.
Keith G
Having done extensive research work in Greek city state politics and culture many moons ago, I would submit that very few boys (Greek society was so sexually segregated and females lives were so prescriptive that who knows what girls were able to envision – though I imagine that they probably dreamed of being an aristocratic woman with several slaves in service) dreamed of being philosophers. Philosophers as often as not either lived in wandering penury or they served at the pleasure, and on the dime, of wealthy aristocrats.
No, Athenian boys like most other boys, dreamed of being a respected warrior, and or an athletic champion, or a great orator and civic leader, a skilled hunter or even an acclaimed actor.
Whenever I see Brooks introduced as a ‘public thinker’, it seems to me that the word ‘attempted’ needs to be added to the intro.
Chris J
It’s got to be parody. Or some incarnation of Poe’s Law.
Lyrebird
@Yatsuno: Glad your wit’s ready for all of this! Sending thoughts and wishes of supremely skilled, top-of-their-game medical folks and a speedy & full recovery!
piratedan
am so glad Senor Self-Important could descend to bestow upon us mere mortals his innermost thoughts. Let us hope his head is one of the first on the pikeheads
Villago Delenda Est
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
The only apology from Brooks I’ll entertain is a Captain Needa apology.
Cervantes
@Tom Levenson: Oh, I should hope so. Life without laughter would hardly be worth the trouble.
By the way, re your “flash mob” post, I tried to supply a link to the choir and their upcoming North American tour but WP was not having any of it. I’ll try again now (i.e., in 60 seconds) but I do not have high hopes.
catclub
@Certified Mutant Enemy: Whenever I see ‘Put Christ back in Christmas” I retort ‘Put Thor back in Thursday’.
PJ
@fuckwit: they get it from their parents, who, with pleasure, pierce the unselfconscious privilege (and aspirations) of their children.
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
Well, he couldn’t very well say that Putin is one of them because they secretly want to be dominated by thuggish former members of the secret police, now could he?
Roger Moore
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
Then he should come right out and apologize, not vaguely allude to himself.
Tom Levenson
@Cervantes: North American tour, huh? Boston on the list?
Also too: agree re need to laugh. It’s the anecdote to a multitude of ailments.
the Conster
Weirdly the NYT commenters mostly seem to think he’s on to something, as opposed to on something. Maybe the rest of the readers are still recovering from their gob being smacked and are formulating their responses which, really, can only be “…the fuck?”
boatboy_srq
I’m waiting for said “introductions” to morph into announcements of his being left to his [presumed] private thoughts.
nastybrutishntall
Brooks is mad as hell, and he can’t take himself anymore.
smintheus
For me, this was the cringiest line in Brooks’ self-portrait:
DougJ
A deeply unfunny piece but it showed more introspection than usual.
hoodie
I can’t decide whether Brooks’ column is a cry for help or the unveiling of his new schtick. He may be ditching armchair ombudsman for the everyman (now that even Patio Man knows that Applebee’s doesn’t have a salad bar), and is replacing it with navel-gazing prophet of decline, i.e., “all future commentary is vacuous because I plagiarized it before you did, and was quite well compensated for my efforts, even though it left me profoundly unfulfilled in my modest Cleveland Park abode. I’ll update you on my misery when I return from Davos. Fuck, Davos again?!”
Mike in NC
BoBo has been hitting that fortified eggnog a little too hard.
pat
I’m getting a 404 page can not be found, both with this link and Charles’. Did not want to actually read it all, but I thought the comments might be interesting.
Churchlady320
@Villago Delenda Est: Thank you! It is for the ditch diggers and seamstresses, the auto workers, and the field hands, the people who clean your hotel room and the welders who keep things from falling down that we need to keep pressing for ways to sustain them. Thought Leaders? He pays scant attention to the wisdom of these people he dismisses, people who understand life through and through. They are the ones to whom we should be listening. Not to David. To them.
TaMara (BHF)
@Amir Khalid: I should have known I’d arrive late and someone smart would beat me to it. Glad it was you.
catclub
@smintheus: I read your comment and decided he thinks he is psychoanalyzing Barack Obama. [Everybody else does.] That he is actually describing himself just makes it goofier.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
How long until we lose dear David Brooks to an auto-erotic asphyxiation mishap?
MattF
I think this is all about that move from Bethesda to Cleveland Park. I’m guessing that, somehow, it didn’t work out the way David expected.
JustRuss
Amongst the many, many, reasons I love Charlie Pierce is his introducing me to the word spalpeen. Originally, and appropriately, in reference to Rand Paul.
EconWatcher
@schrodinger’s cat:
Who got the $4 million house in Cleveland Park in the divorce proceedings? Didn’t they just buy it last year? Not usually what you do when you think your marriage is on the rocks. Inquiring minds want to know what happened.
EconWatcher
@EconWatcher:
I’ll add that I know all too well how much divorce sucks, and I have some sympathy for almost anyone going through it. But almost. Almost is the key word.
burnspbesq
Pierce:Brooks::pot:kettle
J
‘Paragon’ (I suppose he meant ‘paradigm’) is funny. I’d give Brooks the benefit of the doubt and say it was a slip of the pen or the fault of copy-editing at the Times, but there have been a suspiciously large number of errors like it in the Brooks oeuvre. In one column, newly returned from Britain, where he had been able to rub shoulders with his right-wing British counterparts, he called something a ‘damp squid’ instead of a ‘damp squib’ (‘squib’ = ‘firecracker’, more common in Br. English). Squid, unlike squibs, are at their best when damp!
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: You know that’s a compliment when Der Pat compares whomever to a Nazi.
Paul in KY
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Hopefully tomorrow.
pat
OK, so now I’m getting that annoying “you have read your 10 free articles….” I thought if it was a link, it didn’t count.
Ah well, I really don’t want to read Brooks anyway.
Petorado
@EconWatcher: That would explain why Brooks seems to be engaged in tortured introspection rather than his usual finger-pointing. Maybe with a failed marriage on his hands he can no longer sit on his high horse and claim his life is what it is because of his superior morality.
Gex
PZ Myers took a swipe at this too, before deferring to Charles Pierce.
@pat: You’d think they’d be willing to give the propaganda away free. It doesn’t work if no one has access to it.
Anoniminous
Eakins is one of my favorite painters. I stood in front of the Gross Clinic for over two hours when it was hanging in Thomas Jefferson University. (See here for a description.)
Anoniminous
@Yatsuno:
Good luck on the op!
Re: Topic Post
What the hell did I just read?
Has Bobo-baby developed self-awareness?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@schrodinger’s cat: We may never know the real truth.
kc
That’s a nice portrait of Colbert!
Gene108
@Paul in KY:
I somehow think the Nazi’s are less popular in Russia than here.
I could be wrong of course.
Rex Everything
I agree with him and everything, but Jesus, Charles Pierce is one sorry-ass hack. I love how he tries to pass off the meaningless Cobain groove he stumbles into as clever. And that “Moral Hazard the dog” garbage—dude, it goes nowhere; throw it out! At least Brooks can structure a column.
Suffern ACE
@schrodinger’s cat: hmmm. Perhaps she left him for a younger thought leader.
Just One More Canuck
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: not soon enough
Cervantes
@Rex Everything: Charlie’s a good guy but I agree with you about his “Moral Hazard” schtick.
fuckwit
@PJ: Hmm, you know, I’ve seen that. I’ve noticed a few Irish parents seem way, WAY less indulgent and more disciplined about child-raising, particularly with regards to politeness and respect for other people.
chrome agnomen
if brooks would go into an extended angst-ridden couple of friedman units worth of columns, ending in a plunge from his roof into a dry pool, why i might start reading his stuff now, just to revel in the display. and he would be setting a fine example for many others i could name.
SiubhanDuinne
In any Charlie Pierce column about David Brooks, I always always know that Moral Hazard is going to lick his ballls, and I always always giggle. Today’s CP offering did not disappoint.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Pronoun ambiguity. Moral Hazard licks his own balls, not David Brooks’ balls or Charlies Pierce’s balls.
Bill Arnold
@Villago Delenda Est
DougJ called him predictable.
Ramalama
I love the word spalpeens and have Charlie Pierce to thank for that (and BJ for pointing me in his direction time and again).
Paul in KY
@Gene108: Putin might not take it as a compliment, but it was meant as a compliment if der Grossenfuhrer said it.