Let me save you all time on this morning’s Bobo piece on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book: he actually restrains himself all the way until the fifth paragraph to start the “Well, actually…” whitesplaining nonsense that puts a complete lie to the article’s title, “Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates While White”.
Brooks doesn’t even listen to how insipid his own tripe is. Stay in the boat on this one.
Open thread otherwise.
Baud
My strategy of never reading Brooks pays off again.
gogol's wife
I have been staying in the boat about Brooks for a very, very long time. Although I did read his column about Hamilton.
Kropadope
Looks like Brooks confused his column for the comments section. Instead of waiting for an answer from Coates, of course, he assumes he has standing to respond as a white person.
I don’t disagree he has standing, but, oh, the sanctimony!!!
shortstop
I brought donuts for the boat, ’cause it’s Friday.
Kay
Yeah, I just disagree with this. Rejecting the narrative that David Brooks’ loves does not mean there could never be a guiding star or a different positive narrative. Coates is asking a lot, no doubt, because he’s asking people to consider that the narrative Brooks likes is grounded in a lot of fantasies but that in no way means there is no possible imaginable guiding star that points to a better future. It would be different, but it could exist.
It isn’t Coates’ job or duty to come up with a narrative to replace the one that David Brooks likes. Maybe there isn’t one yet, but there could be.
debbie
@Kay:
If only Brooks would deliver that sentence you quoted to israel.
mtiffany
For those of you who have not yet read Gawker’s (defamatory, libelous, and criminal conspiracy to extort?) hit piece on Daivd Geithner, you can read it here https://archive.is/WLmaI without giving Gawker the clicks. Yes, I used the man’s name — that horse has already left the barn, such is the nature of instantaneous accessibilty of information in the digital age.
If anybody knows the ‘stage name’ of the gay porn star in question, I can’t find it and I would really love to know.
Kay
@Kropadope:
I think he makes a mistake with “conclusions”. Instead of looking at what Coates wrote as an ending, Brooks could look at it as a beginning, or really the ending that has to precede a new (possible) narrative.
PaulW
The Horde offers up this quote:
“I Ask Ta-Nehisi Coates For Absolution, And All I Got Was This Stupid Oatmeal Recipe!”
“…also this coupon for Hair Cuttery”
Trying to make it into a t-shirt right now.
Kay
@debbie:
One of the things I admire about Coates is he refuses to be “solutions man” – he refuses to be “an activist” and an example of a particular movement or a set of policies. He doesn’t have to do that. We can have other categories of work. We allow white artists and writers to be that, to say “I don’t accept this story you’re telling, here’s what I see” and there’s no demand that they fix it or “work for positive change” or whatever.
MattF
Brooks has a mission: figure out a way to make right-wing crazy sound sympathetic. But that always leaves a gap between his ‘reasoning’ and his ‘conclusions.’ Tiresome.
Kropadope
@Kay: The conclusion of one thing is the beginning of another.
He could take the Coates’s experience and come up with his own conclusion. He could accept Coates’s conclusion and say “now, what?”
I don’t think he really cares about conclusions though. Brooks really seems most interested in playing the white victim card.
mtiffany
@Kay:
For FSM’s sake, and starch-dammit! I’m trying to eat my breakfast. Word salad does not pair with anything, least of all Froot Loops. And milk stings when it comes out your nose.
I’m super-serial, though: if you ‘dissolv[ed] dreams under the acid of excessive realism,’ wouldn’t the people whose dreams you had ‘dissolved’ be trapped in the present rather than the past, since technically, the present is the only real moment which exists? Is our Bobos learning? Is our Bobos even trying? Or is it — dare one hope — the decline into dementia and irrelevance that Bobo so rich deserves, finally come ’round at last? A guide star into his personal oblivion, which therefore also too, point future generations to that best of all possible futures, the one without David Brooks in it?
shortstop
@Kay: This. We don’t tell white writers that their job is to make the most privileged layer of society feel good about itself. That concept would be actively mocked.
mtiffany
No, Mr. Brooks, your privilege is on display because you are full of nothing but shit, yet you are still published in the New York Times.
Amir Khalid
What I got from Brooks’ column was, “Ta-Nehisi Coates’ words makes me uneasy. I’m a put my fingers in my ears. Can’t hear him now, neener neener neener!”
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Which was exactly his intent.
NotMax
@shortstop
Now have a sudden craving for the doughnuts on a stick one local bakery cranks out (those and other goodies they are renowned for (cream puffs!) are there early in the morning only – if one saunters by after about 10 a.m., may as well not bother.)
Kay
@shortstop:
I watched a really good documentary on Bob Dylan once and one of the things I saw him do really stuck with me. He refused to allow himself to be drawn into “representing” something or obliged to “fix” something. He does it over and over at media events. He is forcing them to take what he wrote and do whatever with it – it’s up to the listener. He doesn’t know the answer and he has no duty to provide one. It’s probably absolutely neccesary to not let them put that kind of work into a category – “social justice activist music” or whatever because then he’s in that box and they’ll never let him out of it. He loses independence and agency if he lets them do that.
oldster
I saw the title of that column on the front page of the NYT this morning and groaned.
Without even reading it, I could predict what it would say:
“dear comfortable white people: you may have heard that there is a scary black man saying things that will disturb your comfort. But I’m here to reassure you: you can all go back to sleep right now.”
shortstop
@Kay: White artists are, of course, constantly being asked to pigeonhole themselves for the mental convenience of all, and good on the ones who refuse to play ball. (I’m reminded of a professor of mine who heard Robert Frost answer a “What does it mean?” question by reciting the poem in entirety and adding, “It means that.”) But minority and especially black artists and writers face daily demands to reinforce the entire racial status quo, and if they don’t, the next demand is for immediate “solutions.” The balls of asking the citizens on the receiving end of racism to fix racism — it fries me.
debbie
I just checked Coates’ Twitter feed to see if he’d reacted to Brooks’ column. Not yet, but apparently Cornel West is very critical of the book.
oldster
“By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future.”
I kept thinking this sounded familiar, and then I remembered where bobo stole it from:
It’s from Lucy in Peanuts, holding the football for Charlie Brown.
different-church-lady
@shortstop:
We don’t have to tell them, they do it already. (See Brooks, David)
MattF
Brooks takedown from SEK.
Kay
@shortstop:
Agreed. It’s like black athletes have to be role models in addition to being athletes. There’s this “and” – athlete AND role model, writer AND solutions man, and it’s always applied to black people.
I also think it goes back to the fundamental disagreement: Coates doesn’t believe we’re at “solutions”, he believes he’s still trying to explain what’s really going on, what he sees. Brooks didn’t even take the first step- he’s still convinced the narrative he relies on will or could get us somewhere different. I no longer think that’s true. It could just be wrong and if it is what comes out of it is likely to be wrong.
Mack
Hoping I am not breaking protocol here, but I will assume an open thread means I can pose this question. Let me say I was fascinated by the discussion on digital copyright from the other thread, and I learned a great deal, even though much of it was over my head. I still don’t know where i come out on the whole thing, I know at least that I do not steal content, other than I let my daughter use my HBO and Netflix passwords while she is away at school. I figure if she were home, she’d be using them, a change of venue seems a bit trifling. YMMV. Sorry, here’s my question: I am completely dependent on my DVR. I cannot sit thru even a thirty minute program if i have to watch the commercials. So, I record everything. Is that not, in some way, a theft? The advertisers are clearly not getting their moneys worth as I am not watching the ads, and they are the reason the content is there to begin with. How does this square with those that feel sharing is theft?
different-church-lady
@Mack:
Let’s say you let the ads run but left the room when they were on. Would that be stealing?
You’re really over-thinking this. Partially because the entertainment executives want you to.
Kropadope
@Mack: It’s not theft. They pay to air those commercials and they’re certainly aware that people may skip over them using the DVR. They may do so themselves. You’re under no responsibility to watch them and fast-forwarding over them is no more theft than leaving the room during the break to make a sandwich.
They’re getting wily though. When you watch video on-demand, fast-forwarding is disabled for commercials, though there are fewer commercials than there are during a typical broadcast.
Mack
@different-church-lady: Oh that’s entirely possible. I am one of those who see grey everywhere. It’s a curse.
WaterGirl
@Mack: When they outlaw DVRs and you are still using one to avoid commercials, that might be in the theft zone. Until then, my answer is no, avoiding commercials with your DVR is not theft. Not in any way.
Of course, I missed the copyright thread you mentioned, and I am not a lawyer or copyright expert.
Mack
@Kropadope: It may be the tinfoil, but I’ve noticed that many of my favorite programs insert a VERY quick glimpse of their programming into the block of commercials, and I often stop fast forwarding there and get tricked into watching the last two or three. They are wily, are they not?
Kropadope
@Mack: I think most channels end the commercial block with advertising for their own programming. I generally use this as a signal to stop fast-forwarding.
Jeffro
How could a political writer be bored enough to write this?
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/17/its_time_to_draft_al_gore_if_democrats_want_to_win_its_clear_neither_hillary_nor_sanders_is_the_way/
It’s actually better posed as a question: If something should happen to Hillary (health-wise, scandal-wise, whatever) who should the Dems run as their candidate? I would assume Biden + a younger VP, but Gore would fit the bill as well.
Andrew Cuomo? gack
shell
Ugh, I hate that weasly ;Fast Forwarding may be disabled for this broadcast.:
If it is, say it is.
.
Another Holocene Human
To Ben Cisco, I missed you yesterday, but best wishes to you and the missus.
Another Holocene Human
@gogol’s wife: Do tell.
john b
@Kay: In other words, “He’s not gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more”
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: Like this airy fairy philosophy matters when you’re 18, school let out, and you can’t get a fucking job!!!
Fuck you, Bobo! You do nothing but defend conservative pols who ensure that hiring discrimination, low wages, unaffordable education, housing discrimination, disinvestment, and high unemployment continue into perpetuity.
Mike E
@PaulW: Applebee’s Word Salad Bar.
Another Holocene Human
@mtiffany: Agreed, I saw that last night. It’s so fucking outrageous. I’ve also never seen the Gawker commentariat so united. There’s no kinda sorta here. This dude is batshit crazy and wrong and borderline extorting people and Gawker helped him do it?!
As someone in the comments said, isn’t Ted Cruz helping a gay vet with PTSD more of a story.
Fuck you, Gawker. Fuck you right in the clickhole. With votes.
Another Holocene Human
@mtiffany: Where does Bobo’s vaunted “humility” come in?
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Is Brooks a solutions man? He’s been writing a lot of vaguely gloomy stuff himself lately.
Another Holocene Human
@shortstop: What you’re describing is the relationship between a boss and an employee, not the relationship between equals.
Bobo is proving TNC’s point.
RaflW
I am as certain as can be that he doesn’t read the comments. But other NYT readers do, and maybe a few NYT employees. So I posted this in the column comments:
To say that Mr. Coates distorts history is quite the accusation. History is the creation of those who record it. And in this country, and much of the globe, history has been bent to fit the needs, wishes and justifications of the white men who have largely compiled the “record.”
You suggest that this book calls you to sit with it, yet it has only been on the shelves a few days. Even if you got an advance copy, you cannot have had any real measureable time to sit with it, to reflect.
I challenge you (and your readers): read Mr. Coates, and watch the white-processed and “white-splained” world unfold before you with new eyes gained from deep reading and absorption of Mr. Coates and other black writers.
Read Langston Hughes’ poem Let America Be America Again. And Maya Angelou, and Ta-Nehisi and more. And sit … quietly, for weeks or months before opining. Otherwise you are just reacting.
It is obvious, David, that you are stinging from the slap you mention. That is not the time for a white writer to put words to paper on a major new work by this prominent black writer. Reflect, wait, ask questions of yourself, your culture, your place in history – then maybe you’ll be ready to comment.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: One does get the feeling that Brooks has been trying to lift up his field-of-view but keeps hitting his head on the corner of the bookshelf.
Another Holocene Human
@Mack: You’re right, that is a terrible problem that threatens the content model. Because wealthly people had DVRs, they weren’t hunted like young kids were for Napster. Instead, the industry went sideways and started doing heavier product placements, something parts of the industry had resisted.
They already put ads in sports along the bottom of the screen, either superimposed or in the stadium so you look at ads while you watch the event.
Another Holocene Human
@Kropadope: I hate those ads more than the ad ads.
Kay
@john b:
Exactly. It’s funny how you recognize it when you see it.
“Oh, no. That’s not happening to me” :)
Kropadope
@RaflW:
Deadlines, bruh
Jeffro
Also, just wait until The Donald hears about this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-note-about-our-coverage-of-donald-trumps-campaign_55a8fc9ce4b0896514d0fd66
Kropadope
@Another Holocene Human: Better than having to fast forward then rewind then fast forward again.
RaflW
I will add, that I am really impressed by a number of commenters on the Brooks shambling. Quite a few people get it, even though Brooks of course can only react in his tweedy, white faux-academic tower of personal privilege.
NYT comment sections are really the only ones I read. Every other newspaper has a volume of trolls and idiots that push me towards me despair, and that’s a useless thing to indulge in.
Kropadope
@Jeffro: No, NO!!! Don’t you dare make me have a glimmer of respect for HuffPo.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t know. I just don’t think he has any other response available to him other than “I like this narrative you’re rejecting. Please give me another one”.
I have zero patience with his mourning the loss of “community” for low income white people, BTW. He’s right, it is grim for them out there from what I can see but “community” was more than church and good feelings. It was a shot at something better and some security and David Brooks has supported each and every step that got them to this hopeless place. Fuck him with his yearning for “community”. Maybe conservatives shouldn’t have blown it up without offering a replacement. I don’t know what white men who lack college degrees are going to do, and that’s where his fear comes from, that those people are falling fast. I wouldn’t have put them in this place to begin with. Brooks ignored them until he started to notice it was fucking falling apart.
Mack
@Another Holocene Human: I remember watching some show where the producers of a (fictional) broadcast were lamenting the fact that they were being forced to do product placement, and while I understood their position, it seemed like a reasonable compromise. I mean, if a character was going to say, use a laptop in a scene, is it so bad that the HP or Apple logo is visible? I understand there might be a slippery slope argument to be made, (like the programming starts to resemble a long advertisement rather than a piece of art) but it seems at first glance to be pretty harmless.
RobNYNY1957
@Kropadope:
Here in NYC at least, some on-demand programs have more commercials than in the broadcast version of the same program. Either the program runs longer (34 minutes instead of 30 minutes) or the program is edited/accelerated to compress the non-commercial portion. Modern video software allows for about 5% compression that is not noticeable either visually or audibly. Reaction shots and musical cues that are not under dialog are cut. It’s pretty easy to get five extra minutes of commercials into an hour of a scripted show, and that’s before extending the hour to 64 minutes. Reality shows are even easier to reedit because they are so repetitious. Six three-minute commercial breaks are less intrusive than four four-minute breaks, and you gain two minutes of commercial time. Some shows add an extended commercial break about the 50-minute mark on the theory that viewers will wait through it to see the end of the program. There are smart people whose job it is to think about this.
Joel
The sad reality of our current situation is that Brooks’ endorsement (from last year) is a big reason why Coates has exploded into the mainstream.
shortstop
@Kropadope: Deadlines would be his excuse, but really it’s an overweening arrogance that says he’s an appropriate person to comment on whatever he wants, that his viewpoint is always going to be as valuable as anyone else’s no matter the topic. It’s a pathology that comes with syndicated columny (sorry, I couldn’t resist), but black pundits surely aren’t prey to it the way white ones tend to be.
I assume people like Brooks also ruin every party they attend by constantly barging into interesting conversations with unschooled, obtuse observations delivered with self-satisfied smirks or fake-earnest puckered brows.
Kathleen
@MattF: Shorter David Brooks: “Mean blah man hurt my feelings.”
Kropadope
@shortstop:
Well, my viewpoint comes free and I think even that’s too much to pay for David Brooks.
Another Holocene Human
@Joel: Seriously? I thought his essay on reparations went viral but he’d been picking up name rec for a while. Atlantic columns kind of help with that.
Another Holocene Human
@Kathleen: Echoes of reliving previous decades in there, too. White conservatives never change. It’s always some version of them being “silenced” because a minority or oppressed group is trying just to be heard.
shortstop
@Kropadope: You may even want to ask for a refund.
Another Holocene Human
@RobNYNY1957: It only works because of cheap production costs (partially because of two-tier wages and reality show crews/writers/talent get paid less). Because most people just quit watching reality shows. Their ratings are terrible but it still pencils out because they cost less to air.
shortstop
@Another Holocene Human: If they don’t have 100 percent, they have nothing. Math is hard and zero-sum thinking makes it easier!
Joel
@Another Holocene Human: Brooks’ end-of-year promotion of said reparations article gave it a push into the “mushy middle”. That’s when I started hearing about Coates from my conservative-leaning friends and relatives. I agree that Coates has been well known around these parts for years, but “these parts” are a far cry from the mainstream.
Another Holocene Human
@Mack: I’m not in the industry, but if I had to guess, it’s sort of the flip side of the coin where companies will prevent them from using their products in a “negative” way. So if you want to do a horror movie, or an ironic movie, or a movie very critical of American life, you have to use coverups or kind of tussle with brands about whether the brand is visible in the movie. So, when you are using product placements, it’s clearly a suit-friendly, upbeat, “commercial” movie that none of your peers will respect you for.
Nimoy got Jobs to agree to use an Apple Macintosh computer in Star Trek IV and it was a really funny scene … and Drew Barrymore famously talks about Reese’s Pieces (all but launching the brand) because M&M Mars refused to give Spielberg permission. But then you have these recent Adam Sandler movies that are long commercials that even movie goers don’t respect. It’s hard to strike a balance.
Another Holocene Human
@Joel: Okay, I didn’t realize he gave a signal boost like that, since I avoid BoBo as much as possible. Since he taught that seminar he’s gone from lulzy to insufferable and I have no more fucks to give.
Kay
@shortstop:
Yup. It’s what bugged me about Andrew Sullivan too. His two decade long foray into health care where he read nothing and learned nothing but insisted on repeating market-based boilerplate every time the issue came up? It wasn’t free either, his self-indulgence. A lot of people paid for it.
Kryptik
@Kay:
One thing I constantly have to tell people when it comes to things like that (not just the kind of stuff TNC talks about, but even with things like Climate Change) is the fact that the first step toward solving a problem, as a group, as a people, is getting the larger group to actually accept that there’s a fucking problem that needs solving in the first place. Right now, TNC and others are still on that step, because so many people have their fingers in their ears that it makes most practical solutions that could be suggested impossible to implement.
Kropadope
@Kay: Not only that, a lot of people chose to pay for it. I read his blog every day, but I tended to assess his opinions on a case-by-case basis (and believe me, he drove me crazy sometimes), but I mostly read his blog for the links. They truly did a good job aggregating a lot of content from a lot of disparate sources, different opinions, subjects I might not normally think to look into, his blog was the one that led me here.
magurakurin
is “do not leave the boat” a reference to Apocalypse Now? If so, it’s “never get out of the boat.”
Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin’ all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin’ program.
Kay
@Kropadope:
Oh, I didn’t mean like that. How much did Andrew Sullivan’s uninformed opinions on reforming health care cost the US public? Would we be better or worse off, further down the road, without conservatives insane campaign to kill the Clinton health care reform? You could get really over the top if you wanted to, but obviously it’s unfair to put all of that on him. How many people died? How many billions of doillars?
rikyrah
thanks for reading him so that we don’t have to.
Matt McIrvin
@Kryptik: And much as with climate change, before you can even figure out what’s worth doing, you might have to go through this period of despair at the size, severity and intractability of the problem. There’s emotional resistance to even moving in that direction.
I see Coates’ reparations advocacy as a first step. I doubt he thinks the chance of anything actually being done is high, since, for one thing, there are such obvious implementation problems to work through (when it’s worth money, how do you officially decide who is black? Some kind of blood-quantum thing like the Bureau of Indian Affairs? Etc.) and the resistance is ferocious. But his point is that we weren’t and aren’t even seriously talking about it, and pushing people to talk about it is a way of moving the needle on how they think, not just about reparations but about US history and what has been done to and by African-Americans up to the present.
Kathleen
@Another Holocene Human: This. You have described the level of a white person’s idea of “conversation about race”.
Kropadope
@Kay: I have no idea what the numbers would be for better health in the U.S. if the Clinton plan had passed, nor do I know how much Andrew Sullivan giving column space to Betsey Mc…Coffee(?) moved the needle of public opinion. However, I wish it had passed just so I wouldn’t have to hear the constant bleating about the ACA now. Not that I wish there were no ACA, it’s a step in the right direction.
I know, still selfish.
Kathleen
@Kryptik: I learned in Philosophy 101 that “logic” in and of itself serves no useful purpose if the premise it’s based on is not true. This served me well in my business career in quality analysis and process improvement. The most important key is defining the problem and identifying its root cause correctly. Thanks to you and Kay for including this concept in your discussions.
Another Holocene Human
@Kathleen: This is where my skepticism towards conservative columnists kicked in … their reasoning sounded really good to my uninformed mind, but they were arguing counterfactuals.
“If the facts don’t fit your theory, your theory is wrong!”
Huh, science larnin’ is from the Devil. The holy rollers were right!!
Another Holocene Human
And all that thinkin’ for mahself.
Another Holocene Human
Totally apropos of nothing, but @eclecticbrotha is posting as “Jade Helms Deep” this week. I LOL’d.
Another Holocene Human
Pretty sure the Jade Helm is the Green Lantern, amirite?
Kryptik
@Another Holocene Human:
I always thought that Jade Helm was the married name of the first Green Lantern’s daughter, but hey, what do I know. Could be the real full name of the Mortal Kombat character as well.
Jeffro
@Kathleen: His opening paragraph
was easily one of the most offensive things the man’s ever written. The thought that all those lives lost were – in Brooks’ mind – first and foremost, “an education for white people” is astounding.
Jeffro
@Kropadope: I think it is a stroke of click-bait trolling genius. He will burn out his Twitter account in response.
rikyrah
@Kay:
thank you, Kay.
Amen.
Another Holocene Human
@Kryptik: Good one. I think she’s a Jade Ghost now, but Dan Didio induced me to ragequit DC for good so I really don’t know. (One of the things that really offended me was that they made one of their few long-time gay characters a bad guy and killed him off or something and then retconned Alan Scott as gay, which, really? It was just so gross. I’m glad Marvel has been killing their market share. Marvel sucked with all the “events” which is why I dropped my Marvel titles but DC has been mainlining the suck for some time. Didn’t help that all their really good people left for TV and never looked back.)
bupalos
@oldster: There’s probably a word in German for something that is this sharp and apt, and if I knew it I’d use it.
Really, I think your comment will be the best thing I read today.
lol
The only David Brooks story I’m interested in reading is the one that starts with the discovery of his tear-strained body next to a bottle of sleeping pills and a glass of scotch.
Kryptik
@Another Holocene Human:
I’ve honestly been horribly meh on the comics from both sides the last few years. Thankfully, both companies still have their saving graces in other media, DC with their Animated Universe, and Marvel with its Cinematic Universe.
Kropadope
@Kryptik: Recent DC movies get a lot of hate (and in cases like Green Lantern, I understand), but overall I’ve rather liked them. The most recent Batman were some of my favorite Batman stories and the Superman movies, while not great, didn’t bore the life out of me like the Christopher Reeve ones.
bemused
I rarely bother to read Brooks. I rely on others to relate the lowlights, but his you’re harshing whites’ mellow american dream comment got me morbidly curious. I shouldn’t have. He deserves bitch slapping as usual.
I’m never sure whether Brooks or people like him really believe the nonsense they write but being paid enough to buy an almost 4 million dollar home is a great motivator for moral losers to be that obtuse.
oldster
@bupalos:
Thanks! Your comment will certainly be the nicest compliment I get today!
shortstop
@oldster: That IS most excellent. I missed it the first time!
dogwood
I don’t have the life experience to really understand the fragility of being poor in America. Nonetheless I have always assumed that society’s indifference to the poor came from a couple of places. First it stems from sheer nastiness in the form of racism, and the unbridled self regard of so many of the more fortunate in this country. Second it comes from people who find the problem too complex to fathom. Caring about the poor means I must try to do something about it, and when I don’t know what to do I get frustrated and rely on blaming them to get myself off the hook. It’s less malicious in origin but leads to the same toxic outcomes. But if I dont have much insight into living poor in America, as a middle class white person, I do have some things in common with a middle class black person. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that middle class and most likely upper middle class black people are sick and tired of being lied to by the wise old white folks. There isn’t a college degree or a secure bank balance that can shield you from police brutality, job discrimination, or a whole host of other indignities visited on black people in this country.
rikyrah
@Kay:
All the while he had FULL HEALTCARE – even as a an HIV+ man…
FULLY PAID FOR….
That is what always galled me.
He never ONCE had to navigate the old system with that diagnosis of HIV, and what it means to someone not making a decent income.
Brachiator
This Brooks column has got to be one of the stupidest things I have read since, well, the last Brooks column. The only thing that could possibly top it might be something from former BJ commenter, Little Freddie DeBoer.
shortstop
@rikyrah: Ann Romney has the best MS treatment money can buy. Because she loves freedom, she didn’t want America getting dragged down into soshulist healthcare insurance schemes that would cover MS patients with limited funds—like, for example, Michelle Obama’s late father.
Ella in New Mexico
Why is it so hard for white people like Brooks to just STFU and listen?
At the least, hold your rush to blurble and just stay silent. Just listen, don’t talk, don’t offer excuses, don’t offer suggestions or defenses. Just let what the other person says stand. Let it swirl around in your head and heart for a while. Allow their experience to be theirs, not yours. At the most, tell them you hear them, acknowledge and accept their story as powerful, as real, as important. Then find a way to share it with others, as it stands.
He really could have stopped at about halfway down his column and accomplished so much, but alas, his ego could not resist.
But than again, he IS David Brooks.
Keith G
@Kropadope: Once a week, Huffington Post put out a political affairs recap podcast that is mandatory listening if you like smart and snarky commentary containing an amazing amount of depth.
Their decision on Donald Trump aligns nicely with the editorial outlook of the podcast.
The podcast is called, So That Happened.
RaflW
@Another Holocene Human:
Yep. Antonin Scalia can pretend that more political money is just moar speech!, but when actual black people speak more, that is somehow silencing conservatives.
Ella in New Mexico
Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates Whilst Snuggled Deep Within My Butthole http://jezebel.com/listening-to-ta-nehisi-coates-whilst-snuggled-deep-with-1718506352
RaflW
@Jeffro: There is also the implied notion that there wasn’t richness to A-A activism, writing, arts and community before the recent documenting of deaths.
slag
@RaflW: That said, it would be nice for some of our more privileged classes to simply STFU for a while and listen for a change.
If they feel they absolutely must be doing something, they could look at it as practicing their empathy skills. Or even pretend they’re taking a continuing education course: Better Humaning 101. For credit even! Not that they need the credit, of course, because privilege. For extra credit then!
Felanius Kootea
@debbie: Cornel West seems to be critical these days of any other black male in the limelight. He is basically attacking Coates for the book he didn’t write as opposed to critiquing the book he did write. West also attacks Toni Morrison for praising the book. He is getting stranger and stranger in his old age and missing the point entirely. I never saw West’s take on Coates’ Reparations Atlantic piece, so I wonder whether he even read that or is aware of it.
shortstop
@Keith G: I’ve enjoyed Jason Linkins’s writing for years. He unfortunately doesn’t get enough credit for his good work because he’s with HuffPo.
shortstop
@Felanius Kootea: I’ve wondered, listening to him over the past couple of years, if he’s suffering from some age-related cognitive changes. He’s only 62, though.
NCSteve
I think it’s cute that Bobo thinks he’s in TNC’s intellectual weight class. The same way an annoying little yippie dog barking a Great Dane is cute.
jl
Brooks wrote a foolish, condescending smug column.
My favorite is
‘ By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism’
Maybe people like Brooks get cut enough slack to wander through life in a perpetual dream world. Most of us, particularly poor people, minorities do not have that privilege. So, if at the end of the column Brooks says Coates is guilty of committing excessive realism, I take that as meaning that Brooks has to acknowledge that what Coates says is true. That must be it, I cannot imagine Brooks, man or character, would toss off sloppy writing. So if what Coates says is true, then maybe Brooks should spend more time discussing that truth rather than passively aggressively posing and posturing in order to avoid what Coates says.
I saw on the internets that Coates tweeted that, yes, everyone has a right to say what they think about his book, and then let the readers decide. So maybe Brooks should try again.
Turgidson
@Matt McIrvin:
Bobo’s “solutions” are generally of the “cure is worse than the disease” variety.
Felanius Kootea
@shortstop: Some age related changes can hit that early. I keep hoping that a good friend will sit West down and have a heart to heart but that seems not to be happening. Reading West makes me sad these days.
Ruckus
@Kay:
When you wear that white pointy hood on backwards it’s pretty hard to see anything. Present or future. And the past can be anything you want it to be because all your friends are wearing theirs the same way, so they can’t see shit either.
ETA Even worn forward those eye cutouts are pretty small so it’s not really much help.