Putz Drinks Kool-Aid, Gets Cramps

I took a potshot at Peggy Noonan the other day, former-conservative-turned-Obama-cheerleader-turned-disillusioned-Obama-cheerleader.

She is joined by Kathleen Parker, who I never really read in the first place, and David Brooks, token faux conservative at the New York Times. The little trio is doing a lot of worrying these days. Who stole the Hope and Change gusto? (Incidentally, Obama should copyright the word "hope." Lately I've heard people say the word on TV outside of an Obama context, and audiences applaud, seemingly for no reason. When they realize the speaker isn't talking about that kind of hope, the applause trickles to nothing. Amusing).

There's just something about J-school hacks who use flowery prose that turns me off. Here's Brooks, worrying:

NYT: If ever this kind of domestic revolution were possible, this is the time and these are the people to do it. The crisis demands a large response. The people around Obama are smart and sober. Their plans are bold but seem supple and chastened by a realistic sensibility.

Yet they set off my Burkean alarm bells. I fear that in trying to do everything at once, they will do nothing well. I fear that we have a group of people who haven’t even learned to use their new phone system trying to redesign half the U.S. economy. I fear they are going to try to undertake the biggest administrative challenge in American history while refusing to hire the people who can help the most: agency veterans who are registered lobbyists.

So much for all of those sober, smart people with supple plans chastened by realistic sensibility (previously known as "reality"). The guy writes a thesis in one paragraph, then obliterates it with the next. Cool trick.

Is it just me, or has modern politics created a whole new form of journalist as putz?