Putz

What's the deal with everyone calling NYT columnist David Brooks a "conservative?" I just read this article that shows Brooks to be a political sycophant of the highest order (as if we needed anymore proof), chock full of liberalism, and yet it begins and ends on the same note: David Brooks is a conservative, or a "center-right columnist." People have been saying it forever: he's a conservative.

For the past year people have been saying things like, "though a conservative, David Brooks agrees with Obama." For Brooks' part, he more than agrees with Obama, he thinks they're cut from the same cloth. Here's Brooks:

"And, then, the war in Iraq has caused me to rethink things in a much more modest [way], and that is Burkean, too.”

[Brooks] recognizes something similar in the current president. “Obama sees himself as a Burkean,” Brooks says. “He sees his view of the world as a view that understands complexity and the organic nature of change.”

Ah. So it's not so much conservative/liberal, as it is smart/doofus. Naturally Brooks is in the smart camp, the Burkean camp.

I'm from the Don Rickles camp: David Brooks is an arrogant snob who sold his soul to political masters a long time ago. He's a putz. Take this bit from Brooks: "My line is, the Clinton people would tell you you’re a complete and total asshole. The Obama people say, ‘We love you. You’re a great guy. It’s sad you’re a complete and total asshole.’ They’re always very mature about it.”

Wonderful. When's the last time you were pleased that people who loved you thought you were a pathetic jackass?

As a liberal or conservative, the guy's a joke.

Putz Drinks Kool-Aid, Gets Cramps (II) + "Intellectual" Alert (Brooks II)

It's like Christmas. A twofer of my current hobby horses.

David Brooks has been doing some sweating over the Obama administration. Things looked so rosy and cheerful. What could have gone wrong? Brooks:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice.

As a bonus, Brooks throws in another "intellectual" line. I scanned the article before reading it through, knowing I would find it. I wasn't disappointed. Everyone's using the word these days:

We moderates are going to have to assert ourselves. We’re going to have to take a centrist tendency that has been politically feckless and intellectually vapid and turn it into an influential force.

What a putz. Just so I'm clear: smart guys (i.e. "moderates") like Brooks thought Obama was the cat's meow. They spent months telling people that Obama wasn't anything to be afraid of. He was The One. He was The Speech Maker. The Saviour. Mr. Cool. But now that he's proven to be the regular tax-and-spend liberal that all of us dummies said he was, Brooks is bewildered and lost. He's looking to his "moderate" friends to turn around a dumb moderate-right population to become an "influential force."

Sorry, Brooks. You don't get back in the game that easily. If you're so smart, so intellectual, you should have seen this coming last year. But you didn't. Why, only last week you described Obama's team like this: "The people around Obama are smart and sober. Their plans are bold but seem supple and chastened by a realistic sensibility."

A week later and they're all dangerous left wing loons?

Realistic sensibility (what the rest of us call "reality") has smacked Brooks in the face and he doesn't like the bruises. He's lurching around for a crutch or someone to lean on. To use his words he's been "chastened," if not by Obama then by his own embarrassing willingness to get drunk on political Kool-Aid. Now the hangover's killing him.

Who's he to call anyone politically feckless and intellectually vapid? Take a look in the mirror, pal.

"Intellectual" Alert - Brooks (Updated)

It's no shocker that David Brooks uses the most asinine word in the English vocabulary. Fun to ridicule him for it, though.

David Brooks in the NYT: "Intellectually serious efforts are made to pay for at least half of the cost of health care reform."

"Intellectually serious." As opposed to non-intellectually serious, or idiot serious, or dumber than a bag of hammers serious, or clowns climb out of my head like at the circus serious.

Thanks for informing us common fools that a group of dancing bears didn't write the budget, putz.

Update: Pegs and Putz go hand in hand, so I'll put her latest laughers here. I love this stuff. Better than the comics.

Peggy Noonan, WSJ: Third is an unspoken public sense that we cannot afford another failed presidency, that we just got through one and a second would be terrible. Americans know how much good a successful presidency does for us in the world, in the public mind. The last unalloyed, inarguable success was Reagan. We need another. Liberal? Conservative? That, to the great middle of America, would, at the moment, be secondary. They want successful. They want "That worked." They want the foreign visitor to say, "I like your president." They want to respond, "So do I."

Yes, perhaps it, would, at least, make people, happy, to use, commas, to make their, point, about wanting, something, anything, to work, no matter what it cost, them. ("Intellectuals" often pay homage to the Comma Fairy).

"Americans know how much good a successful presidency does for us in the world..." Yeah, the world's heart was really boom-boom-booming over your hero Reagan, Pegs. I know you wrote a fawning book about him, but peddle the bull somewhere else.

I love Peggy and her omniscient ability to read "unspoken public sense." She brings it up every time she talks about a shopping trip that took her past a wind swept Italian restaurant dappled with the sunlight of a thousand children's eyes. Or something.

This bit from the piece is good, too:

A mysterious thing happened in that speech Tuesday night. By the end of it Barack Obama had become president. Every president has a moment when suddenly he becomes what he meant to be, or knows what he is, and those moments aren't always public.

That's actually true. A buddy of mine told me a similar story: "You know how they say that love will find you when you least expect it? Well, there I was at 3 in the morning, taking a dump..."

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?