The Case Against David Brooks, Man of the Privileged Few

[xchrom]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/david-brooks-wrong-inequality-column-6537797

I don't think it's too strident to demand at this point that David Brooks be hauled up before a jury consisting of everyone else in America and forced to defend himself against several million counts of being an insufferable twat in a public place. In today's episode of Missing the Point So I Don't Miss a Meal, Our Mr. Brooks informs us that he once again has placed us all under close inspection beneath his monocle and discovered that some of us are very angry, not because some thieves in nice suits pillaged the national economy and then held the scraps for ransom. Oh, no, that isn't it at all, and he's got some wholly arbitrary ad hoc sociological categories to prove it.

Here's one:

If you live in these big cities, you see people similar to yourself, who may have gone to the same college, who are earning much more while benefiting from low tax rates, wielding disproportionate political power, gaining in prestige and contributing seemingly little to the social good. That is the experience of Blue Inequality.

Here's the other:

Then there is what you might call Red Inequality. This is the kind experienced in Scranton, Des Moines, Naperville, Macon, Fresno, and almost everywhere else. In these places, the crucial inequality is not between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent. It’s between those with a college degree and those without. Over the past several decades, the economic benefits of education have steadily risen. In 1979, the average college graduate made 38 percent more than the average high school graduate, according to the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke. Now the average college graduate makes more than 75 percent more.

Ah, you might say, this is all my balls. Shouldn't we at least mention here that many people do not go to college because they can't afford it? Shouldn't we mention that the reason they can't afford it is that nobody has any fking money anymore? Shouldn't we also mention that the reason nobody has any fking money anymore is because of economic policy that enabled unbridled corporate avarice, whereby all the jobs got shipped out of Scranton and Des Moines and off to Shandong and Inner Mongolia? This left us with a Potemkin national economy within which our primary products are new financial instruments through which the 1 percent can steal what's left, thereby further guaranteeing, again, that nobody has any fking money anymore.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/david-brooks-wrong-inequality-column-6537797#ixzz1cY4bKiDi

[marmar]

1. Brooks is the vox populi for the disconnected elite.

nt

[xchrom]

2. indeed. nt

[tularetom]

3. I had to click on the link to see who wrote that

It almost looked like it came right off the typewriter of the Rude Pundit.

[xchrom]

4. i like them both ... they are blunt. nt

[democrank]

5. K & R in solidarity

A full-fledged ass

[truth2power]

6. Outstanding article...Read the first few comments, about Mme. Defarge...

And this from Mr. Pierce: "There's the sneering at "liberal arts majors" from a guy with a degree in History from the University of Chicago." :rofl:

[Blue_Tires]

7. the line "Missing the Point So I Don't Miss a Meal" deserves a kick alone

[yellowcanine]

8. "insufferable tw*t" ?? If you go down that road where will it end?

I mean, if we have to deal with all of the insufferable tw*ts, we would not get anything else done.

First and foremost: George Will. Then we have Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Ralph Reed, Cal Thomas, etc. Not to mention the female version - Peggy Noonan.

Dang, I forgot Fred Barnes, the biggest tw*t of them all, second only to George Will.

[libinnyandia]

9. David Brooks is boring

When I lived in NYC and subscribed to the Times, I came to mourn tha loss of all the trees that died to provide paper for his column. If I read his column I almost always wondered what was the point he was trying to make.