12. David Brooks
The moderate conservative columnist hides appalling opinions behind "reasonable" language
Topics: Salon Hack List 2011, New York Times, David Brooks, Media, Media Criticism, Politics News
Last year, we gave New York Times columnist and liberal editors’ favorite moderate conservative David Brooks grief for being milquetoast and lazy. But this year, let’s hand it to the guy: When you want a truly vile opinion dressed up to sound innocuous, Brooks is your guy.
He can make a defense of racist demagoguing sound benign. He obfuscates and misleads on income inequality, while, as always, accusing those damned coastal liberal elites of disrespecting Real Americans. Accusing liberals of disrespecting Real Americans is one of Brooks’ go-to lines, even though there’s absolutely no evidence that he has any clue whatsoever how the middle and working classes live in America in 2011.
Everything, with Brooks, comes down to “values.” Bad things happen because of a lack of the correct “values,” and the correct “values” are essentially white upper-middle-class mid-20th-century bourgeois values. Poverty happens because the poor don’t have those values. Earthquakes happen because of a lack of those values. The sexual abuse of children happens because — you guessed it — America lost those important pre-’60s values. The abuses at Penn State, in Brooks’ worldview, went unreported because America has become “a society oriented around our inner wonderfulness.”
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
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The Salon Hack List is our annual countdown of our least favorite media personalities, ranked (very roughly) in order of awfulness. This is our 2011 list. 2010's Hack Thirty is here.
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