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David Brooks, “structuralist”

Tue, 08 May 2012 18:28:00 +0000

David Brooks is everything that's wrong with elite opinion in America. The president reads him and takes him seriously. That is why the opinions of venal faux "reasonable" clowns like Brooks matter. Brooks today sums up the new argument for not actually doing anything to alleviate worldwide unnecessary hardship: The problem is "structural," not "cyclical"!

Long Op-Ed short, Brooks says "cyclicalists" (unnamed) think we should deficit-spend our way to prosperity, because, according to Brooks, they believe that "the level of government spending is the main factor in determining how fast an economy grows." (No one actually believes this.) But according to Brooks, all of our problems are "structural," which is to say that the reason we have mass unemployment and debt and growing wealth disparity is because of "technological change" and crappy schools. And "special-interest deals" in the tax code.

Thomas Friedman: America’s escalator is broken and only Mike Bloomberg can repair it

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:24:00 +0000

Thomas Friedman, globe-trotting superstar New York Times columnist and America's foremost Big Thinker, noticed recently that America is Broken, and by "America" he means an escalator, in a parking garage, at the train station in Washington. There is only one man who can fix this escalator that represents America: Famed escalator repairman and billionaire mogul Mike Bloomberg.

I had to catch a train in Washington last week. The paved street in the traffic circle around Union Station was in such poor condition that I felt as though I was on a roller coaster. I traveled on the Amtrak Acela, our sorry excuse for a fast train, on which I had so many dropped calls on my cellphone that you’d have thought I was on a remote desert island, not traveling from Washington to New York City. When I got back to Union Station, the escalator in the parking garage was broken. Maybe you’ve gotten used to all this and have stopped noticing. I haven’t. Our country needs a renewal.

And that is why I still hope Michael Bloomberg will reconsider running for president as an independent candidate, if only to participate in the presidential debates and give our two-party system the shock it needs.

Bill Keller joins Krugman/Brooks Op-Ed fight

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:15:00 +0000

Like a rich WASP family, the New York Times does not, as a rule, air its disagreements in public. The newspaper of record has a (supposedly unwritten) rule barring opinion columnists from criticizing one another by name. It would be unseemly. So you will never see columnist Paul Krugman specifically criticize something written by columnist David Brooks.

But what you will see, regularly, is Paul Krugman criticizing unnamed people who happen to have made the exact same argument as David Brooks. (Or Thomas Friedman.)

Last week, Krugman wrote a column attacking so-called "centrists" who defend the Paul Ryan budget plan and criticize the president for being too "partisan" about it. The column came a few days after Mr. Brooks defended the Paul Ryan budget plan and criticized the president for being too "partisan" about it.

David Brooks: “I have heard of Jeremy Lin”

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:55:00 +0000

David Brooks had to write a column about something, and his deadline was fast approaching, so he glanced at the sports page and saw something about New York Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin, and he was like, yeah, that works. Next stop, most-emailed list!

Lin is a point guard who rocketed to near-instant celebrity when he came off the bench and had a series of monster games, dragging the Knicks to a .500 record while their two biggest superstars were sitting out games. His celebrity then became a "mania" in part because he's Asian-American and a Harvard graduate, two rarities in the NBA. It also obviously doesn't hurt that he plays for the dominant team in the nation's biggest media market (also it's the fallow period between football and baseball). That's basically the whole deal, and if you'd like to learn more read Andrew Leonard's account of the early social media explosion and Alexander Chee's take on Lin and Asian-American identity. Whatever you do, don't read David Brooks' take on the Lin phenomenon, because David Brooks doesn't understand basketball or social media or race or religion or American society in general.

Times public editor asks if newspaper should correct lies

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:17:00 +0000

Should the New York Times -- America's "newspaper of record" -- print the truth? That is the question posed by the paper's "public editor," in a very funny blog post today.

Public editor Arthur Brisbane would like to know if it is professionally appropriate for an objective journalist to "take sides" by noting that someone lied. When you read the newspaper, would you like it to contain "facts"?

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

In Brisbane's formulation, when a reporter corrects a falsehood made by a source or public figure, that reporter is a "truth vigilante," because he or she took the truth into his or her own hands, before some slick fast-talking lawyer got the lie out of truth-jail on a technicality. (Hand in your truth-badge and truth-gun, New York Times! You're getting too close! That untrue assertion has major connections at City Hall!)

Another line: "Is it possible to be objective and fair when the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another?" Haha what? Probably?

Bill Keller writes newest, dumbest Biden-Clinton 2012 swap piece

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:59:00 +0000

Bill Keller, a bad opinion columnist, has written a bad opinion column. It is about how Barack Obama will replace Vice President Joe Biden on the 2012 ticket with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a thing that will not actually happen.

The former New York Times editor has lately been celebrating his return to writing by fearlessly tackling hacky column ideas already exhausted by everyone who was writing bad opinion columns during Keller's tenure as a person with an actually important job. Having offered his own takes on classics like "The Huffington Post isn't as good as a real newspaper" and "Twitter is dumb," Keller today tries the old "running mate switcharoo" scenario.

11. Bill Keller

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:30:00 +0000

I guess we should all be grateful for the lesson that you don't need to be all that insightful or wise to become a successful newspaper editor. Bill Keller, once a fine and decorated foreign correspondent, took over the editorship of the New York Times in 2003, when his predecessor, Howell Raines, was forced to resign in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal. Keller did, honestly, a decent job righting the ship. It took him a while to deal with the paper's in-hindsight much greater violation of the public trust -- the faulty Iraq reporting of Judith Miller and her bizarre behavior during the Plame fiasco -- but he cut ties with the prevaricating Miller and took responsibility in public and in the paper for errors and mistakes that had really happened under his predecessor. The Times, for its many faults, remains the best newspaper in the nation. (It has retained that title thanks in large part to the tireless work of competing newspaper owners Sam Zell, Rupert Murdoch, the Washington Post Co., but it's still an achievement.)

So it probably would've been best for Keller to have retired to, say, write an unread memoir and join the Council on Foreign Relations instead of deciding to return to the place where his obvious, obnoxious hackishness is most apparent: The opinion page.

12. David Brooks

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:00:00 +0000

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.

The New York Times has female trouble

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:00:00 +0000

The New York Times thinks naughty ladies are just da bomb. People still say "da bomb," right? That's a thing? On Sunday, the Paper of Record gave Katie Roiphe free rein to gas on "in favor of dirty jokes and risqué remarks," which, to her mind, are what those whiny girls are complaining about when they're being sexually harassed. "Show me a smart, competent young professional woman who is utterly derailed by a verbal unwanted sexual advance or an inappropriate comment about her appearance," she wrote, between boasts about her Princeton pedigree, "and I will show you a rare spotted owl." Show me evidence Katie Roiphe has ever held a real job, and I will eat a rare spotted owl.

Not willing to let any grass grow under its zeitgeisty, metaphoric feet, today the Times notices "Female Comedians, Breaking the Taste-Taboo Ceiling." Have you heard of this Sarah Silverman person? Because apparently she is rather raunchy. And lest you find yourself wondering how you woke up in 1998, and if so, whether Dawson's ever going to hook up with Joey, let me assure you, this story actually ran in the New York Times in November 2011. Coming next, a piece on how people are using emoticons. Oh, wait.