Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Dave Defends Raping Boys

That's more or less the argument Brooks makes in today's column on the Penn State boy rape. He trots out the old "You don't know what you would do until you're in that situation" chestnut, then cites the usual suspects: genocide, Kitty Genovese.
 
Not Even Close

Yeah. Right. Except there's really not much of a comparison between the Kitty Genovese or Rwandan genocide cases and stumbling on the football coach butt fucking a little boy in the locker room shower. There are scenarios when it's legitimate to say you can't know what you would do until you're in that situation. But this isn't one of them. All the witness had to do was to call out, "Hey! Stop raping that boy!"

Both Sides Now

Once again, Dave argues both sides to make no meaningful point. He spends the bulk of the column citing wishy-washy social science that defends moral relativism -- we see what we want to see, blah blah blah -- but then concludes by implying it's our wishy-washing, moral relativism that allows us to let grownups rape boys in locker rooms. Just more of Brooks's bottomless intellectual dishonesty.

What's your next column? Defending the Catholic Church's right to rape boys?

Friday, November 11, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/opinion/the-inequality-map.html
So if church inequality, ancestor inequality, moral fitness inequality and spending inequality are unacceptable, we can look forward to Brooks’s next column announcing that he’s leaving the Republican Party.

Vey

Foreign visitors often come up to me and ask, “Why does David Brooks get a column in the New York Times?" And I answer, "Damned if I know. Nice cupcakes!"

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Wrong Again

Today, DB complains about "Blue Inequality."

There is so much that's wrong with Brooks's analysis, but let's stick to just two points. First, the complaint about 1% vs. 99% is not exclusively about income inequality; that's a literal and tendentious interpretation. The complaint comprises educational inequality as well as income inequality, in part because college is becoming financially out of reach for all but the most affluent, which of course further entrenches the divide.

There is almost no relation between the general economy and the economics of higher education. In that sense, higher education is similar to health care: the costs exist in their own spheres.

Ain't Data Great?

Brooks is so enamored of social science statistics and research. There's plenty of data about students graduating college saddled with crushing debt, and that Congress refuses to address the problem. Why does the federal government charge 7% on student loans?

That's the second point: Brooks is absolutely correct to underscore the links between education and educational attainment on the one hand, and individual, community and national social and economic well-being on the other (e.g., income, health, family dynamics, social cohesion).

So what's Brooks's solution? Complain about young, White, urban liberals.

Really?

It's liberals and progressives who have been drawing attention to the social consequences of educational disparities at least since before Brown v. Board of Education. There’s plenty of social science and developmental research on how critical early childhood support is to academic success and lifelong well-being. Go read some. Fool!

If Brooks and other conservatives believe education is so critical to social well-being, as liberals have been screaming about for generations, why don’t they support, say, early childhood learning instead of gutting public education and diverting tax dollars to religious schools?

Brooks’s intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking.

Obscure References to Others' Thoughts and Work

The economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley Heim

Meaningless Data

  • Roughly 31 percent
  • About 16 percent
  • 14 percent
  • 8 percent
  • 5 percent
  • About 2 percent
  • 38 percent
  • 75 percent
  • tens of millions of Americans
  • 40 percent
  • 50 percent