Boundless Brooks

It's astonishing that David Brooks can take these very critical positions against Mitt Romney -- basically agreeing with Gail Collins and everyone else that there is no discernible Mitt Romney -- and still favor him for election.

There You Go Again

Once again, he proves that his intellectual dishonesty is boundless.

Brooks Renounces Enlightenment, Abandons Skepticism

"If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out."

That's a journalistic chestnut. Brooks needs to be reminded of it in light of today's column, in which he hails the return of "Moderate Mitt." How gullible can he be?

How does Brooks know that Moderate Mitt, and not Severely Conservative Mitt or 47 Percent Mitt or Let 'Em Die in the ER Mitt is the real Romney? Brooks lacks even the patina of journalistic skepticism.

What an abdication.

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?

Oy ...

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!"

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

Oh No You Didn't

Did Brooks really tag the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations as anti-Semitic in today's column?

I think he did!

"Take the Occupy Wall Street movement. This uprising was sparked by the magazine Adbusters, previously best known for the 2004 essay, Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish? — an investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy."

What a putz.

Don't Let the Facts Get in the Way of an Ignorant Argument

Brooks laments what he declares to be the lack of innovation in America today, variously the "innovation slowdown" and "innovation stagnation."

Well, Dave, it certainly doesn’t help that our political leaders don’t believe in science, anthropology or climate change; that they put more faith in faith than in ideas; and that they block public investment in science, research and things like, oh, alternative energy. Like the Green Economy Brooks slammed a couple of weeks ago for not having created 300 million new jobs in two years.

Best Unsupported, Ideological Swipe

“... the environmentalist ethos has undermined the faith in gee-whiz technological wizardry.” So it’s all the fault of environmentalism?

Gratuitous References to Obscure Writers

• Michael Mandel

• Tyler Cowen

• Neal Stephenson

• Peter Thiel

Unnecessary Reference to Overused Thinker

• Einstein

Boy, Gomer! That Brooks feller sure is smart!