David Brooks…
…recants from his recent piece criticizing the President’s budget as way too liberal. Now he’s back in the Obama saddle again, and all it took was a little phone call from “four senior officials” of the Obama administration. And a dozen red roses, no doubt.
They mean well, they told Brooks. And they’re not really liberals, after all. And the deficit won’t be that bad. Promise.
On the other hand, is Whoopi Goldberg starting to have second thoughts about supporting The One? She’s been doing the tax math and doesn’t like the way it’s adding up.
Putz.
vanderleun: don’t say that about Whoopi.
Or maybe a dead fish.
From Whoopi to putz is a massive step up. She aspires to putzdom in her wildest dreams.
Conclusion: David Brooks is not only a nitwit, but a spineless nitwit at that. Vanderleun is a putz.
Sorry, got distracted. That should have read, “Vanderleun is right – Brooks is a putz.”
Sorry, Vanderleun. My bad.
rickl: or maybe a horse’s head?
Nah, if he’d received a horse’s head then he could’ve hooked up with it to form a complete horse.
More likely he was threatened with being struck off the list of invitees to fashionably lefty social events. Liberals for some reason are acutely sensitive to losing popularity.
Brooks was probably bribed with, “Recognized as the true voice of Conservatives, not that awful Limbaugh.”
Meanwhile Obama is making time for Brad Pitt today to discuss the reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina.
These are deeply unserious people.
Obama is heading for a classic fall.
Oh my, Brooks wants to be loved in the worst way.He’s a classic apple polisher.
Sorry for the vulgar parlance, but I don’t give a shit what David Brooks has to say about ANYTHING. Or any in his coterie of the Fourth Estate. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was exactly right about what should be done to journalists and pundits.
As for Whoopi Goldberg… yeah, it’s finally sinking in that Barry O wants to redistribute the wealth. You people really beat up on poor Joe Wurtzelbacher about it, but he exposed Barry in a most uncomfortable way. I mean, zipper down and his pants down by his ankles…
soupcon,
We ex-soldiers have another expression for what exactly it is that David Brooks is polishing…
Disgust is too mild a word to describe the depth of contempt I feel for people like this.
We haven’t heard from Jane Smiley, either. I haven’t been compared to a member of a racist lynch mob in a while, and I’m feeling neglected.
I know it’s been said over and over again by conservatives, but I’ll say it again: It’s creepy how close the media is to this administration and, in this case, vice-versa.
Maybe it’s me, but I don’t ever remember such a pr police force out and about trying to keep individual columnists in line with the president.
“… all it took was a little phone call from “four senior officials” of the Obama administration.”
I think it more likely that Brooks saw that he was about to be ruined by his fellow pundits for crossing over the line with that first critical piece. The calls from the Obama folks merely offered Brooks a rationale for what he already knew he needed to do preserve his career.
Somerby, over at the Daily Howler, on March 4, dissected an article by Ed Kilgore as an example of what Brooks could expect: distortions of what Brooks wrote, using such techniques as quoting fragments of sentences in order to imply false meanings.
All a pundit’s got is his credibility and if the other pundits turn against him … well, that has long-term career implications, doesn’t it? Better to hurriedly crank out an apology as soon as possible to quell the flames before the firestorm develops.
We can expect no more criticism of Obama from Brooks, for he knows they will not forgive a second transgression.
A couple of phone calls intimidated him? Not much of a man, is he? (But we knew that already.) No more than 50 milliMcain, tops.
If Brooks had been in the Hanoi Hilton, the threat of some MSG in his chow would have had him singing “The Internationale,” falsetto, of course.
Occam’s Beard,
Hell, he’d never make it out of Basic Training, first week. Some drill sergeant yelling at him would break him completely.
Does the Left or their liberal, useful idiot allies have any real men?
Hell, Ernesto “Che” Guevara was whimpering like a kid and begging for his life when the Bolivian military decided he wasn’t worth more to them alive than dead. He was a big man when he was waving a pistol in front of his victims who were hog tied, being tortured by him, and then being executed by him.
But when it was HIS turn – role reversal – he soiled his underpants.
Will they be able to shut Jim Cramer up as well? He better disavow Obama even more strenuously or fold up his show tent and go home.
Though I have to say, his criticism is pretty strong, albeit qualified by declaring himself a raving liberal, something I never realized.
Cramer: My Response To The White House ...But Obama has undeniably made things worse by creating an atmosphere of fear and panic rather than an atmosphere of calm and hope. He’s done it by pushing a huge amount of change at a very perilous moment, by seeking to demonize the entire banking system and by raising taxes for those making more than $250,000 at the exact time when we need them to spend and build new businesses, and by revoking deductions for funds to charity that help eliminate the excess supply of homes.
We had a banking crisis coming into this regime, but now every area is in crisis. Each day is worse than the previous one for this miserable economy and while Obama’s champions cite the stimulus plan, it’s really just a hodgepodge of old Democratic pork and will not create nearly as many manufacturing or service jobs as we hoped. China’s stimulus plan is the model; ours is the parody….
Obama’s chickens, coming home. to roost.
Neo was right the other day calling all of this surreal. Disagreement with Obama has become some sort of implied cultural taboo that transcends political ideas itself. I’ve never lived under a King, but i can’t imagine it being much different than this.
I wont forget Mr David Brooks, or Mr Tom Hanks, or Mr Ron Howard, or Mr Jimmy Buffet…and the list goes on… A long list of people God will deal with, if us freedom loving people don’t deal with them first.
At the time it happened, I wondered if what was being done to Joe the plumber was the harbinger of things to come.
I wonder if Obama’s saddle is hard on Dave’s back. Validates my theory of contamination by writing for the Slimes.
It’s tempting to write off Brooks as just another squish; but as I have followed the thread and commentary between people like Robinson, Hinderaker, and Mirengoff on one hand, and people like Brooks, Christopher Buckley, and David Frum on the other hand, I believe that the issues are deeper and tie directly to the ongoing Limbaugh kerfuffle.
Simply put, Limbaugh and people like him are Socially Unacceptable. From that standpoint, Limbaugh is merely the New Palin, who was symbolically the New Limbaugh for about 15 minutes last fall. And they stand symbolically for the great majority of conservative voters.
And why are they Socially Unacceptable? At bottom, I don’t think it has anything to do with theories of government or economics. The Ur-transgression is their unapologetic defense of revealed religion.
And why is Religion a problem? We have discussed before how the progressive lexicon is built around phrases that don’t mean what you think they mean. I argue that the main progressive definition of Religious Right means “against abortion rights and gay rights.” (My wife chimes in “Duh” at this point.)
I’m getting a little uncomfortable now, because these are not the issues I write about. I will stop to see whether the readers think that this is idiotic and whether they care about the strategic implications.
Oblio:
Duh!
Although he’s kidding on the one hand, he’s not quite kidding on the other. Limbaugh may well be one of the last conservatives standing.
We can say what we want within the “safety” of an almost obscure blog (in comparison to the size of his audience). No one is coming for neo at this time. I would say Limbaugh has nads the size of footballs. I would also say he’s hoping the rest of us grow a pair.
And that would be ovaries, for women on the right side of left.
Oblio,
You’ve clearly laid out what I think is the heart of the matter. I’ve thought so for some time.
I find myself in a difficult position vis-a-vis these two antagonists: the secularist socialist elites vs. the literalist Christians.
I’m very, very uncomfortable with either of these antagonists. And yet I am very comfortable with Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. It’s very difficult for me to explain where I am as a Roman Catholic. I’m all over the map, depending on the theological and social issue. Some I’m quite traditional about (recently seeing a way to return to what I was brought up with, modifications as needed); others I am more moderate and sometimes liberal about. I don’t treat the Bible as a divine dictation, as Muslims treat the Qur’an.
Neither Limbaugh nor Palin would impose some kind of religious orthodoxy on the rest of us. They are not unsophisticated rubes, contrary to what the Ivy League educated pundits might think.
I am opposed to abortion-as-a-means-of-birth-control. Yet, I want to keep it legal for the rare cases where I think husbands/boyfriends and children want to save their mother rather than the baby. I think we in the churches can do a better job of training our young and reinforcing with each other the moral reasoning behind why life is sacred. It has to be an ethic that is freely embraced, not coerced. And an informed conscience and trained mind would go a long way towards achieving that end.
As for the whole gays thing… in most states now they can have legal partnerships which confer pretty much all the benefits they want. I’m opposed to altering the standards for marriage, which we Christians hold to be sacramental and between one man and one woman. Not a man and man, woman and woman, human and animal, human and multiple partners, and whatever other inventions the deviant could conjure.
These Ivy League elites have milked all the mileage one can get out of post-modernism/deconstructionism. It cannot be the basis for a flourishing civilization, as the evidence is overwhelming that it puts us in suicide mode while these pundits want us to keep hitting the snooze button.
Thanks, Fred, but I hope no one will think I am trying to start a discussion of the merits of the case for either abortion rights or gay rights. I am arguing that my own opinion here isn’t really relevant.
What IS relevant is what “liberal” positions on these social issues signify to the people who determine what is Socially Acceptable. I think the people who determine who and what is Socially Acceptable are Upper and Upper Middle Class urban and suburban women.
Strategically, the Republican (or conservative) message is not going to break through until you get a critical mass of these women on your side.
Oblio,
I understand what you are saying. It is most unfortunate that the survival of our nation and Western Civilization may depend on such a narrow class of people. If the premise of your reasoning holds, then we’re finished.
I think we need to take abortion and gays off the table by simply not talking about it. There are FAR MORE important things to worry about and present circumstances only amplify that.
I don’t think you will get most of those women on the Republican side. They are hostile towards any kind of pro-life and Christian ethic. Therefore, you play away from that crowd and take them out of the game. You then focus on economic, foreign, and defense policy which are all areas the the Leftist women are very, very weak in. Stay away from the social issues.
I have sympathies for the social conservatives, even if I do not share their whole shebang and their peculiar biblical hermeneutic. But we Republicans should not make the social issues the front burner stuff. This is just me being strategic in my thinking. I used to play ice hockey and when you planned your game against an opponent you always tried to not allow your opponent to play to your weakness. But always go at his weakness.
To Republicans who are very strong social conservatives and who want their issues front and center, I would say: there is just too damn much at stake to put a bulls eye on our foreheads. Up to this point, during the last two decades the Left has successfully caricatured Republicans as misogynists and homophobes who want to impose a theocracy. It’s a straw man, for sure, but it has worked. We need to take that out of the game, or at least neutralize it so that it isn’t a big moving target.
Western Civilization and our Republic are under assault. There is an emerging symbiosis of Marxism with Islam going on and if these people win all over the world, the world that emerges from it will be infinitely harsher on women and gays than the phantom Christian persecutors they so despise. This is how I would reason with the social conservatives AND with the Maureen Dowd’s of this world.
The single working woman:
“Rats, I’m knocked up. This is inconvenient. I need an abortion.
The single welfare woman:
Rats, the rent went up. I need another kid.
And the taxpayer shall pay for it all.
I don’t think we should be so quick to dismiss these women, or to surrender them on the other side without a fight. Many of the best writers on this blog (including our hostess!) are such women: intelligent, educated, urbane, and courageous, with a deep appreciation of the way the world works.
I am saying that if we want to change minds, we need to understand women like this first.
So, Fred, I am taking issue with your strategic prescription. Right now, like it or not, the White House and Left Democrats, through the vehicle of an attack on Rush Limbaugh, have turned the budget fight into a disguised proxy battle about culture and social issues. Their gambit doesn’t need to work to be successful: it just needs to distract.
Oblio,
You tell me how we are going to change the minds of the educated, elite women who have all this influence? I’ve been around a few myself and I do not see how you can change their minds on the social issues. I don’t even want to try, because I don’t have enough time or patience. I can muster very good arguments, but I suspect they won’t convince any of those ladies.
But they must first understand that in the world that will replace the one they are destroying there will be no respect at all for women or gays. None. And when the alliance succeeds in putting us down, they will fight each other for control and the Muslims are going to win that one.
If it all boils down to the kind of milieu that Maureen Dowd is a good representative of, I’m not sure I want to live to see the Gotterdammerung they play a bit part in the orchestra of.
I can put on a public face and say nothing when these kinds of women lecture us about what they want, or their gay allies want to shove in our faces. Privately, I have my conscience to fall back on. But there is just too much at stake in the big picture.
You know what? If creating this mishmash of Limbaugh-Palin-and those Eeeeevillllll Christians works, and we can’t overcome it, then we don’t deserve to survive as a civilization and Republic. If our people are that shallow, venal, and cold then we deserve the encroaching darkness and the curtain coming down.
Listening is part of the answer.
Undereducated poor people who are desperate opportunists are pouring across our borders. They are being allowed to, encouraged. Mainly, I believe, to slow the coming explosion from south of us. Our welfare system has torn the family apart and is breeding generation upon generation of lost, angry souls.
There are now people in power in this nation who believe socialism is the answer – while fooling millions into believing it will still be America as we know it, just better.
OK, the attack on Limbaugh was not only intended to distract attention from the economic debate; it also acted to rally social progressives in advance of the stem-cell/cloning policy change.
This is the most proactive communication strategy we have yet seen from this administration. Please note they are also establishing (or re-cultivating) the perceptual equation “social conservative” = “Religious Right” = “anti-science” = “stupid.”
FredHjr, I could see your point if social conservatives had been driving the bus lo these many years, but it’s simply not so. For 40 years there has not been a single major reversal of the liberal ratchet on social issues; we now are reduced to fighting a rear-guard action against gay marriage, creation/use of human life for medical experiments, euthanasia, selective-breeding abortions, leftist indoctrination in schools, and so on. Each of these liberal projects directly involves an imposition of the state over the family and the individual.
I expect that so-cons will lose each of these battles in turn, and certain folks will then cluck about how the so-cons should have gotten with the so-called “conservative” platform that involves entitling Achmed to put only three of his Pakistani brides onto welfare instead of all four, or entitling Christian churches to worship “freely” so long as they consent to ordain at least one lesbian female per parish to celebrate the sacraments “fairly”. Never is there a serious policy challenge to the basic leftist doctrine that the state’s interests are paramount and the family’s and individual’s rights only secondary.
Ronald Reagan, for all his rhetorical successes, only ever managed to reduce the government’s rate of growth. Except for the social conservatives, nobody on the right seriously acts as though government can be unmired from the swamp of liberalism. As Yoda says, “that is why you fail”.
The problem with a strategy of harping on the threats of Marxism and Islam is, the latte ladies don’t think these really are any fundamental threat to our way of life. Liberals and elites think the benefits of Western civilization simply happen, like California weather or accident of birth, and don’t see how civilization requires a substrate of toughness. It’s the same mentality that leads to their blithely ignoring the fact that taxing the hell out of business kills the economy.
Social conservatism is a bogeyman for these people not its hermeneutic hinges on finer points of Biblical interpretation, but because its base axioms contradict the liberal assertion that the popular will can define or redefine morality itself. Most of the leftist hermeneutic is a reaction against Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular: they don’t care that their criticism is against a straw man of their own imagining. (Ever notice how many simple details they get wrong — depicting Catholics as young-earth creationists, e.g., or Baptists as rosary-prayers? They don’t care. Some things genuinely make no sense until you learn to see irrationality itself as indicative of a struggle against God, who is rationality — Logos — Himself.) Because the base philosophy of leftists is mere will-to-power, their politics, attitudes, and prejudices are similarly rooted in nothing but “I want” (cf. “I won”). The main thing is that so-cons stand in opposition to the revolution, therefore they are isolated and targeted.