Like most right-thinking people, I am stunned by how little factual content there is in New York Times opinion columns. It’s pretty remarkable that Tom Friedman can write entire columns (possibly entire books, I haven’t read his books) about the wonders of free trade without citing a single figure. And it’s more remarkable still that David Brooks regularly posits solutions to societal ills that are backed up only by his own vague unsourced armchair sociological theories.
But apparently these aren’t quite fluffy enough because there’s a new feature — a few months old — wherein Gail Collins and David Brooks blag at each other about whatever strikes their fancy. I have been banned from the comments section of this feature for suggesting (rightly, in my opinion) that the only good that could come out of putting these two together is a possible murder-suicide. Here’s some of the highlights of today’s discussion which revolves around Brooks’ love of Obama’s “bipartisanship” and Collins’ concern that Obama is being “too bipartisan”:
Collins: David, Happy New Year! My resolution was to buy you a cheesy memento from every airport in the country but here I am in Birmingham, Alabama, and the gift shop is closed.
[…]But a lot of Americans went to the polls hoping to do more than get rid of the small-minded aspects of partisanship. Maybe it was just me, but didn’t John McCain and Barack Obama have really, really different programs for very large problems like taxes, health care, Social Security reform? And didn’t the Obama versions win?
[…]Brooks: For example, that night with us, he had an elegant dinner filled with sophisticated ideas and complex policy conversation with a bunch of right-leaning commentators. Then the next day, he had a meeting with some liberal commentators where, I presume, he was just as fluid while using much simpler sentences, shorter words and serving Froot Loops and Hostess Twinkies.
So what are Collins’s specific concerns about what Obama has proposed? I think the size of Obama’s proposed tax cut as part of the stimulus package would be one good example, but on health care he’s signaling that he’ll be more aggressive than many had thought. But that’s not really the point here: the point here is that she mentioned nothing specific and that there is simply no value in having millionaire pundits exchange content-free witicisms. What possible value does this kind of thing have?
Incertus
Other than reminding everyone that Brooks is a snobbish douchebag who wouldn’t spit on a middle-class person if he was on fire? Can’t say.
Shygetz
Because paying those two choads and a glorified steno pool is cheaper than paying for real investigative reporting.
kommrade reproductive vigor
If the answer isn’t the Times is trying to hasten its slide into bankruptcy, I have no idea.
And to repeat a gripe, it pisses me off no end that I have do a shit ton of research and interviews in exchange for which I receive chicken feed. Meanwhile people like this get the big bucks for shitting all over a keyboard.
JL
Except for Krugman and Judith Warner, I stay away from the op-ed page of the NYTimes. By the way Judith Warner’s column is on Jack Bauer and Bush.
DougJ
@krv
I hear you. That’s what really gets me about this too (not that I do research for which I get chicken feed but that I know others who do).
Fulcanelli
David Brooks. Witness the quintessential Conservative mindset in all it’s ugly, condecending glory. He’s just thinking out loud.
I take comfort though, in the fact that there’s nothing going on with this arrogant prick and his ilk that 3 or 4 tours as a Marine Infantryman in Iraq wouldn’t fix.
Explain again to me how the "Liberal Elitists" meme ever took hold, and who do we mock and belittle because of it?
DougJ
You know, as much as I hate Brooks, he’s not nearly as bad as Collins here. He brings up a fact – that Obama kept Bush’s head AIDS guy on.
J Royce
The Times publishes this crap for the same reason all the corporatized media publishes this crap: to drive thinking people insane. We are the American kulaks.
BTW, Great Britain just gave 2/3rds of its GDP to the banksters. A large … sigh went out from the commoners. Just in case you are out of subjects to write about.
DougJ
I may write about the American bailout later. So far, it looks the government has lost $64 billion. Now…I don’t think it’s clear that means the American bailout was a bad idea.
Jay Andrew Allen
Then the next day, he had a meeting with some liberal commentators where, I presume, he was just as fluid while using much simpler sentences, shorter words and serving Froot Loops and Hostess Twinkies.
It’s a good thing that immature bloggers aren’t given columns in major magazines. That would really lower the national discourse. sarcasm>
Scott H
What value? The answer is… no value to the shareholders of the NY Times.
I wouldn’t even know about these people, or at least what the current content of their contractual word count might be if I do know of them, except for the derisive vivsections they provoke.
Personally, I don’t go where I know there is no "there" there.
demimondian
I love this line from Brooks:
Um, David? Schookums? Listen, babe — those "liberal commentators" are more educated than you are. Atrios? He’s got, like, a Ph.D. in economics. Yeah, he understands what you prate about — unlike, say, you. And Josh Marshall? Yeah, you know, his…um..Ph.D. is in American History, awarded by Brown.
In fact, when you look across the "liberal commentariat" you love to sneer at — you’re a joke, Davd. You’ve got no significant knowledge in any area, and the only qualification you have is that Bill Buckley, who was himself unfit intellectually to be stepped on by those folks, tapped you as an up and comer.
AkaDad
That’s just mean.
If Brooks wasn’t so close-minded, he would realize that Twinkies and Froot Loops provide a perfect combination of nutrients and essential vitamins giving Liberals the ability to use facts and logic to form analysis and predictions that are usually correct.
KCinDC
Just reading the excerpts, I didn’t find much wrong with Collins, because I assumed her criticism was aimed at Brooks and all the other commentators rhapsodizing about bipartisanship and cautioning Obama against doing anything unpleasant like trying to implement Democratic policies. I gather the larger context made the words more offensive.
Fulcanelli
Too big to fail, too big to insure with taxpayer money.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
As much as I realize the bailout in many ways was necessary, we taxpayers and our wallets should not be held hostage by a financial system run by people wipe their asses with us and then sneer at the idea of us having any say at all in how our money is used.
As recently as only a few hundred years ago, the No Parking signs on Wall Street would have been stripped from their poles and the bloody heads of the CEO class would have replaced them. Come to think of it, it’s still not a bad idea…
Les Miserables, indeed.
Fulcanelli
@AkaDad:
Epic WIN!
Ed Drone
vs.
Danger, Will Robinson! That Does Not Compute!!
Then again, logical consistency is inconsistent with the conservative mind, as most of their blatherings illustrate so conclusively.
Ed
John Cole
I haven’t hated Collins as much lately, but if I have to sacrifice her in a murder-suicide to get rid of Brooks, that is a trade worth making.
Comrade Jake
On the better side, we have Matt Taibbi putting a beating on Friedman in ways that are too awesome not to share. Here’s paragraph #2:
Comrade Darkness
The Times, like the dem congress, suffer from battered-spouse syndrome.
Fulcanelli
@Comrade Darkness: Or Stockholm Syndrome. Seriously.
John Cole
@Comrade Jake: I know Taibbi is just trying to be funny, but he might be on to something with the graph about the size of Valerie Bertinelli’s ass.
Rudi
Sully has a link to Matt Taibbi ripping Tommy Friedman a new assho$$.
nypress.com/article-19271-flat-n-all-that.html
Read all and enjoy…
1jpb
It seems that the NYT is not a favorite of the the BHO folks.
I think they have done some hatchet jobs on him, and he probably remembers that. The NYT had multiple pieces that resulted in extremely detailed, and very long, point by point rebuttals on that BHO fact check website thing.
And, I will never forget when I openned up the NYT, a little before the election, and they had a double full page spread with a summary of the two candidates (JSM and BHO.) As I scanned through the blurbs that were printed around the main text in the middle I was blown away by how much more negative and critical the BHO side of the two page layout was than the JSM side.
Then, I realized that these blurbs were summaries of each of the pieces the NYT had done on the candidates during the campaign. Overall, they had clearly gone after BHO more strongly than JSM. And, these pieces were packed w/ factual errors, as the BHO rebuttals proved. It’s true that there were a couple times the NYT went after JSM (the lobbyist lady, and Cindy’s history), but we all know about those because they get publicized by the right as "proof of the evil, elite, liberal NYT."
My guess is that the BHO folks were aware of the out of whack overall content balance of the NYT well before I read this comprehensive summary of the campaign coverage.
Seems like there’s no reason for the BHO folks to cower and capitulate to the NYT–and they aren’t.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Comrade Jake: If Taibbi ever figures out how to weaponize his prose we’re all in deep shit.
former capitalist
Ah, but the good news is that Friedman’s wife’s money is circling around the john and heading into the septic tank. GGP, of which her father is a partner, is on its last legs. Good riddance.
sgwhiteinfla
I think Gail Collins is referring to
Rick Warren, she wrote a scathing article about him doing the inauguration I believe.
Size of tax cuts in the stimulus plan but I think that was a smokescreen by Obama because he knows the Dems in congress are going to slice them up and raise the level of infrastructure spending as the House did this week in their bill.
Talking about reforming SS an Medicare reform even though his words were twisted on that front.
Trying to do Healthcare reform in a bipartisan fashion when most Republicans will work to kill it because they fear that it actually might work.
Not being willing to look back and investigate Bush because it might be seen as a partisan attack.
Now I believe she was in fact specific when she mentioned taxes, health care and SS reform. I think where she screwed up is in her belief that Obama is going to bend to Republican will just because he is showing the willingness to keep an open mind and listen to them. From what I have read about Obama thats just his MO. It doesn’t mean he will change his mind but he at least gives folks the impression that he values their opinion thereby generally earning their respect.
But all in all you would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of columnists out of all of the newspapers in the country who don’t speak out of both sides of their asses most of the time and really have no clue what they are talking about. Talibbi’s eviceration of Friedman clearly shows this and the average reader of the NYTimes thinks the sun rises and sets on Friedman’s fat ass.
sgwhiteinfla
The best parts of Talibbi’s article IMHO
snip
JGabriel
DougJ:
It lets the rest of us know how the other 1% lives and thinks.
Basically, it’s the same function as a horror film. But the Fear(tm) is real.
.
bago
DougJ: How many white house journalists does it take to change a lightbulb? What. You don’t know? Pfft.
jeremy
Right, because as we all know, it’s liberals who are effete Eastern elitists, while conservatives are men of the people.
Oh, yeah.
Maus
In the interest of bipartisanship, can’t we just axe these assholes and axe the worst of the liberal pundits at the same time?
Whatever can bring journalism back, I’m for.
Dulcie
@Jay Andrew Allen:
He said this same shit on NPR yesterday, and no one called him on it. I almost went through my car radio trying to choke that smug bastard.
Zuzu's Petals
@AkaDad:
For some reason, it’s very important to the righties to point out that they ate better than the libruls.
Zuzu's Petals
@demimondian:
Not to mention Rachel Maddow, who earned her PhD at Oxford. As a Rhodes Scholar.
sparky
these guys (Brooks especially) are paid to regurgitate the conventional wisdom of the cronyocracy in a form that the reader can say "what he said" without too much brain strain or cognitive dissonance. there is no relationship between the existence of the conventional wisdom (in pure or regurgitated form) and its utility, moral value or any other metric we might use to judge its goodness. it’s there because somebody has to do it, and do it professionally.
ps: Brooks is pretty good at it, and i am glad he works for the NYT rather than the GOP where he’d be much more pernicious.
pps: i dunno what happend to Gail Collins. she was much better when she worked for Newsday. perhaps being a cronyocracy tool requires removal of the snark lobe.
Riggsveda
Yeah, well…um…Michael Moore is adipose.
(Can I be conservative now? Or do I have to publicly excoriate Twinkies and Froot Loops, too?)
Oh hai
Umm, actually I didn’t disagree with what Collins was saying, and I find it odd that you pick at her excerpt while sparing Brooks. The point is, she’s bringing up a valid point about policy, which you can disagree with without having to accuse her of vapidness. David Brooks, on the other hand, is just being an ass. I know it’s fashionable among bloggers to snark at pundits, but at least give them credit where credit is due.
Comrade Baron Elmo
What blows me away about this snotty little comment is that if someone like, oh, Al Franken, Paul Krugman or Rachel Maddow made it about Heartland Americans (the folks who eat this stuff, after all!), Brooks would be one of the first on deck in the resulting hue and cry, shaking his head sadly and clucking his tongue at the incivility of it all.
He’s a vicious little prick masquerading as a Will Rogers-like fount of horse sense, and the fact that so many buy into his scam makes me want to force-feed him live spiders.
jcricket
When you the GOP’s fortunes are stacked on making fun of education, learning, science and facts – are we to be surprised that their public faces are morons? You have to speak the language preach to the choir, knowhatimean?
But all this know-nothing-ism has its "benefits". You can be aggressively wrong all the time for years, and then later experience no cognitive dissonance when you entirely switch your stance.
I expect no mea culpas from the right when they embrace global warming, nationalized healthcare, business regulation, reasonably tax rates, etc. (assuming they don’t continue their slide into oblivion by clinging to the anchors currently weighting them down). In fact, I’m sure they’ll find a way to blame the Democrats for stalling progress on those issues.
I also want to add that the rise of the liberal commentariat on the Internet, and the mocking take-downs provided the instant the traditional yahoos spout their BS – is awesome. I think it will really help Democrats going forward. The more "authoritative" people like Josh Marshall and Matt Yglesias are, the less chance there is for the GOP peddled lies to get accepted in the first place (and thus become zombie lies)
Comrade Darkness
Come on. You’re mixing your messages. Since Arugula-eating is one of the rightwing insults against DFH, I guess spicy green salads must really go well with hostess products.
As a certifiable DFH household, we can’t even bring ourselves to buy commercial bread, let alone crap that comes portioned in little nitrogen-filled baggies. As befits loser-liberals, we bake the NYT no knead recipe in our cloche every two days. Come on, liberals can’t eat bread lacking in a true European crust! This is just desperate projection because these overpaid pundits can’t stand that their constituency stands around holding signs reading "morans" and wouldn’t know foie gras from baloney.
In the darkness household we are currently having deep fried risotto balls. Take left over squash risotto (yes, there is a future for left over risotto) wrap it in balls around a piece of ham or sausage, roll in egg, roll in (the *only* bread crumbs approved for hippies) Panko. Deep fry to golden brown.
MMMMMmmmm. Better than twinkies!
DougJ
There was absolutely nothing specific about her point. For example, as I mentioned, Obama seems to be getting more aggressive about health care than many thought. So what specifically is Obama doing that this too bipartisan?
Joe Buck
Friedman doesn’t need figures, he has anecdotes, and third world cab drivers who think just like the billionaire in the back seat.
And then there is Dowd, who somehow counts as a liberal even though she devotes most of her column space to talking about what a bunch of faggots Democrats are, even calling them childish names, like "O’Bambi" for Obama. And Edwards was "the Breck girl". And for Kerry it was much the same.
And then there’s Kristoff, whose hard bleeds for the suffering of the Third World even though he takes the conditions that cause their suffering as given and immutable, because free trade is vital, and filling up the world with low-wage sweatshops is the best possible outcome because of course corporations will move their operations where it’s cheapest.
Bob Herbert is often right but seldom memorable. Krugman is head and shoulders over the rest.
Surabaya Stew
Hey DougJ, are you aware that the majority of Tom Friedman’s books are taken DIRECTLY from his columns? In other words, if one reads the NYT every day (like I did when I was a reverse commuter for 4 1/2 years), there is no need to read his books at all unless you like to own collected writings by authors. To be sure, he does thrown in a few chapters in each book not to be found on the editorial section of the Times, such an introduction taken from the pages of his last book or a conclusionary chapter that will form the basis of his columns for the next year! In fact, his columns are perfect commuter reading; the whole point is to be in a state of semi-conscientious with glazed over eyes when pondering Friedman. For only then does he make sense.
DougJ
@SS
Tell me you’re kidding.
Todd Armstrong
The NYT editorial and op-ed pages are among the most coveted destinations in publishing.
Krugman, Dowd, Friedman, Herbert and Kristof and the guest contributors give this paper another slant and vitality.
I am not a big fan of Collins or Brooks but I am certainly a fan of the page. For me it’s front page then op-ed, then the rest.
Surabaya Stew
DougJ, I’m not kidding! To be sure I have not read all of his books, but from the ones that I have read (in the 1998-2005 vintages) all contain his more notable NYT columns pasted in there but in a different order. Reading a book of his after consistent daily doses of the NYT editorial page is like ordering a Hardee’s Monster Thick Burger after eating 30 White Castles; its more of the same shit, just bigger and harder to digest!
To be fair, perhaps only 60% of the book is taken from his published columns, but the stuff all reads the same anyway, so even parts of his books not originally found in the Times may as well have come from there anyway. I was just speaking from my experience as a former reader of his, how absolutely strange it was to read a Friedman book and to know how most pages were going to conclude because I had already read them last year!
glasnost
I love these things. For a Republican, David Brooks is rather moderate and admitting of error. Gail Collins is hilarious. They’re both funny when combined. It’s a humor column. Seriously, give the NYTimes and the people therein a freaking break. John Cole puts out any number of blog posts with nothing more than pictures of his cat, but the NYT posts one lousy humor column and you act like an asshole about it. Lighten up.
Spoken as a pro-balloon juice commenter.
Brett
Yeah, I thought it was pretty obvious that Gail Collins’ column isn’t supposed to be some Great Source of Original, Inspired Thought on the Solutions to the World’s Eternal Problems. She’s a humor columnist, who mainly cracks some pretty damn hilarious jokes and jabs at the political situation.
Brooks, not so much, because he takes himself seriously.