Mother Jones has a big piece about Chunky David Brooks. Like it or not, he’s going to be with us in the NYT opinion pages, promoting holy wars and railing against animated films, for the next 40 years or so. If he starts shaving regularly, he may even be on television. I can’t speak for all of you, obviously, but there is also a very good chance that I will have to spend many of these years explaining to friends, family, and colleagues why he is awful despite his pseudo-reasonable demeanor, the way I do now with David Brooks.
So I’m reading the article. It turned my stomach a few paragraphs in, but I’m sticking it out.
Update. The close of the article is very good, fair-minded but critical:
Some of his columns contain what blogger Yglesias calls “a characteristic Douthat-ian error…a powerful desire to believe, contrary to the evidence, that some or another Republican Party blowhard is secretly an ambitious policy wonk.” It is this faith in people that trumps his sense of sin just when we need it most—to call to account a dissembler like Palin or a warmonger like Cheney.
[…..]What Douthat envisions falls into the realm of the utopian—it’s magical, Tolkien-like thinking. Few of today’s Republicans would be so concerned with the welfare of those babies after birth, or be so lenient with the doctors. Still, it provides a glimpse of the real Ross Douthat, a young man who is still very much interested in the impossible.
I’m sorry to inflict this on you, but I find the Douthats of the world fascinating: on the one hand, I feel sorry for them for having to defend something like contemporary conservatism, on the other, I think it’s ridiculous that they can have such cushy careers simply by be wiling to do so.
Svensker
What part of you is sticking out? Inquiring minds want to know.
General Winfield Stuck
One fidgety wingnut is about the same as any other. If it wasn’t Brooks, then maybe ivory tower Dowhat, the list of these apologist weasels is longer than DicK Cheney’s Dick.
You might not be around another 40 years Dougj, if you don’t regulate your obsession with these asshats. It will wear out the neural net fer sure. And I’m not given you shit, just friendly advice
DougJ
What part of you is sticking out? Inquiring minds want to know.
Sorry — I left out “it”.
trollhattan
Is it a good thing that they at least didn’t give the esteemed NYT Kristol seat to McMegan? Douthat is too milquetoasty to seem harmful but certainly types and says some dumb shit. I don’t find him as aggressively disingenuous as McMegan, however, but I do wonder about his appliance collection.
licensed to kill time
I’ve finally learned how he pronounces his name, “DOW-thut”.
I’d always thought Doo-that.
Now I can intuitively think Doo-thud.
General Winfield Stuck
@DougJ: Filed under unfortunate word drops.
Donald G
@licensed to kill time:
And I’ve been pronouncing it “Doubt-that” all these years.
Cat Lady
I don’t ever want that illustrator to illustrate me.
The author could have saved a lot of time by linking everyone to the BJ lexicon.
dr. bloor
Shouldn’t this also get the “I read this shit so you don’t have to” tag?
I don’t see Douhat’s shelf life lasting that long. Bobo is a polished act, and part of his longevity has to do with his ability to adapt to his environment–when speaking with Shields on the Newshour, for example, he can come across as being positively reasonable for short periods of time.
He may mellow as he gets older, but Chunky impresses me as being way too narcissistic and way too invested in being provocative to turn his act into something with real legs. He’ll last only as long as the Great Partisan Wars last. Bobo will always be with us.
Nicole
Oh my God, that is one boring profile piece. I gave up halfway through and skimmed the rest. Let me know if I missed anything interesting.
Ash
DougJ, when I develop a brain tumor from direct exposure to this article, you’re paying my medical bills.
Someone please cut off his balls.
neill
Chunky Bobo is a sign of the nihilism of our times — the retro-paleo-Christianist countercultural perspective, announcing itself within an epoch of Christendom that finds the ‘gospel of love’ is sublimated, and the ‘gospel of hate’ is a dynamic will to power…
Chunky Bobo has it down, my friends. He is anchored in what Nietzsche referred to as the Christian ressentiment to a radical degree.
Alex S.
At first I wanted to comment in a constructive way, then I got tired of dissecting the psychological problems of yet another “reasonable conservative”.
aimai
Oh, how sweet. I stuck it out to the end and it turns out that Douthat’s a young man who “believes in the impossible.” That is, he believes that if he supports draconian, anti woman, anti abortion, conservative policies that magically A pony!
Contra the interviewer this isn’t proof that Douthat is really a nice guy, or has something to contribute. Its proof that he’s an intellectual and moral coward–a man who is accepting money to pimp a conservative line which he can’t, really, support in practice. KThe way he resolves these contradictions is, apparently, to fall silent just at the moment when an honest man, who had thought out his positions and stood by them, would be writing. So far he has refused to write about gay marriage, at least in the Times, because he can’t figure out how to maintain his nice guy persona while personally attacking his actual gay friends. He apparently has also decided not to write about Iraq because he “doesn’t know anything about it” and isn’t going to be bothered to find out enough in case it turns out that it doesn’t fit neatly into any conservative playbook. I take it that he will also refuse to talk about bush, or cheney, or anything else if he can’t make it work for his conscience and his paymasters? I wouldn’t call that “believing in the impossible” I’d call that, uh, being utterly morally and intellectually bankrupt, and willing to sell it.
aimai
El Cid
What really pisses me off is that I have to spend one fucking moment of my life thinking about or hearing what these absolutely worthless shitbags like Douthat spew.
It’s like the great majority of the punditariat — we’d all be completely better off without their worthless, hired lackey selves, and reading people who actually are worth a tinker’s damn and have a true point to make, but instead, noooooooo, our fucking major media have to fill up their pages and minutes with the equivalent of garlic and vomit flavored jello, so that then all these shitbags can reinforce their message and find spaces to talk to each other and we have to then read analyses of why the shitbags think the worthless things they think and what they really mean.
eastriver
Ignore him. It’s easy. You’re the only person that pays attention to him.
That was easy.
Alan
Jeebus, I’m glad Balloon Juice has its lexicon links. I finally looked up ‘Chunky Reese Witherspoon’ and now realize people aren’t making fun of Reese Witherspoon’s weight….
ericvsthem
Not going to happen. The NYT just isn’t going to be around 40 years from now.
PTirebiter
@Ash:
Why prune a dead bush? He described the decor of his college dorm room as being of the conservative aesthetic. And he really, really likes gladiator movies
jenniebee
Well, there’s Ross Douthat in a nutshell: one minute he’s bemoaning his party’s lack of interest in moving beyond slogans, the next minute he’s outlining a pro-life position in which abortion is illegal but nobody goes to jail for performing one.
He went on, however, to say such a ban would require “radical experimentation with the welfare state” and likely “a lot of new welfare agencies of one kind or another,” plus orphanages and an expanded “network of crisis pregnancy centers.” Nobody involved would go to jail,
It never seems to occur to Douthat that if he backed the stronger welfare support for women faced with unwanted pregnancies, he’d get a natural reduction in abortions and a growth in support for putting restrictions on them. But the realities of making having and raising children more affordable, of eliminating the disincentives to put children up for adoption (adoption agreements are completely unenforceable, as many birth mothers find out too late), and of opening up the popular conception of family to the point that a multi-racial adoptive family fits the norm, none of that is as easy for Douthat as saying “abortion is kind of like murder” and letting that loose on the electoral winds.
FlipYrWhig
I don’t understand the reasons why any media organization wants to have someone like Ross Douthat around. It seems to me that if you’re going to pay someone to write, he or she should either (1) know something or (2) be interesting. Douthat fails on both scores.
Jules
@Donald G:
Every time I see his name I read “Douche-Hat”…
El Cid
@jenniebee: That’s all well and rational and good, but it lacks the sweet feeling of moral condemnation of shameless indulgence in sexual desire and the stern, cold hand of fate which conservative religious types want to direct toward women with unwanted pregnancy.
dmsilev
I find it rather amusing that the article covered the episode that earned him his nickname, but rather carefully avoided quoting the “chunky Reese Witherspoon” portion of the anecdote.
-dms
Comrade Luke
Yglesias is the Douthat of the left.
Heresiarch
@Jules:
Hey, me too!
Riggsveda
Oh, it’s just another illustration of the truth behind the cliche that it’s not what you know but who you know. Seriously. Would someone as clueless and inexperienced as Douthat (or Brooks, or random name here, ad nauseum) ever get a gig in the Gray Lady telling everyone else what to think if he talked like Howard Zinn (God rest)?
Heresiarch
From the article:
That sucks for him, because he’s Crazy glued to those motherfuckers.
That’s what the reasonable conservatives don’t seem to get: They can paint a happy face on the matter all they want, but they’re still peddling the same poison as Fatty Limbaugh – and it really is poisoning the country.
Sorry Douthat, you don’t get to disown Crazy Aunt Palin.
Keith G
Oh joy! Yet another white male born into privilege who writes essays about reinforcing ways society can protect that privilege.
Talk about the soft bigotry of mediocre expectations.
Ash
@Keith G: But it’s not REAL privilege! Cause he had to go to all those damn hippie stores and probably couldn’t eat gluten. That makes him different!
Just Some Fuckhead
lolz
J
Douthat satisfies–in spades–the chief requirement for being a conservative pundit these days: an entirely unearned presumption to moral seriousness. I picture him sighing a mighty sigh at the shallow, frivolous spirit of our times as he sits down to pen yet more immortal prose, having paused first to drink deep of the wisdom of the ages, from a spring known only to him and his exalted brethren, the taste of whose deep, cool waters would, in any case, be entirely lost on members of the smelly, sweaty, grubby sex-obsessed lower orders with whom it is Douthat’s misfortune–borne, mind you, with exemplary good grace–to share the planet. And then, having set down his pen, yielding for a moment to the sadness known only to the elect, the knowledge that the exquisitely wrought piece of work he has set before the public, the fruit of the infinite pains and the subtlest of intellects, will never be appreciated at its true worth.
I haven’t seen Avatar. For all I know, it has many defects. But I defy anyone with half a mind to read D’s windy pontifications inspired by the film and conclude that the author is anything other than a shallow poseur who knows nothing about what he’s talking about.
Keith G
Got a question. In this thread, besides Douthat, I have seen reference to Kristol and Brook. I read Krugman and Dionne.
Where are the women? I don’t count Modo, obviously. Ivins and Mary McGrory are gone. Who am I missing? Where are the front line women columnists?
A sad state of affairs that more voices are not heard.
Short Bus Bully
Why are we talking about this douchebag hack again?
/cornfused…
Sly
Reading Douthat is always uncomfortable for me, because at one point in my life I was nearly as insufferable a prig as he is. Not as much because I didn’t have all that idiotic You-Have-To-Act-Right-Or-The-Baby-Jesus-Will-Smite-You baggage, but pretty bad nevertheless.
No one wants to be reminded that they were an asshole, even if they aren’t an asshole anymore.
FlipYrWhig
@Comrade Luke: I thought of the Yglesias-Douthat comparison too, because both are basically fairly dull and conventional versions of their side’s typical pundit, just younger. They don’t supply much in the way of verve or humor. But IMHO Yglesias actually does occasionally attempt to acquire information. Douthat just pontificates.
Also, every time I see Douthat’s name, I think, I would do anything for love but I won’t Douthat.
Nicole
@FlipYrWhig:
Goddamnit, now I have an earworm. But it’s making me laugh, so maybe I’m not quite as mad at you as I should be.
Maude
@Keith G: There’s Gail Collins. I can’t think of any front liners.
The noise machines are limited to a select few. These aren’t people who know anything.
Dou-whatever is a mediocre twit.
They are all so self imprtant and boring.
Nicole
While I’m trying to get the dulcet tones of Meatloaf out of my head-
The older I get, the angrier the “except in cases of rape or incest” contingent makes me. It’s such a cowardly position it just makes me want to punch them in the face.
(I’m pregnant now, with a wanted pregnancy, and run the gamut every day from thrilled to ambivalent to terrified. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to be pregnant and not want to be.)
Linkmeister
@Keith G: Ellen Goodman (unfortunately just retired)? Trudy Rubin? Anna Quindlen?
Violet
@FlipYrWhig:
Lolz!
@ DougJ
But the NYT may not be with us for the next 40 years or so, given how newspapers are doing the opposite of thriving. Or, if they are, Doo-that may wither away from an affliction of behind-a-paywall-itis: declining influence due to people being unwilling to pay to read the crap you write.
The Truffle
Let’s be fair. Douthat got to where he is without having a rich neocon parent to give him a foot up.
Notorious P.A.T.
WTF? No one put a gun to their head and forced them.
Feel sorry for the people of Haiti; they can’t help their bad situation.
bayville
The New York Times’ wunderkind columnist is on a quest to save intellectual conservatism.
I had to call it quits after I read that sentence. I’ll take your word on the piece but I find him incomparably boring and irrelevant.
frosty
@https://balloon-juice.com/?p=33762#comment-1563077J
This. Also, too.
Nailed it. Precisely what has annoyed me reading these guys going back to Bill Buckley. Yalie. Douthat. Harvard.
I kind of liked reading Buckley’s sailing books, until I realized all his manly stories of challenging nature, taking the wheel, beating against the wind and the waves occurred on a boat with a cook, a captain, and a first mate. That he had hired.
La-de-da indeed.
frosty
Rats, buggered the link. Wasn’t allowed to edit, fancy that. Is this where I say FYWP?
Anyway, the link to J:
@J
Tomlinson
I think I paid $.99 for Douthat’s book, Privilege. What a rip off.
What struck me most was his underlying belief that everything he was experiencing was somehow special and above that experienced by mere mortals.
What an asshole.
Mike in NC
This is the clown who co-wrote a book entitled “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream”. Even Stephen Colbert isn’t that funny.
darryl
I love my New York Times. I used to read it every day, for years. I would get off the bus in Chapel Hill, make a beeline for the alley behind starbucks, find the blue recycling bin, grab a copy of yesterday’s Times, and head into a coffeeshop to peruse it for an hour.
That said, if the Magical Unity Pony arbitrarily anointed me HNIC (a term which should replace ‘czar’) of the Times’ editorship, I would walk in the front door, take the elevator to the staff offices, and my first words would be “Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, and Ross Douche-hat, clean out your desks. On second thought, don’t. Security will be accompanying you out of the building directly. We will mail your belongings to you.” Then I would round up their personal affects, box them up, and have them all thrown into a furnace.
darryl
I knew a really, really good journalist in the 82nd Airborne. Award winning guy. After a disaster in the 90’s, the pentagon called and asked if he would specifically attend this one event, to cover it. When he got out, I said, “Why don’t you go to work for Newsweek, or a big paper, or something?” he (who didn’t have a college degree of any kind) said, “You basically can’t get those jobs unless you have an Ivy League degree. If you have that degree, you can get your foot in the door, no matter what kind of idiot you are. I don’t, so the door is closed, for the most part.”
Years later, when I read a Matt Yglesias post where he doesn’t understand the difference between “there” and “their”, I shake my head and realize my friend was right. Sad but true.
J
Thanks frosty! I was striving to sound a note of solemn self-regard as only RD can, but thought for a moment that I might have overdone it.
darryl
It’s longer than two and a half inches?
darryl
No shit, I was listening to NPR today, and McMegan actually said that borrowers should feel an ethical responsibility to global corporations, and repay their loans, even if it didn’t make financial sense for them, while the corporations should continue bloodlessly doing whatever was in their best interests, because ‘it’s just business’.
Why does anybody listen to this woman? She has the ethics of Ted Bundy. Socially-retarded people like her should receive therapeutic assistance, not broadcast time.
darryl
I had to hit the button and turn the radio off, for fear her moral idiocy would contaminate me.
Tim in SF
DougJ:
It would be very helpful if you could give me your one-paragraph elevator pitch as to why Bobo is such a dodo. I often find myself at parties with politically-minded people and it would be nice to have a paragraph I could memorize well enough to blurt out after three drinks.
darryl
In fairness, garlic can be really good under the right circumstances. Ross Douche-hat never is.
darryl
that doesn’t make any sense, at all. If you believe abortion is murder, it doesn’t matter, in the slightest, whose parents the victim had.
defendant: “Your honor, I killed Jerry.”
judge: “Who were Jerry’s parents?”
that doesn’t make any sense at all.
darryl
Something like 50 million American women have had abortions. I want to see Ross DoucheHat argue that they should all be put in prison for first degree murder. It was premeditated, so first degree, Ross.
Joel
@darryl: I like Yglesias more than others around here apparently do, but I think of him as someone who brings up interesting subjects with little added insight.
He’s a great aggregator, though.
IM
I think what Douthat is envisioning is some kind of christian democracy, social conservative christian democracy. That includes a right-wing welfare state with lots and lots of church run orphanages and so on.
That can be done and was a big success in Italy and Germany in the fifties and sixties.
but of course the fifities are over and the succces of christian democracttic parties with a special catholic social conservative slant depended on the power of the catholic church. And this power doesn’t exist in the USA. And most republicans won’t like any kind of welfare state anyway.
Of course you could and did go to jail for an abortion in Italy and Germany and other conservative welfare states. This whole illegality without jail is either idiotic or cowardice.
Nicole
I’m still in moderation? What? I posted that hours ago!
(Whine, whine, whine)
eastriver
Why is anyone giving Douchehat the time of day? Christ, move on.
b-psycho
I found that article especially interesting, nailed his quirk perfectly. It’s like his purpose to being — whether a columnist or merely being alive — is to try to deny what his own encounters with modern life have been screaming in his face, but without sounding like the fire&brimstone nutjob that wholesale rejection requires one to be.
The Times should’ve tried to get Larison away from American Conservative instead, if they really needed a conservative. He’s the only one I don’t laugh at these days.
AhabTRuler
@darryl: ‘fraid not.
metalgirl
@Donald G: Me too!
carlos the dwarf
Slightly OT, but did anyone see this piece of staggeringly stupid commentary in today’s Times?
With complete seriousness, the man argues that Obama has been doing a bad job as president because his speeches are going over people’s heads. HOLY BALLS THE STUPID IT BURNS!!!
metalgirl
@Jules: Even better! Thanks!
psychobroad
When Douthat first came on the NYT scene, someone described his name (and by extension, him) as “a perfect portmanteau of douchebag and asshat.” I only wish I were so clever.
stickler
eastriver:
Why? Because the drizzling buttwheeze has prime real estate in the New York Painted Gray Lady Paper Of Record Times, that’s why. His meandering perambulations through the intellectual fever swamps are provided to us courtesy of Powers That Be, who would prefer that we not look around and see things as they actually ARE.
That’s why.
Joel
@carlos the dwarf: “Blow” is right.
slightly_peeved
It’s quite easy to defend contemporary conservatism, provided you define conservatism by its actions, rather than its label. The current conservative party in the US – the Democrats – has staked out very defensible conservative positions on the economy and health care. The Republicans are more radical theocrats than conservatives at this stage.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t.
While it’s true that Dick is all Dick, all about Dick and nothing but Dick, it’s more of a novelty item than a useful tool.
What kills me are the people who get “they’re” confused with either (or both) ‘there’ and ‘their’…lol
daverave
@b-psycho:
yep, Larison writes circles around Douchehat
Wile E. Quixote
@DougJ
Someone needs to tell the New York Neck Beard that a beard is no substitute for a jawline.
DFS.
@b-psycho: There are two problems with trying to give Larison a spot on a major editorial page. One, as I think I mentioned here a while ago, he writes about half a dozen grade levels above the target audience for that sort of thing. His prose is dry and his analysis is dense, which makes him great for the reader who wants to learn something, but of no use to an editor who’s just looking for someone to dish out facile bullshit on a weekly basis.
Two, while it mercifully doesn’t happen on his blog all that often, when he does touch on a subject that brings his faith into play, he reveals himself as a raving religious lunatic.
Wile E. Quixote
@DougJ
Damnit Doug. Knock it off with the “I feel sorry for the stupid” thing. They don’t deserve your pity, only your mighty scorn and pwnage abilities. As far as defending contemporary conservatism goes it should be a felony, except in cases of rape or incest.
Notorious P.A.T.
Head on over to Taibbi’s place and you’ll get a hundred paragraphs about why Bobo sucks. Pick your favorite. There’s racism, imperialism, classism, sexism, all sorts of good stuff.
Or you can talk about how Bobo thinks Sarah Palin is a joke and an albatross around the party’s neck, but he refuses to write it in his column because he is a coward and a hypocrite.
Or you can keep it light and talk about the Applebee’s salad bar affair.
DougJ
It would be very helpful if you could give me your one-paragraph elevator pitch as to why Bobo is such a dodo. I often find myself at parties with politically-minded people and it would be nice to have a paragraph I could memorize well enough to blurt out after three drinks.
He was a huge cheerleader for the war who insisted we turned at least 8 or 9 corners over the course of the first few years. Much of what he says is factually incorrect — that Clinton had an approval rating in the 20s, that you can’t spend over $20 per person at dinner at Red Lobster. He sometimes quotes white supremacist Steve Sailer in his columns. He merely cites philosophers to avoid substantive discussion of policy (Hume wouldn’t know what to do about health care, so maybe we should do nothing!). His attacks on universities are often reminiscent of Joseph Goebels.
This article is the definitive put-down.
Waynski
@DougJ
This. A thousand times this.
darryl
His dad is a partner in a law firm in New England, so it’s not like he pulled himself up by his bootstraps. But I know what you mean, he wasn’t born with a silver tard spoon in his mouth like Jonah Goldberg or Andy Schlafly or supertard Bill Kristol.
darryl
I agree with this. Frankly, though I read the NYT every day, I never read Brooks or Douthat, because they’re engaged in an idiotic project–pretending that modern conservatives make sense. It’s just not worth my time. I’d rather listen to people who have intelligent things to say.
darryl
@AhabTRuler: that’s probably a colostomy bag.
darryl
Oh, he does that too. I actually suspected that English was Yglesias’s second language, at one point.
darryl
A thousand times this what?
Tim I
@DougJ:
What ‘it’ did you leave out, and why is it ‘sticking out’?
Tim I
More substantively, may I point out that whores never starve.