Jon Chait describes every Michael Gerson column ever written:
It is very hard to summarize what the column was about. The general theme was a defense of civility.
My college age cousin once told me why he prefers rap music to the emo (I guess I should say proto-emo, since this was ten years ago) stuff that the kids listen to these days: “at least with rap, you can tell what they are talking about — women and money.” That, in a nutshell, is why I prefer George Will and Charles Krauthammer to Bobo and Gerson. I honestly have no idea what Gerson and Bobo are trying to say most of the time. They make only marginally more sense than a Jack Johnson song. They may as well start writing their columns barefoot while humming along with an acoustic guitar.
MikeJ
What should you listen to while reading Gerson?
Not owls. Not the gentle lowing of cattle at dusk. Not dried corn rattling into a galvanized bucket.
aimai
What’s not to understand–the point is always the democrats and democratic policies and politics are doomed, evil, uncivil, childish, unworkable…etc…etc…etc… Its always a fairly simple trick. Start with something everyone can agree is good, or bad,and then show how something democratic is the direct opposite.
aimai
russell
That’s gonna leave a mark.
aimai
Sorry, shouldn’t blog while doing other things (I’m watching a video about Rembrandt). The permanent structure of a bobo column is “obscure but uninteresting reference based on a brief reading of someone else’s academic work…we all agree that…suprise! the democrats don’t agree and their policies will kill puppies.”
aimai
DougJ
@aimai:
At some level, yes. But all the twists and turns involving references to gladiators and neuroscience and so on can be hard to follow.
slimslowslider
soul side! shudder to think! moss icon! emo!
Punchy
You read waaaaaayyyy too much politics. I have no idea who Gerson is, nor do I care.
Bill Simmons, Wilbon, and Jay Mariotti….that’s more my style.
Brachiator
Rule of thumb: a column that cannot be summarized is not worth reading in the first damn place.
Barbara
I joke with my husband that the reason I like sports and the tv shopping networks in preference to dramas is that the purpose of the event is absolutely clear, no trying to appeal to emotion or push a covert view.
However, nothing can make me read Krauthammer. George Will, occasionally.
Comrade Jake
Quite the haircut Gerson’s sporting there. What is that one called? The middle-aged douchebag special?
Martin
@aimai:
I think the point is that the people screaming at the clouds wouldn’t be doing so if the rational folk weren’t somehow wronging them, and that they should instead work harder to appease them.
If you, as a reasonable person, constantly put yourself in the shoes of someone making a spittle-soaked racist rant about government staying out of your Medicare and wonder how wronged you would have to be to get to that state, and then work backward, you have Bobo and Gerson. When these guys were 12, they needed to have their dad sit them down and say ‘Son, most people are good and reasonable, but some are just assholes and some are just insane – and you can’t change that. Focus your life on the good and reasonable ones and mock the assholes and crazy one for the sake of your own sanity.’ I’m 99% certain that’s what happened to Stewart and Colbert.
Warren Terra
In a related vein, I read the subhead on Douthat’s column and was replulsed, but remain intrigued: did anyone with more fortitude than I click on it and discover just how bad today’s column is?
Noonan
I just like how Bobo uses fancy words, misdirection and historical inaccuracies to explain his continued ball-jiggling of GOP policies.
Zifnab
@DougJ: That makes BoBo and Gerson look smart. It’s like doing a finger painting and sticking it in the Luv. I mean, it’s right next to the works of the greatest masters, so it has to be great, right? And if Brooks (or his Chunky protégé) are talking about neuroscience, they must be side-by-side with neuroscienists, and therefore… Geniuses!
They’re praying on your ignorance to sell you lies. Perfect little Republicans. Brooks is a child of the Lauffer Curve and Supply Side Economics schools. It’s all par for the course.
PopeRatzy
Possibly in the future please to insure that music references to Jack Johnson include the disclaimer “(not the great delta bluesman Big Jack Johnson)”. Anyone that played for years with Sam Carr and Frank Frost should not have his reputation even marginally besmirched by references to the barefoot mediocrity of the pop Jack Johnson.
DougJ
@Warren Terra:
I didn’t think it was that bad. The basic point is right, that everything went to hell under the saintly JPII.
Bill E Pilgrim
Instant Brooks/Gerson column:
Somewhat provocative title actually written by an editor
Start of the article immediately veering off into amateur sociology, linking to a book that the author just read.
Slow, painfully slow, walk back from left field that involves detours through the bullpen, the dugout, and the clubhouse and finally to an entirely different ballpark from where it started
One-paragraph conclusion that is empirically, demonstrably unreachable from where the article started that amounts to a summary of everything that Charles Kruathammer ever wrote.
SGEW
@aimai:
This is just about perfect, actually. I would only add that the reference to the academic work is also incorrect and/or misleading, as well as being obscure and uninteresting.
beltane
Bobo is very simple, really. He is a master at using pleasant sounding canned anecdotes to mask the bitter taste of his Randian beliefs. And it is all done so perfectly tongue-in-cheek that it’s hard to determine whether or not he believes a single word he says.
George Will is just a classic fuddy-duddy who is perpetually shocked and scandalized by the goings on of the world around him.
Zifnab
@Noonan: I wouldn’t call Applebee’s “historical” per say.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Zifnab:
My mind reels with possible things that could mean.
beltane
@Warren Terra: I read Sullivan’s critique of the Douthat column, which is as close to it as I will venture. Douthat feels tremendous compassion for the Pope, who was just following orders like a loyal soldier. Yuck.
Keith G
@Brachiator:
Easy solution. I do not bother with three out of the four. I may scan a Brooks column to see which Bobo has shown up that day. A job made easier since he summarizes his latest column (sometimes quite extensively) on the Friday News Hour.
Athenae
I went through a country music phase a few years ago because all the men of pop were whining about women who’d left them, and all the women of country were like, “Yeah, I left you. You fucked my sister. You’re an asshole. By the way, I left a dead fish in your car. Last week. Good luck with your pathetic life, dickface.”
It was fun. Then Kenny Chesney happened.
A.
Punchy
OT
Can you really be a Congressman if you have no fucking clue how the process (and the veto) works?
I mean….a day or two after the signing, I understand the overheated rhetoric. But a month later, and he STILL dudn’t understand the math?
David
To me, Bobo’s columns are (consciously or subconsciously) mostly just nostalgia porn for a time that never existed. It has to do with his age and the age of his readers — they’re thinking a lot about their youth.
The vagueness of his columns are a feature, not a bug.
Dan robinson
Fuck you. There is more truth in “traffic in the sky” than you can comprehend.
cleek
@Punchy:
he understands it just fine. he’s counting on Joe GOPBase not to understand.
aimai
Warren Terra,
The best, or worst, part of Douthat’s column was when he acknowledged that Ratzinger was called “the rotweiler” of the papacy since he’d sought out and held with an iron fist the top slot in the office of the inquisition but then argued by passing reference that somehow Ratizinger was no more than a weary, learned, monk whose “reward was supposed to have been scholarly retirement.” Poor bastard! After all those years trying to refuse monetary donations from pedophiles he gets stuck with the top job and the expensive robes! Oh the humanity! Here, feel a gabardine. (obscure Woody Allen reference.)
aimai
MH
I can’t open the link to directly email John with this story so I’m posting it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/us/04dogs.html
DOGS HELP SOLDIERS WITH PTSD
someguy
DougJ, isn’t there something new and horrible you could say about BoBo? A lot of electrons died so that you could write, in essence, “BoBo is teh Suxxor!” and so that we could chime in with variants of “F*** yeah!” That’s old and, well, not even horrible. It’s getting repetitive. We already know it. It doesn’t count as original content. C’mon… how hard is it to write that “BoBo’s intellect is so bland that library paste is practically habanero paste by comparison.” Or “Douthat is so fat that even his smallest ass pimple weighs more than Roseanne Barr, and is smarter too.”
If you don’t do it for me, then do it to save the electrons!
binzinerator
@Zifnab:
For a minute there I thought you were about to get a little kinky-nasty in your comment.
MikeJ
@Punchy: Thiessen’s column says republicans are “losing their nerve” on repeal because Obama is fighting back and they don’t know how to handle that.
dr. bloor
Oh, yeah. I’m stealing this one.
slag
From The Republican Dictionary:
Civility (n): We get to call you UnAmerican/Marxist/Terrorist and you don’t get to argue against our policy decisions.
Island in Alabama
Brooks’ core message is simple: “Feudalism is the bestest eva! I bow to our overlords, and so should you.”
That message, written directly, would be ridiculed by the target audience of petite bourgeois, so Brooks dresses it up with excruciating sophistry to sneak it under their radar.
I’m pretty sure brain cells expended reading Brooks are never replaced, so I just say No to Brooks
Sly
Its a rationalization, intended to justify opposing a politics that directly challenges their privilege. The difference between, say, Will and Brooks is that Will doesn’t need a justification for it. Both lack any real capacity for self-reflection, but Brooks doesn’t have the kind of cognitive dissonance that Will does. Will can blithely accept that meritocracy and unmerited privilege can exist side by side. Brooks can’t. But he also can’t accept the rational arguments against unmerited privilege because, in reality, those arguments put some hefty cracks in the argument that a meritocracy does, or even can, exist at all.
They can’t accept the politics, so they need to justify it. This justification is true because it must be true.
This justification will generally, if not always, come in the form of “Liberals/Democrats and just as bad as Conservatives/Republicans” whenever a rational criticism of Conservatives/Republicans penetrates their bubble. Without such a framework, their positions of power become cognitively unsustainable: If I’m not entitled to this privilege, why should I have it? And if I’m going to have it regardless of the answer to that question, what should I do with it? The justification is designed to avoid those questions.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
aimai:
As Sully has shown, The Rat was a dictator to the extreme. He’d call parishes himself to “fix” problems. So trying to absolve The Rat of everything is just stupid. Then again, stupid is Chunky David Brooks middle name.
RSA
I think that the average David Brooks piece boils down to “Look at me! I’m a modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville.” And if Tocqueville had substituted made-up shit for observation, shallowness for insight, and so forth, Brooks would be right.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Punchy:
What type of asshole would list Jay Mariotti as one of his favorites?
Oh, hi, Punchy.
As a Chicagoan I find it hard to believe that anyone likes Jay Mariotti. The man is a walking, talking anus.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Punchy: Shorter Orange Bohner: Elections have consequences. Unless said election leaves Democrats in charge.
MattR
@Dan robinson: Glad I’m not the only one with that reaction. Jack’s songs may be pop fluff, but they generally make sense (EDIT: And some do have deeper meanings). (At least his first couple albums. Have not picked up anything recent of his)
Lyle4
I like Jack Johnson, a lot. I feel like I probably shouldn’t be admitting that.
Violet
And that is why people like Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh. Things are very black and white in their world. Things that are good are USA! Patriotism! Lower taxes! Our troops! Things that are bad are Soshulism. Tax increases. Government meddling. People who are different from us.
So for people that want be sure what side they’re on, the Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh axis provides a lot of security. At least you know where you stand. No matter what’s happening in the world, raising taxes is always a bad idea.
Bill E Pilgrim
Wasn’t he one of the candidates on Futurama?
“And I say your three-cent titanium tax doesn’t go too far enough!”
Captain Goto
@Athenae:
Win.
wilson
Proto-emo would be like Rites of Spring in the 80s. Of course, emo only really spanned from like Sunny Day Real Estate through Mineral or Promise Ring. Jimmy Eat World was really the end of it all, I guess.
Bubblegum Tate
@Bill E Pilgrim:
He was. His opponent, John Jackson, said his three-cent titanium tax went too far.
OT: For some good laughs, check out Big Hollywood’s sneak peek at the script for the Red Dawn remake. The conclusion: Not bad, but it could use more guns and less feelings.
low-tech cyclist
@Warren Terra: I read Douthat’s column. It was pretty damned bad.
Quick summary:
1) Everything went to hell under J.P. II and his predecessors. (He’s clearly not leaving out Paul VI or John XXIII.)
2) Joey the Rat fought the abuses under J.P. II to the extent he could, but he didn’t have the power to do much; he was really just a helpless bystander.
3) But he’s really doing his best now, and we should feel sorry for him as he cleans up the mess J.P. II left behind.
He’s right about J.P. II, but of course wrong on everything else.
IndieTarheel
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Adult Swim probably has this one covered already.
__
And if not, they should certainly look into it.
Zifnab
the
LuvLOUVE:-p
Bill E Pilgrim
@Bubblegum Tate:
I actually clicked over there thinking you had written “Red Dwarf” instead and was shocked to discover where I had landed.
They should combine Red Dwarf and Red Dawn.
I’d pay money to see a collection of Wingnuts wandering in the far reaches of outer space cut off from the rest of humanity where all they can do is get drunk and tell stories trying to impress each other.
Come to think of it, that wouldn’t be so much science fiction as it would a documentary.
in canaduh
Emo is from the 80’s .. “proto-emo” would be Rites of Spring, Fugazi and all.
slippy
@Warren Terra: Ross Douthat is one of the reasons I don’t even bother with the Times anymore.
I mean, it’s like they’re not even trying. Brooks is a douche and Safire was a condescending jerkweed, but Douthat is a moron with a crayon. He is so head-crushingly stupid he’s beneath my contempt. Often not even writing a column about reality.
@Violet:
No matter what’s happening in the world, liberals are raising taxes on you and it’s a bad idea.
Even if, as I have to keep exhaustedly pointing out to the stupid fucks who show up on every comment thread to scream about liberals and taxes, 90% of America got a tax cut under Obama practically the day he took office.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Zifnab:
Oh is that what you meant. Sorry, I really had no idea what you meant, wasn’t being snarky about spelling. (Still missing an R, but who’s counting ;)
Mnemosyne
@MikeJ:
Isn’t that pretty much an admission that the Republicans have been bullying everyone for the past 30 years if they have absolutely no idea what to do when someone actually stands up to them?
MikeJ
@Mnemosyne: Yup, and that’s from a guy that works at AEI.
Tax Analyst
@Martin:
Every father should have this talk with his son. The nation (well, the World, actually) would be a much less bat-shit crazy place.
Unfortunately, between the assholes, the insane and the passively unaware there are large blocks of people who will never have this sort of essential guidance.
brandon
Full-blown emo in the Dashboard Confessional sense was ascendant, if not yet quite dominant, ten years ago, so your college age cousin was probably using his terms right.
Lisa
They make only marginally more sense than a Jack Johnson song. They may as well start writing their columns barefoot while humming along with an acoustic guitar.
That tickles the shit out of me. And it is spot on.
Will
Neither do they, especially Bobo. He is trapped in his own false actuality, unable to admit to himself that he stopped being a movement conservative a long, long time ago.
RSR
this post should have been titled Bubbly Toes
binzinerator
@slag:
Which is why Michael Gerson can go eat a bag of turgid dicks.
John T
My idea of what “emo” was, back in the early 90s when I was a late-adolescent fanboy of bands like Rite of Spring and other unlistenable screechy post-hardcore scream therapy, is totally different from what kids these days on Myspace are calling emo. Fortunately, I don’t care; they can claim the word if they want it. I’ll just point and laugh at their silly haircuts.