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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / Always leave them wanting less

Always leave them wanting less

by DougJ|  March 10, 20118:05 pm| 42 Comments

This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, Green Balloons

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I’m inflicting another Bobo review on your asses. This one is very good, it’s what I like to think I would have written about it if I read the book, had more time, and had some familiarity with the body of literature in the fields Bobo wanks about.

Harold and Erica go to good schools, and pass through a series of haute bourgeois jobs—museum curator, freelance consultant, corporate marketing functionary, author of mid-list historical biographies—until, finally, the hyper-achieving Erica arrives as the chief executive of a cable company, and the ponderous Harold scores a sinecure at a neocon think tank, where he pastes David Brooks opinion columns into papers on public policy.

[….]

The story of Harold and Erica does not really illustrate a new, coherent, science-based theory of human nature. It is a bowl hammered from Brooks’ philosophic predilections into which a jumbled stew of scientific anecdotes is poured.

This last bit goes to my big problem with would be conservative intellectuals. They start with a premise and then they find some high-brow arguments — maybe invoking science, maybe mentioning Burke, maybe just using trendy phrases like “regulatory capture” and “confirmation bias” — in favor of the premise. This is no terrible sin when it’s done in a three-hundred word column or even in a McMegan length blog post, but it doesn’t merit a 400 page book and it doesn’t qualify as intellectual inquiry.

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Reader Interactions

42Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike Kay (Ding-Dong-Broder's Dead)

    March 10, 2011 at 8:08 pm

    Bobo was on Colbert last night, and it seems his novel is a brick in the rear guard attempt to rehabilitate Bush. Bobo is arguing that “gut” decisions are actually subconscious analytical choices.

    http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/376922/march-09-2011/david-brooks

  2. 2.

    BD of MN

    March 10, 2011 at 8:14 pm

    if any of the Twin Cities BJ’ers want to go heckle Bobo in person, he’s going to be here in town on the 31st…

  3. 3.

    Villago Delenda Est

    March 10, 2011 at 8:15 pm

    There is nothing that Bobo can do that qualifies as an “intellectual inquiry”.

  4. 4.

    Dave S.

    March 10, 2011 at 8:15 pm

    Strictly speaking, I think they start with the desired conclusion and work backwards to whatever premise they end up with.

  5. 5.

    BGinCHI

    March 10, 2011 at 8:16 pm

    Anyone who went to grad school knows exactly this type. They weren’t very smart, but they were sure they knew everything.

    Their ego insulated them from the kind of self-scrutiny that would have propelled them to humbler work and thought.

    And no one is surprised when they declare themselves the smartest person in the room/field/country.

  6. 6.

    liberal

    March 10, 2011 at 8:24 pm

    OT: Christ, talk about an Onion-esque headline over at TPM:

    Peter King Hearing Focuses On Whether Peter King Hearing Was A Good Idea

  7. 7.

    Veritas78

    March 10, 2011 at 8:24 pm

    Forget Bobo. Tom Friedman has gotten stinking rich doing exactly this. Which is why he is, indeed, a conservative “intellectual.”

  8. 8.

    Elvis Elvisberg

    March 10, 2011 at 8:26 pm

    Oh hey, was just reading this.

    This review reminded me of Jon Stewart’s recoiling from Chris Matthews’ book, “Life Is a Campaign.”

    Stewart summed up Matthews’ argument as follows: “What you are saying is, people can use what politicians do in political campaigns to help their lives… It strikes me as fundamentally wrong. It strikes me as a self-hurt book… a recipe for sadness.”
    Matthews: “You’re trashing my book!”
    Stewart: “I’m not trashing your book! I’m trashing your philosophy of life.”

  9. 9.

    Mike Kay (Ding-Dong-Broder's Dead)

    March 10, 2011 at 8:27 pm

    @Veritas78: no, like McCain he got rich marrying an heiress.

  10. 10.

    PurpleGirl

    March 10, 2011 at 8:28 pm

    @Veritas78: Friedman is stinking rich because he married into a family of real estate developers.

  11. 11.

    Redshift

    March 10, 2011 at 8:29 pm

    Justifying the predetermined ruling-class conclusions is the entire purpose of right-wing “think” tanks. You can be atrocious at reasoning, cherry-pick facts, tell lies that no one would let a three-year-old get away with, but the only thing that will get you kicked out is getting the answer wrong.

    The really dangerous thing is that they’ve now got a generation of people who actually believe that the policies cooked up in that hothouse environment are actually “proven” because everyone who matters agrees with them, without reference to any actual data or real-world results. This leads to a crew like the Bush Administration, who are absolutely convinced they are Right, no matter how obviously their policies crash and burn, and they’ll keep flying off that cliff (with us as passengers.)

  12. 12.

    Mike Kay (Ding-Dong-Broder's Dead)

    March 10, 2011 at 8:30 pm

    @BD of MN: that’s a great idea. Go and munch some Applebee’s take out why he’s talking. Then during the Q&A ask him, “George W Bush – great or greatest President”. And if they let you have two question, ask him, “how much does Israel pay you?”

  13. 13.

    beltane

    March 10, 2011 at 8:59 pm

    Bobo and the rest of them are not capable of performing the type of coldly objective observations of society that are necessary for writing the types of work they think they are writing. Basing a plot around an unrealistic social theory and filling it with stock actors will not make you a Mark Twain or a Charles Dickens. David Brooks is not unique in his hackery but is just another bubo in the plague that has stricken the intellectual life of our country. Where is the passion? Where is the basic curiosity about other human beings?

    I will not be reading the David Brooks book as I imagine the reviews of it, both positive and negative, are far more enlightening than the book itself.

  14. 14.

    priscianus jr

    March 10, 2011 at 9:09 pm

    They start with a premise and then they find some high-brow arguments— maybe invoking science, maybe mentioning Burke, maybe just using trendy phrases like “regulatory capture” and “confirmation bias”—in favor of the premise.

    You really nailed it. That is exactly what annoys me about most of these RW pseudo-intellectuals. They try to make it look like they’re thinking, but they’re not. And their followers don’t even know the difference.

  15. 15.

    jwb

    March 10, 2011 at 9:11 pm

    @beltane: I don’t actually think Bobo is unintelligent, which to my mind makes him even worse. Just follow any of his columns. They always start out pleasant enough. The argument at first seems reasonable and headed in a reasonable direction. At the end he suddenly wrenches it around to some astoundingly trite conclusion that he knows will satisfy his paymasters but follows in no way from the first part of his column. Basically, he is playing Lucy’s game of yanking the ball away. It’s a tiring, cynical routine, and I gave up reading him a long time ago because of it. I just don’t have time for that kind of shit.

  16. 16.

    Wile E. Quixote

    March 10, 2011 at 9:11 pm

    @BD of MN:

    He’s going to be in Seattle at Town Hall on Monday, the 21st. Are there any Seattle BJ’ers who want to join me to mock him?

  17. 17.

    Stillwater

    March 10, 2011 at 9:12 pm

    @BGinCHI: Conservatives feel their principles so strongly – with an intensity and commitment union loving liberals could only hope to ever experience – that they look on us with pity for being duped by evidence and argument.

  18. 18.

    JCT

    March 10, 2011 at 9:16 pm

    @BGinCHI: Apparently at Bobo’s alma mater they are referred to “that kid” in the core classes.

    He truly is a Bobo.

  19. 19.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    March 10, 2011 at 9:17 pm

    They start with a premise and then they find some high-brow arguments … in favor of the premise.

    I believe this is how we ended up with the Earth at the center of the Universe.

  20. 20.

    beltane

    March 10, 2011 at 9:22 pm

    @jwb: You’re right about Brooks’ intelligence. He is certainly of above-average intelligence. What I really meant to say is that he is neither creative nor honest enough to be an interesting thinker. There are no surprises in Brooks’ work as compared to someone like Chris Hitchens. Brooks is the type of affable-seeming propagandist whose role it is to masquerade as an intellectual. These types of people have always been with us and they are always soon forgotten. When David Brooks is gone from the scene he too will be forgotten.

  21. 21.

    jl

    March 10, 2011 at 9:26 pm

    I don’t have time to read the book.

    It sounds like Ecclesiasticus with interlinear footnotes for the CW maxims. The footnotes being references to a sentence or two from the discussion section of a peer reviewed paper, or published popularization, of whatever maxim is at hand.

    Erica is still living at the end of the book. Maybe in a sequel she will write a bland modern Ecclesiastes, except without the human insight or inspiring parts.

  22. 22.

    cbear

    March 10, 2011 at 9:30 pm

    Brooks is going to be in Seattle at Town Hall on Monday, the 21st.

    Say, that sounds like a wonderful opportunity to enjoy an evening of interesting and informed commentary.

    Perhaps someone can reanimate Broder’s dead ass to offer stimulating counterpoints.

  23. 23.

    jwb

    March 10, 2011 at 9:30 pm

    @beltane:

    Brooks is the type of affable-seeming propagandist whose role it is to masquerade as an intellectual. These types of people have always been with us and they are always soon forgotten. When David Brooks is gone from the scene he too will be forgotten.

    Almost a perfect definition of a pundit, methinks.

    Yes, I agree about Brooks not being at all an interesting thinker. The thing is that he is intelligent enough that he could be one if he had the discipline to follow the logic of his thought rather than pushing his words to the trite conclusion he knows he wants to reach. And personally I think his thought is irresponsibly cynical (which is one reason I can no longer read him) because I think he knows very well what the consequence of his thought actually is but chooses to take it to the trite conclusion.

  24. 24.

    justawriter

    March 10, 2011 at 9:30 pm

    I prefer PZ Myers review where he said that he could only finish the book by yelling “Die yuppie scum” at the end of every page.

  25. 25.

    befuggled

    March 10, 2011 at 9:35 pm

    Masochist.

    Brooks is single-handedly the reason I stopped reading the NY Times and the NY Times Review of Books.

  26. 26.

    beltane

    March 10, 2011 at 9:46 pm

    @justawriter: @justawriter: That’s how it ought to be done. Just by coincidence “Die Yuppie Scum” is what a yell every time I read something by Megan McArdle.

  27. 27.

    Mark S.

    March 10, 2011 at 9:47 pm

    Early on, Brooks unaccountably describes the “hunger for status, money, and applause,” as part of the conscious “outer mind.” But the outer mind isn’t his subject. His subject is the unconscious, “inner mind.” According to Brooks, the “inner mind” craves not recognition and esteem, but “harmony and connection.”

    I think people also subconsciously desire “status, money, and applause.” They subconsciously want power and affirmation, and consciously seek it through money and prestige. It’s not really a conscious desire.

    In particular, Erica’s ill-fated choice to sex a “Forbes-cover boy” is chalked up to “her old fantasy of being part of some headline-grabbing power couple.” But we are offered no thoughts on the underlying psychological mechanisms driving this sort of fantasy.

    Which is odd, since it’s supposedly a book about psychology. Isn’t it a little silly to think Erica’s decision was a result of her conscious mind weighing the pros and cons of sleeping with her boss? What about the guilt she feels afterward?

  28. 28.

    jl

    March 10, 2011 at 9:47 pm

    I will try to add a positive note for further reading, which admittedly is off the top of my head.

    Wilkinson says that Brooks is obsessed with this ‘thumos’ as a driving force behind our behavior.

    It seems to me that John Adams (the founder guy) was obsessed with a very similar idea.

    Except Adams operated in a different mode than Brooks. From the reviews I have read, Brooks blandly narrates his modern very upper middle class heaven (may be another person’s hell) and blandly uses cherry picked bits plucked from discussion sections of publications to implicitly justify it.

    Adams looked at how the idea justified his own social heaven, but also looked at the dangers and dilemmas this ‘thumos’ drive posed to a good post-enlighenment society.

    For funner reading, look at Adams’ letters in the correspondence with Jefferson.

    http://www.amazon.com/Adams-Jefferson-Letters-Complete-Correspondence-Jefferson/dp/0807842303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299811607&sr=8-1

    I probably should read this Brooks’ book, but I have read one already. And life is short. So I will go read some John Adams, who will make me pound my head against the wall just as much as reading Brooks will, but at least Adams is really trying to think things through.

  29. 29.

    alwhite

    March 10, 2011 at 9:50 pm

    Yes, there is a sin when those 400 words appear in the paper of record & then used to banish reason and logic and science.

  30. 30.

    Valdivia

    March 10, 2011 at 10:09 pm

    Fucking awesome. The hit on Mansfield in it is also a thing of beauty.
    Will forward far and wide.

  31. 31.

    Sly

    March 10, 2011 at 10:10 pm

    You know what the central hallmark of lazy writing and even lazier thinking is? When characters are invented merely to mouth the author’s philosophy and be presented to the reader as the ideal person. Bobo’s opus sort of admits this from the get-go, so I can partially forgive him for that.

    The problem is that his characters are Upper West Side boring-ass douchebags who contribute zero to the lives of others. That is his ideal person; someone who is intellectually tedious and emotionally unremarkable, who rationalize joylessness as success.

    This is possibly more nauseating than Ayn Rand having all of her characters channel her inner sociopathy. At least her ideal person fantasy was somewhat interesting, in the same way that a multi-car collision, with dismembered bodies strewn about the highway, can be called interesting.

  32. 32.

    BruceFromOhio

    March 10, 2011 at 10:37 pm

    I’m inflicting another Bobo review on your asses.

    WHY? What… what the hell have I ever, ever done to you? Is this some perverse outlet for all the whackfrackery that is going on simultaneously? It’s like hyenas run everything in this Circle of Life Death Spiral.

    Crawling back under the big, dark rock until the snow quits and the madness takes over or finally starts to burn itself out.

  33. 33.

    John Emerson

    March 10, 2011 at 10:54 pm

    Friedman is stinking rich because he married into a family of real estate developers.

    He was worth a billion, but he lost 99% or so in the crash.

    Which put him down to a measly 10 million. The poor bastard.

    If he lost 99% of that, he’d be down to 100,000. Plenty of people would be delighted with that.

    If he lost a third 99%, he’d be down to where I am.

  34. 34.

    JGabriel

    March 10, 2011 at 11:10 pm

    Doug Hill:

    This is no terrible sin when it’s done in a three-hundred word column or even in a McMegan length blog post …

    I can’t help it, I always feel pity and remorse for the printer’s ink and electrons tortured into forms that deliver Brooks & McMegan screeds. It just seems so unnecessarily cruel to our sibling chemicals and their atomic parts.

    .

  35. 35.

    Another Bob

    March 10, 2011 at 11:37 pm

    This last bit goes to my big problem with would be conservative intellectuals. They start with a premise and then they find some high-brow arguments— maybe invoking science, maybe mentioning Burke, maybe just using trendy phrases like “regulatory capture” and “confirmation bias”—in favor of the premise.

    It’s bullshit that serves the interests of certain groups. It’s basically conservative propaganda. If people like Brooks and McArdle didn’t serve it up, they would have been easily replaced by someone else who did. The main talent of people like them is knowing what’s expected of them, not being honest.

  36. 36.

    Mark S.

    March 11, 2011 at 1:21 am

    Bobo’s new column (which he mostly recycled from one he wrote a year ago) says we think we’re better than we are and that’s why we’re awash in debt:

    I wonder if the rise of consumption and debt is in part influenced by people’s desire to adorn their lives with the things they feel befit their station.

    I wonder if it has anything to do with middle class incomes being stagnant for the last thirty years.

    Our lives are given meaning by the service we supply to the nation. I wonder if Americans are unwilling to support the sacrifices that will be required to avert fiscal catastrophe in part because they are less conscious of themselves as components of a national project.

    Does this mean the richest 2% should pay 39% instead of 36%? Or does it mean Granny should start eating Fancy Feast? I’m going to guess Bobo would go with the latter.

  37. 37.

    Uloborus

    March 11, 2011 at 1:24 am

    Let me point out that Bobo is not a new phenomenon. Not even close to one. Descartes goes from ‘I want to dismiss all of my prejudices and get at the real truth’ to ‘I think therefor I am is undeniably true’ to ‘So everything that is totally obviously true must be really true’ to ‘So I’ve just proven that the rules of the Catholic church are the fundamental basis of morality and the universe’.

    If anything, he’s a throwback to a bygone age, a true philosopher for whom an argument that sounds good and convinces him is Proven.

  38. 38.

    Chuck Butcher

    March 11, 2011 at 3:34 am

    Considering what an insufferable read 400 words or so of Bobo is; the chances I’d read 400 pages are about as likely as my annointment to Sainthood. I guess I won’t be reviewing it.

  39. 39.

    Bill in PA

    March 11, 2011 at 10:45 am

    Could it be intentional that Brooks’ opening, “This is the happiest story you’ve ever read”, echoes the first sentence of Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier? Perhaps it is meant as a hint that the book is written by a classic “unreliable narrator”.

  40. 40.

    geemoney

    March 11, 2011 at 10:45 am

    “They start with a premise and then they find some high-brow arguments— maybe invoking science, maybe mentioning Burke, maybe just using trendy phrases like “regulatory capture” and “confirmation bias”—in favor of the premise.”

    @beltane and others: I think that McMegan is the worst about this. She uses words that she doesn’t understand in the hope that the reader won’t, either (go to the link below, and seach for posts about monopsony). Susan of Texas is good about it, but I always enjoyed the takedowns by Kathy G., a real economist (this is a comparison to McMegan, not SoT).

    This is also why you get crap about Burke, and the Mau Mau revolution, and all that other stuff that no one in normal life really reads much about. It’s all chaff and Chewbacca defense by these clowns.

  41. 41.

    Ailuridae

    March 11, 2011 at 12:01 pm

    They start with a premise and then they find some high-brow arguments— maybe invoking science, maybe mentioning Burke, maybe just using trendy phrases like “regulatory capture” and “confirmation bias”—in favor of the premise.

    See Kain, E.D. I doubt I will ever read Brooks book but the above is also entirely true about anything Kain wrote here on beer deregulation, bidding of government contracts constituting monopolies, etc. This essentially stinks of the same kind of tribalism that allows Ezra to pretend McMegan and Younger David Brooks to be legitimate while mocking other conservapundits that aren’t his friends.

    I know, I know, ED has found Brad Whitford so we should pretend it is OK that all of the front page posts riddled with factual errors are still uncorrected.

  42. 42.

    Batocchio

    March 11, 2011 at 1:42 pm

    Wilkinson’s much more bearable when he trashes crap from Bobo rather than arguing for wealth inequity and against raising taxes on those poor rich folks (who were paying him at the time).

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