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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / Things they do look awful c-c-cold

Things they do look awful c-c-cold

by DougJ|  November 15, 201110:44 am| 105 Comments

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

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I find the blame-the-60s-for-Sandusky garbage that neocons are pushing to be even more nauseating than the let-the-healing-begin crap. You may have seen Bobo’s piece along these lines in today’s Times, but Steve M. finds some stuff that was even more awful. Bobo on MTP:

MR. BROOKS: I don’t think it was just a Penn State problem. You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here. We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don’t have categories to put it into. They vaguely know it’s wrong, but they’ve been raised in a morality that says, “If it feels all right for you, it’s probably OK.” And so that waters everything down.

Steve M. also digs up an incoherent anti-boomer Walter Russell Mead screed that I can recommend only to the true masochists. Steve M. points out that Paterno is nearly 20 years too old to be a boomer.

There is literally nothing that these assholes won’t turn into part of the “culture war”, nothing. The Sandusky scandal and Catholic Church sex scandals both took place within the context of conservative hierarchies, how on earth do you blame it on the hippies? And it’s strange indeed that the same people who always yak about personal responsibility are so fast to absolve people of guilt as long as they see those people as ideological allies.

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Previous Post: « They Aren’t Talking About the Victims
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105Comments

  1. 1.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    November 15, 2011 at 10:47 am

    Doug, it’s ALWAYS about the Hippies. ALWAYS, FUCKING ALWAYS. There’s nothing in this country you can’t blame on hippies and get away with it seems, because Americans can’t suffer a hippie to live.

  2. 2.

    Hunter Gathers

    November 15, 2011 at 10:49 am

    To be honest, I’m surprised that they didn’t blame it all on Cadillac driving welfare queens and strapping young bucks buying t-bone steaks. But I guess blaming it on teh hippies works just as well.

  3. 3.

    Paul in KY

    November 15, 2011 at 10:49 am

    Right, like we didn’t know back in the 60s that screwing little boys (or girls) was a moral no-no. Plus, I’m sure Mr. Sandusky was a whacked out, free-love, baths-are-for-the-man, hippie freak back then.

    Edit: Don’t want to disparage any whacked out, free-love, baths-are-for-the-man, hippie freaks by seeming to suggest they are/were raging peds. Just making a snarky point.

  4. 4.

    BGinCHI

    November 15, 2011 at 10:50 am

    You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here. We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don’t have categories to put it into.

    Let me translate this from Upper Class White Douchebag for all you at BJ:

    “You know, when we gave blacks civil rights and let women have equality and tried to figure out why we were drafting poor teenagers and sending them to their deaths in foreign fields for nothing, it completely fucked the Worldview of White Men who were used to being in Absolute Control.

    And now we have to blame someone. And that someone is NOT US.”

    Fuck You David Brooks you Child Anal Raper Apologist.

  5. 5.

    schrodinger's cat

    November 15, 2011 at 10:51 am

    Bobo makes me sick with his constant excuse making for his Republican bosses. His cultural commentary is misleading at best and outright lies at its worst.

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 15, 2011 at 10:52 am

    No one in the sixties was advocating raping children in showers.

    The obtuseness and maliciousness of twits like Brooks (who overlooks the role of the 1% in all of this, and their lack of any morality at all as seen in the S&L and mortgage debacles, as usual) makes me wonder if there is any way but the tumbrel to deal with such attitudes.

  7. 7.

    Short Bus Bully

    November 15, 2011 at 10:53 am

    Shorter David Brooks for EVERYTHING: “No moral compass”

    Holy fuck what an asshole. I think, however, I reserve a greater amount of hatred for the people who READ him and like it.

    Jeebus preserve us…

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    November 15, 2011 at 10:53 am

    I’ve never had a lot of respect for Brooks; I put him with Sully in the “Totebaggers’ pet conservative/Wisest Fool in Punditdom” category. But he’s out-wanking himself with this shit (I should say I can’t bring myself to read the whole column). The whole idea that the very Jesus-y, patriarchal and yes, Republican world of college football has been infected with “Teh Sixties”– has someone pointed out to Brooks that he’s talking about Nixon to Reagan when he says “the last thirty to forty years”, or did he just trot out his crib notes from the Days of the Clenis?– is almost to funny to be despicable. Almost.

    The difference between Brooks and Newt Gingrich blaming Susan Smith on “Democrat policies” is one of tone and demeanor. Brooks isn’t given to that hateful sneer, but the same stupidity lies just beneath his sorrowful frown of concern.

  9. 9.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    November 15, 2011 at 10:53 am

    @Paul in KY:

    It doesn’t matter if he was an actual hippie, Paul, and you know this. Either 1) The hippies loose morals made everyone go mad by osmosis, or 2) He’s a “hippie” NOW (as in the kind you paint someone as in order to delegitimize everyone else to his left)

    Preferably both since that’d REALLY piss off those dirty patchouli smokers, beard smelling, dope wearers.

  10. 10.

    schrodinger's cat

    November 15, 2011 at 10:53 am

    @BGinCHI: Is he trying to say that there was no evil before the 1960s? Is he that stupid or does he thinks that his readers are that stupid?

  11. 11.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    November 15, 2011 at 10:57 am

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Both?

  12. 12.

    jonas

    November 15, 2011 at 10:57 am

    OMFG. I want to grab Brooks by the nuts and lift him up off the ground and say this two inches from his gooney little face: Do you know why there weren’t all these pedophile scandals before the 1970s? Hmmm? Because PEOPLE COVERED THEM UP AND DIDN’T TALK ABOUT IT.

    What’s next, suggesting that increasing conviction rates for whites who assault blacks is evidence that whites aren’t going to church as much as they used to? After all, before the secularists took over in the 60s, you hardly ever heard of such a thing.

  13. 13.

    BGinCHI

    November 15, 2011 at 10:57 am

    @schrodinger’s cat: I guess this is shorter Brooks:

    Hitler was an ur-Hippie. He was a painter!!

  14. 14.

    cleek

    November 15, 2011 at 10:59 am

    Brooks is simply stating the absolute core of conservatism: moral scolding based in idealized nostalgia.

    things were perfect, long ago; then we became corrupt. we should strive to be perfect again. and i can tell you exactly how we should do it.

  15. 15.

    xian

    November 15, 2011 at 10:59 am

    oh I know evil when I see it and brooks isn’t stupid. he is evil, no matter how much he tries to muddy the waters himself.

  16. 16.

    harlana

    November 15, 2011 at 11:00 am

    Really, I think Brooks has crossed the line on this one. If anything, liberals have done more to advance the causes of victims of sexual abuse, children and adults, than any other group of people, IMO. It has become very clear, at least in part because of their advocacy, that we no longer tolerate this sort of behavior in society as a whole. And let’s face it, the perps usually end up being sick, twisted right-wingers.

    This is just unconscionable. He should be journalistically drawn and quartered for this. Of course, it won’t happen, but, personally, he is no longer just vacuous buffoon to me, he’s evil.

  17. 17.

    JPL

    November 15, 2011 at 11:00 am

    Where is St Ronny in all of this? Didn’t he start the it’s me, me, me mantra?
    Sandusky is a monster and he alone is responsible for his actions, just as Paterno and the others are for their decision to cover-up the abuse. The hippies didn’t make them do it. Brooks needs a time out from writing his column.

  18. 18.

    The Moar You Know

    November 15, 2011 at 11:01 am

    I have developed a grudging admiration for Bobo. His schtick is so transparently obvious and yet he pulls it off every damn time.

  19. 19.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 15, 2011 at 11:01 am

    @BGinCHI:

    Hitler was an ur-Hippie. He was a painter!!

    “Hitler… there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in ONE afternoon! TWO coats!”

  20. 20.

    JGabriel

    November 15, 2011 at 11:02 am

    David Brooks on MTP (via SteveM):

    We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like [a sixty year old children’s mentor and former coach anally raping a ten year old boy], they don’t have categories to put it into. They vaguely know it’s wrong …

    Gosh, it’s amazing how quickly the vagueness turns to clarity when you substitute an accurate description for “that”. Of course, such clarity undercuts Brooks’ apologia — making this another stellar example of Brooks using Orwell’s Politics and the English Language as a guidebook rather than a prescription.

    .

  21. 21.

    BGinCHI

    November 15, 2011 at 11:03 am

    It’s a smooth rhetorical move, really, that Brooks can add Fuck the Children to his Fuck the Poor ideology.

    Man, that quote really wound me up. Jesus.

  22. 22.

    gogol's wife

    November 15, 2011 at 11:04 am

    @xian:

    Just what I planned to say.

  23. 23.

    harlana

    November 15, 2011 at 11:05 am

    Sandusky was a hippie? Who knew?

  24. 24.

    Hill Dweller

    November 15, 2011 at 11:06 am

    I’ll stipulate violence ultimately solves nothing, but every time I see/read/hear Brooks and/or Gregory, I want to knock their teeth down their f’n throats.

  25. 25.

    PeakVT

    November 15, 2011 at 11:06 am

    We have lost our clear sense of what evil is

    I’m pretty clear on right-wing hacks being evil.

  26. 26.

    harlana

    November 15, 2011 at 11:08 am

    @Hill Dweller: We’re moving into baseball bat territory here, IMO.

  27. 27.

    Special Patrol Group

    November 15, 2011 at 11:10 am

    Elitist Fuckkhead David Brooks is found soft pedaling Right Wing Talking Points? You don’t say.

  28. 28.

    JGabriel

    November 15, 2011 at 11:15 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Brooks isn’t given to that hateful sneer, but the same stupidity lies just beneath his sorrowful frown of concern.

    I think you’re confusing “stupidity” with “sociopathic blame-shifting and inhuman lack of emotional response” but that’s an admittedly fine distinction, plus, it doesn’t really roll off the tongue as trippingly.

    .

  29. 29.

    harlana

    November 15, 2011 at 11:15 am

    soooo, let’s take this thing to the next level, i think we know where this is going:

    OWS = 60’s hippies
    60’s hippies created pedophilia
    Don’t blame Sandusky and his enablers, blame OWS

    Next on Fox.

  30. 30.

    MarkJ

    November 15, 2011 at 11:20 am

    He’s basically saying that the Catholic church’s moral compass was so weak that it could be affected by the mild magnetic pull of the hippies. I would have thought it would take sterner stuff than a bunch of left wingers to tilt their moral compass away from true Jesus.

    It’s kind of funny how hippies are wimps who should be laughed at and mocked, but at the same time have the ability to exert insidious and powerful control over longstanding conservative institutions. I see a logical contradiction there but then I don’t have Brooks deep intellect and insight into human nature.

  31. 31.

    Death Panel Truck

    November 15, 2011 at 11:20 am

    They vaguely know it’s wrong, but they’ve been raised in a morality that says, “If it feels all right for you, it’s probably OK.”

    Who the fuck are “they”?

    Can’t anyone explain to this asshole that 99.9999999 percent of Americans DON’T FUCKING RAPE CHILDREN?

  32. 32.

    schrodinger's cat

    November 15, 2011 at 11:21 am

    @BGinCHI: By that logic Bobo is a hippie too, he is a writer.

  33. 33.

    Social Outcast

    November 15, 2011 at 11:23 am

    Predictable nonsense. Paterno isn’t a baby boomer. He’s from the Greatest Generation. So storming the beaches at Normandy apparently turned the Greatest Generation into boy fondlers, or something.

  34. 34.

    BGinCHI

    November 15, 2011 at 11:24 am

    @schrodinger’s cat: I’d refer to his status as:

    Unemployed, but gets paid by idiots to give his opinion on things he doesn’t understand.

  35. 35.

    Roy G.

    November 15, 2011 at 11:27 am

    I think it’s pretty hard to find a profession that is less liberal, more authoritarian, and more anti-hippie than football coach. This is absurd on its face, and Bobo knows less about football as he does about the Applebee’s salad bar.

    “We have lost our clear sense of what evil is…”

    He did nail it with this one, though he didn’t realize he was only speaking for himself, the 20% batshit right and the turd in his pocket.

  36. 36.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 15, 2011 at 11:28 am

    @MarkJ:

    The hippies are the unchallenged masters of the Jedi mind trick.

  37. 37.

    huckster

    November 15, 2011 at 11:31 am

    We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don’t have categories to put it into. They vaguely know it’s wrong, but they’ve been raised in a morality that says, “If it feels all right for you, it’s probably OK.”

    Who the fuck is he talking about exactly? Himself?

  38. 38.

    cmorenc

    November 15, 2011 at 11:32 am

    My only regret about the 60s was that the hippies and even a large portion of the activists stayed too stoned most of the time to succeed in reaching the critical mass of transformation of our society. There were also way too many along for the ride as a way to continuously party. Also too there was that Vietnam war thing, where the left made the fundamental mistake of vilifying and detesting the returning soldiers, instead of recognizing that a strong majority of them were just as disillusioned and burnt-out on the war when they came back to the US, and giving them a warm and sympathetic welcome. IMHO it was that more than anything else which repelled the ordinary middle class from the left (and the DFH) and created just enough of an opening for the Nixon-led GOOPers to combine enough of them with the racist southerners he picked up with the “southern strategy” to make the culture wars a viable strategy against the left and more progressive dems for several decades to follow.

  39. 39.

    Comrade Dread

    November 15, 2011 at 11:33 am

    The Sandusky scandal and Catholic Church sex scandals both took place within the context of conservative hierarchies, how on earth do you blame it on the hippies?

    Communist infiltrators. No doubt they fluoridated the Holy water and the water used on the sidelines at the games.

  40. 40.

    gnomedad

    November 15, 2011 at 11:35 am

    @cleek:

    Brooks is simply stating the absolute core of conservatism: moral scolding based in idealized nostalgia.

    Nailed it.

  41. 41.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 15, 2011 at 11:35 am

    @Comrade Dread:

    Aha! Tampering with our precious bodily fluids! I knew there had to be a simple explanation for all this!

  42. 42.

    Slugger

    November 15, 2011 at 11:37 am

    I want to unburden myself of my complicity in this evil. Yes, I smoked a doobie in 1967 while listening to a Vanilla Fudge album. All the subsequent evils of the world are my fault.

  43. 43.

    slag

    November 15, 2011 at 11:40 am

    You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here. We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don’t have categories to put it into.

    Wow. That’s some depraved stuff…even coming from Brooks.

    While he does have a point that there do seem to be an awful lot of people running around not knowing right from wrong, none of them are hippies as far as I can tell. And Brooks’s statement is just another example of how morally bankrupt these people are. The fact that they have to say to themselves, “Should I rape this child? I don’t know; let me consult my texts,” is far and away more disturbing than anything those cop car-shitting hippies have done in my lifetime.

    Just grotesque. Some will disagree, but I’m going to put this right up there with “Suck on this” when it comes to stupid shit NYT columnists have said on the teevee.

  44. 44.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 15, 2011 at 11:48 am

    @Slugger:

    OK, obviously it was that combination, and not listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that precipitated the Watergate break in and coverup, Ford’s pardon of Nixon, and the election of the shitty grade Z movie star in 1980.

    Please go sit in the corner for a half hour in penance.

  45. 45.

    slag

    November 15, 2011 at 11:51 am

    @harlana: You’re exactly right. That’s exactly where this is going, if it hasn’t gone there already in some circles. Susan Smith was a communist plot.

    I can’t believe some of us grew up surrounded by people who believed this shit. It’s a wonder we survived.

  46. 46.

    jayjaybear

    November 15, 2011 at 11:54 am

    @MarkJ: It’s like how teh geyz are weak-willed, morally-compromised, physically-weak pushovers who nevertheless will completely destroy Western Civilization if left unchecked. Not to mention lure morally-upright, physically-strong, religiously-committed Christians into the immoral “gay” lifestyle.

    Or how non-Christian religions can completely destroy Christianity just by being acknowledged as existing. Their faith isn’t terribly strong…

  47. 47.

    Lee

    November 15, 2011 at 11:54 am

    Wonder why Brooks is making excuses for this?

    Maybe he likes raping boys.

    It would be irresponsible not to ask….

  48. 48.

    catclub

    November 15, 2011 at 11:56 am

    @MarkJ: “It’s kind of funny how hippies are wimps who should be laughed at and mocked, but at the same time have the ability to exert insidious and powerful control over longstanding conservative institutions.”

    Just like Obama is mocked as a hapless wimp who can barely read off a teleprompter, yet is also ruthlessly efficient at sabotaging all of our sacred institutions.

  49. 49.

    slag

    November 15, 2011 at 11:56 am

    @jayjaybear: I blame Carter-Carmichael Obama.

    Edit: *Shakes fist at catclub*

  50. 50.

    GregB

    November 15, 2011 at 11:56 am

    Surely Brooks is including all of the beltway and political monsters who went through great efforts to morally relativaize away the stigma of torture back during the Bush Era.

  51. 51.

    harlana

    November 15, 2011 at 12:01 pm

    @slag: i have to admit, the mental gymnastics involved are rather stunning

  52. 52.

    harlana

    November 15, 2011 at 12:03 pm

    @Slugger:

    I want to unburden myself of my complicity in this evil. Yes, I smoked a doobie in 1967 while listening to a Vanilla Fudge album. All the subsequent evils of the world are my fault.

    I sentence you to an entire day of Fox News with your eyes wired open! Who knows, you might even find redemption through osmosis!

  53. 53.

    DFH no.6

    November 15, 2011 at 12:03 pm

    They (rightwing mouthpieces, like Brooks) do this because it works, sad to say.

    Fighting against the alleged moral depravity of the cultural changes of the sixties (shorthand: hippies) has been a winning strategy for the right since, well, the sixties.

    Jerry Sandusky is thus a golden opportunity for them.

    Of course what Brooks said in regards to Sandusky is absurd on its face: “They vaguely know it’s wrong, but they’ve been raised in a morality that says, ‘if it feels all right for you, it’s probably OK’”.

    Right. Jerry Sandusky grew up in the forties and fifties in a small town in Pennsylvania, grandson of Polish immigrants, played football at Penn State in the mid-sixites, and went immediately into coaching when he graduated.

    Anyone believe he was “raised in a morality that says, ‘if it feels all right for you, it’s probably OK”?

    Didn’t think so. Far more likely the polar opposite.

    But it won’t stop the fascists from scoring culture war points with “Jerry Sandusky, football coach pedophile = liberal sixties, sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll”.

    Millions upon millions of my fellow countrymen will believe it (I work every day with a few dozen of them).

  54. 54.

    Downpuppy

    November 15, 2011 at 12:04 pm

    @huckster: Of course Brooks is talking about himself. The best summary of his entire career I’ve ever seen is right there:

    Some people suffer from Motivated Blindness; they don’t see what is not in their interest to see.

  55. 55.

    Suffern ACE

    November 15, 2011 at 12:04 pm

    Hmmm. I didn’t realize that Sandusky was a such a great man. Usually when Brooks runs out the blame the plebs for being so lax in their moral clarity, it’s to defend much bigger fish than that, or to take a swipe at public benefits.

  56. 56.

    300baud

    November 15, 2011 at 12:06 pm

    Bobo writes:

    We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don’t have categories to put it into.

    Well, that is actually true. I think Brooks (and much of the right commentariat) has no clear sense of what evil is. All that toadying to power just wears a fella out. If torture has suddenly become good, then it’s totally understandable that Brooks would have to stop and think about whether child rape was a good idea or not.

  57. 57.

    Satanicpanic

    November 15, 2011 at 12:08 pm

    What surprises me most is that Brooks has never been found showering after hours with a 10 year old.

  58. 58.

    harlana

    November 15, 2011 at 12:09 pm

    @slag: Interesting that Smith’s stepfather, a non-hippie who molested her as a child, was a prominent republican and Christian Coalition leader, ain’t it?

  59. 59.

    Bullsmith

    November 15, 2011 at 12:15 pm

    So all those Catholic priests had no place to turn for moral guidance other than asking the Hippies? No institution or book to provide a moral code?

    Jesus H. Christ that is a morally depraved argument Bobo is making.

  60. 60.

    Comrade Dread

    November 15, 2011 at 12:17 pm

    Does this guy even read his own columns?

    But we’re not Puritans anymore. We live in a society oriented around our inner wonderfulness. So when something atrocious happens, people look for some artificial, outside force that must have caused it — like the culture of college football, or some other favorite bogey.

    Except, it’s totally the fault of the 60s, am I right, people?

    You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here. We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don’t have categories to put it into

  61. 61.

    Nutella

    November 15, 2011 at 12:20 pm

    @DFH no.6:

    Yes, dividing the 99% works very, very well. It works with this culture war tripe from Brooks and is also extremely effective in creating inter-generational conflict to distract us from what the 1% are up to.

  62. 62.

    Brachiator

    November 15, 2011 at 12:24 pm

    @harlana:

    Really, I think Brooks has crossed the line on this one. If anything, liberals have done more to advance the causes of victims of sexual abuse, children and adults, than any other group of people, IMO. It has become very clear, at least in part because of their advocacy, that we no longer tolerate this sort of behavior in society as a whole.

    Much of this is true.

    And let’s face it, the perps usually end up being sick, twisted right-wingers.

    On the other hand, I don’t think this is true at all. Depravity in human beings has got absolutely nothing to do with political ideology.

    MR. BROOKS: I don’t think it was just a Penn State problem. You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here. We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don’t have categories to put it into.

    Hmm. So, would Brooks want to blame “moral relativism” for the conservative’s inability to recognize waterboarding as torture?

    I hate these people with every fiber of my being.

  63. 63.

    slag

    November 15, 2011 at 12:30 pm

    @harlana: If only we could make repression a mortal sin.

  64. 64.

    j

    November 15, 2011 at 12:31 pm

    He’s (partially) right. Go back “30 – 40 years” and you gt to Nixon and his “It’s never illegal if the president does it” mind-set. Followed by Jerry Ford and his “IOKIYAR” edict.

    The wholesale “the rich and powerful aren’t like you and me” idea came to a head under Reagan’s “Greed is good” mantra.

    We have been told all these years that the ends justify the means, and if you are either rich or powerful (or both) you can get away with pretty much anything. See: Wall Street banksters, among other examples.

    Who knew that Nixon, Ford and Reagan were all “hippies” who caused these messes today?

  65. 65.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 15, 2011 at 12:31 pm

    @Comrade Dread:

    You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here. We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don’t have categories to put it into

    Richard Milhous Nixon.

    Gerald Rudolph Ford.

    Ronald Wilson Reagan.

    George Herbert Walker Bush.

    George Walker Bush.

    The past 30-40 years.

    Prime examples of those who made it their fucking business to ‘muddy the waters’ to make it easier for themselves and their cronies to gain at the zero sum expense of others.

  66. 66.

    Unsympathetic

    November 15, 2011 at 12:35 pm

    There’s only one possible reason why Bobo’s column is so indecipherable: David Brooks is a pedophile. Pedophiles are the only group of people for whom Sandusky’s actions “seems OK.”

    I’ve read that column more than once, and the whole thing is gut-wrenchingly revolting. Trying to blame the failure of Sandusky and his higher-ups on.. hippies? Are you kidding me?

  67. 67.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 15, 2011 at 12:37 pm

    @Unsympathetic:

    You’re assuming that Brooks ever had a moral compass.

    I can find no evidence this was ever true.

  68. 68.

    shortstop

    November 15, 2011 at 12:39 pm

    @BGinCHI: Yeah, but even more it’s: “This is what you get when you say consenting adults of the same sex should be able to knock boots. Or, for that matter, that anyone should be able to have sex outside of marriage and in any way that doesn’t at least leave open the possibility of pregnancy.”

    A lot of assholes are grumbling about the sexual revolution in general having caused this, and others are outright conflating homosexuality with pedophilia, which of course serves their anti-gay agenda. Cowardly bigot Brooks is just wink-wink-nudge-nudging his approval of that view without coming right out and saying it.

  69. 69.

    ellenbrenna

    November 15, 2011 at 12:42 pm

    Oh, the staff at Penn State knew what evil was and it was anything that made Penn State look bad.

    Brooks loves hierarchies of all flavors so he needs to find something else to blame besides a male-dominated hierarchy that patted itself on the back for its own righteousness on a pretty regular basis and was more interested in its own reputation than anything approaching justice.

  70. 70.

    BGinCHI

    November 15, 2011 at 12:43 pm

    @shortstop: When people bitch about education, they shouldn’t reference crumbling urban schools. They should show a picture of David Brooks, then list the prominent schools he attended. Then they should detail his fucking giant stupidity. Then they can start trying to figure out why education is so hard.

  71. 71.

    Paul in KY

    November 15, 2011 at 12:45 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est: ‘You don’t have any drugs’ (with appropriate hand motions)

    ‘I will give you those that I have confiscated’

    That’s how they always have weed, without having any money!

  72. 72.

    Paul in KY

    November 15, 2011 at 12:48 pm

    @The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik: I’m pretty damn sure he would have self-identified as a hippie stomper back then (and now).

  73. 73.

    Paul in KY

    November 15, 2011 at 12:51 pm

    @Slugger: But did you eat any vanilla fudge, man? Cause that’s when you know you’re smoking the kill.

  74. 74.

    shortstop

    November 15, 2011 at 12:55 pm

    @BGinCHI: Speaking of pregnancy, how’s it coming along?

  75. 75.

    Petorado

    November 15, 2011 at 1:03 pm

    Brooks’ screed is a variant of his “conservatism does not fail, it can only be failed” schtick. Our overlords are where they are because of their superior moral rectitude, work ethic, lack of skin pigmentation, and intelligence.

    When righteous ubermensch like Paterno are brought down, there has to be something pulling them away from their conservative moral compass. This moral weakness is brought on by their not seeing others gravely punished by a harshly punitive state enforcing strict moral codes in the name of some god, and from an environment where people have the actual freedom to make choices rather than having a small, but ruthlessly strict, daddy state dictating what the public can and cannot do.

    Hippies do not believe in the freedom-crushing daddy state, so any temptation that pulls down our betters into some moral cesspool is purely the fault of an insufficiently punished lower class that temps the elites with our evil ways.

  76. 76.

    j

    November 15, 2011 at 1:03 pm

    @cmorenc: I HOPE you aren’t alluding to “dirty hippies spitting on returning soldiers”.

    Because THAT NEVER HAPPENED! The first mention of it was during the 1980 GOP primary races when one of Reagan’s aides used it as a metaphor and the right wing ran with it to the point of it becoming an urban legend.

    A Lexis/Nexis search of every news outlet (print and broadcast) from 1965 to 1975 showed NO mention of any returning soldier ever being spat upon, and NO police report has ever surfaced alleging the charge.

    http://www.amazon.com/Spitting-Image-Memory-Legacy-Vietnam/dp/0814751474

  77. 77.

    28 Percent

    November 15, 2011 at 1:05 pm

    I like it that he’s lamenting moral blindness in an attempt to change the subject away from the investigation of a serious moral failing.

    That belongs in a Heller novel, that does.

  78. 78.

    Scott, PhD

    November 15, 2011 at 1:18 pm

    I hate Brooks’ boner for social sciences generally and psychology specifically, especially as someone with a (pending) doctorate in Developmental Psychology. But of all the columns Brooks has written in which he decontextualizes, distorts, or otherwise mangles science this one takes the cake. First off, the connection between the studies he cites and failing to report child rape is tenuous at best. Second, he makes the abhorrent mistake of confusing explanation for absolution. When Milgram found that people would give a lethal shock to someone on the orders of an authority figure, it wasn’t meant to excuse the crimes people commit under orders from a superior- it was meant to deconstruct and understand why otherwise good people do bad things, knowledge that could be used to prevent such atrocities in the future. When Zimbardo found in the Stanford Prison study that power has an incredible corrupting influence, it wasn’t meant to give the OK to the abuse of prisoners by guards- it was meant to see how it occurs, knowledge that could be used to put safeguards in place in prisons and other situations where there is authority over a vulnerable population. And the studies Brooks mentions- and all the other studies on the Bystander Effect, Diffusion of Responsibility, and similar findings- shows why people behave as less than their best, most upstanding selves in some situations. It doesn’t excuse the behavior.

    To the point- if everyone would commit an incredible moral failing in similar circumstances, it doesn’t make it any less of a moral failing. If- (in part) because of all the mangled science on display in the column- I failed to go to police when I saw or heard about a child being raped in the shower, my failure would be just as big as it is for those involved at Penn State. The ability to explain such execrable behavior does not scrub the stink off such (in)action.

    David Brooks has offended me intellectually, but he’s never been so morally offensive and abhorrent as here. His hard-on for psychology has gotten in the way of a cogent argument before, but never has it caused his moral compass to spin so wildly. I hope he resigns his column over this shit, and shame on the Times for not kicking the column back to him before it went to press.

  79. 79.

    ciotog

    November 15, 2011 at 1:19 pm

    @Brachiator: Oh, I disagree. I think patriarchal, hierarchical, authoritarian people and institutions are far more likely to be involved in sexual assault of all kinds. I am convinced that there are a lot more (conservative) Mormons sexually assaulting kids than there are Unitarians, and a lot more (conservative) Orthodox Jews than Reform Jews. In settings where women and children are less empowered, it’s inevitable. That sexual assault is widespread refelects how widespread patriarchy is, but some institutions at least try to defang it.

  80. 80.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 15, 2011 at 1:23 pm

    @j:

    The reality is, WWII vets (particularly the REMF types) were far more likely to spit on GIs returning from Vietnam than hippies were.

  81. 81.

    j

    November 15, 2011 at 1:26 pm

    @Brachiator: Google “REPUBLICAN PEDOPHILIA”. You will get several lists am mile long.

    It’s all just a part of the republican authoritarian personality. They are convinced that they are always right (even when they KNOW they are wrong) because any admission to being wrong about anything opens the door to them being wrong about everything else.

    Republicans are all sociopaths. It’s in their DNA.

  82. 82.

    j

    November 15, 2011 at 1:37 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est: REMF as in wingnut extraordinaire Pat Sajak, who parlayed his Nam experience (DJ in an air-conditioned Saigon radio station) into an opportunity to write for the “National Review Online” and other right wing puke pages?

    Oh, I guess so.

  83. 83.

    Culture of Truth

    November 15, 2011 at 1:45 pm

    Yeah I caught that liveblogging Meet The Press. EJ Dionne was like, really Bobo, “if it feels good do it” applies to committing and covering up child rape? Really? Bobo was like, um yeah cause.. Kitty Genovese!!

  84. 84.

    befuggled

    November 15, 2011 at 1:54 pm

    @Brachiator: I disagree. I strongly suspect you’d find pedophiles to be more highly represented among right-wing figures than among other ideologies.

    Why? Because right-wing figures are very likely to be authoritarian and have a place in an authoritarian hierarchy. Pedophiles can take advantage of the authoritarian hierarchy to find victims and to cover up their crimes. So regardless of any other inclinations they have they would be drawn to right-wing ideology.

  85. 85.

    ppcli

    November 15, 2011 at 1:55 pm

    Jesus Christ. This isn’t quite as sleazy and preposterous as blaming the corruption of the JP II – Benedict church on hippies, but it is getting there.
    A clue for Brooks et al:

    A) Joe Paterno was 40 years old in the 1960s. He was born in 1926.

    B) Paterno was no hippie. In fact, he was a David Brooks kind of guy – a friend and enthusiastic supporter of Bush I. Gerald Ford too. Made a speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention. The “party of personal responsibility” strikes again.

    C) I have no idea what Sandusky’s politics were, but the fact that Rick Santorum sponsored him for a congressional award gives a hint. Sandusky (born 1944) was also not a baby boomer.

    D) Spare us the vague, meaningless gestures at “muddying the moral waters”. The issues of child molestation, rape, and abuse have become far more starkly defined in the last 40 years. Read a conservative – or even a liberal – child rearing manual, or discussion of the laws of rape from forty years ago and you will be astonished at what you find. If you are denying that then you are lying or stupid. And I don’t think you’re stupid. We now appreciate how widespread child sexual abuse is, and how damaging it is, in a way that *previous* generations were blind to. If you are claiming that current culture views child abuse and rape with less contempt and moral outrage than previous generations then you are stupid or lying. I don’t think you’re stupid.

    The problem with Brooks, unlike the crasser conservatives like Hannity, is that he knows exactly what he is doing, he knows it is flatly dishonest, and he does it anyway. If it were not for the “muddying of the moral waters” that the contemporary Republican party not only encourages but even celebrates, he might be capable of shame over it.

  86. 86.

    Brachiator

    November 15, 2011 at 2:00 pm

    @ciotog:

    Oh, I disagree. I think patriarchal, hierarchical, authoritarian people and institutions are far more likely to be involved in sexual assault of all kinds.

    This is a reversal of the old nonsense that poor people, or nonwhites, or (insert group that you don’t like) inherently more criminal than (insert name of group that you like).

    And a nontrivial example. The wonderfully talented graphics artist Phoebe produced two excoriating graphic works, A Child’s Life and Other Stories, and The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures, much based on her life growing up among artists and related types in San Francisco during the 60s and 70s. One thing that she clearly delineates is the sick sexual exploitation of young girls (and boys) by the worst of hippies and hangers on. She even suggests that her mother turned a blind eye to her daughter’s abuse at the hands of boyfriends and stepfathers.

    And yet a lot of liberal types fell all over themselves to minimize and discredit some of this material, or to downplay it as artistic license.

    It’s a dumb, reductive, stupid stereotype that it is only repression of desire, especially by the overly religious, that leads to abuse. This lie persists much more among the general public than it does in any professional community.

    The sad fact is that amorality and depravity are part of the human condition.

    @j:

    It’s all just a part of the republican authoritarian personality. …Republicans are all sociopaths. It’s in their DNA.

    While this may be useful as ideological cheerleading, it is factually and logically nonsense.

    Ironically, it also feeds into the nonsense of the Bobos that liberals replace morality with psychology and pseudo-science. If Republicans are sociopaths, then they are not responsible for what they do, and are only the way they are because they are off their medication.

  87. 87.

    Petorado

    November 15, 2011 at 2:03 pm

    @ Culture of Truth

    Thanks for Genovese reminder. Since this Penn State think started, I haven’t been able to get this Phil Ochs song out of my head – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulTmmTIlM_o. Change a few words like “Monopoly” to “football” and the song synchs up perfectly with today’s news, though not in the ways Bobo suggests.

  88. 88.

    Brachiator

    November 15, 2011 at 2:15 pm

    @befuggled:

    I disagree. I strongly suspect you’d find pedophiles to be more highly represented among right-wing figures than among other ideologies.

    Sadly, it is just not this simple. This kind of thing comes close to sounding like fairy tales about the right wing. I wonder sometimes if sentiments like this leads to crap tv like Dexter, which often seeks to domesticate and sanitize serial killers.

    One of the most notorious pedophiles was the Belgian Marc Dutroux.

    Marc Dutroux is a Belgian serial killer and child molester, convicted of having kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six girls during 1995 and 1996, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom he murdered. He was also convicted of having killed a suspected former accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, later proved insane. He was arrested in 1996 and has been in prison ever since. His widely publicised trial took place in 2004. A number of shortcomings in the Dutroux investigation caused widespread discontent in Belgium with the country’s criminal justice system, and the ensuing scandal was one of the reasons for the reorganisation of Belgium’s law enforcement agencies.

    Dutroux was an unemployed electrician. It is hard to find any ideological baggage in this piece of trash. His crimes and the residue was so huge that it left this odd legacy.

    The Dutroux case is so infamous that more than a third of Belgians with the surname “Dutroux” applied to have their name changed between 1996 and 1998.

    I wonder if Sandusky got away with his stuff for so long in part because people just don’t understand, or want to understand, how terrible human beings can be, and instead want to apply simplistic formulas and rationales to a very complex issue.

  89. 89.

    slag

    November 15, 2011 at 2:18 pm

    @Scott, PhD: Thank you! I wish I could think that Brooks’ reputation will be irremediably damaged by this column (esp among so-called liberals), but I am not nearly so optimistic. History is a harsh mistress.

  90. 90.

    befuggled

    November 15, 2011 at 2:33 pm

    @Brachiator: You didn’t address my point. I don’t think it has anything to do with the ideology per se. I think it has to do with the ability to control victims and protect themselves.

    Let’s look at Sandusky’s case. Sandusky clearly benefitted from being part of a conservative hierarchy. He was apparently allowed to retire quietly despite being a suspected pedophile. He seems to have used his authority as a coach and as a former coach in order to go into public schools and find victims without any questions by school officials. When Victim 1’s mother initially complained, officials tried to discourage her from bringing a complaint.

    I hardly need to point out the benefits that pedophiles in the Catholic church received from being part of the church hierarchy.

    Does this mean that all pedophiles are right-wingers? Of course not. Could he do this in a more liberal environment? Of course, but it would have offered fewer opportunities for control and coverup.

  91. 91.

    j

    November 15, 2011 at 2:38 pm

    @Brachiator: Au contraire, mon frere. It has been well established that people with the “authoritarian personality disorder” gravitate toward rigidly structured political parties such as the Tories and GOP. The first studies were done in England, starting in the 1970s and duplicated here over a period of several years.

    Look up the “authoritarian personality traits” chart and you will see that they have an unusual fixation on other peoples’ sex lives, while ignoring their own kinds similar behavior. (IOKIYAR).

    They tend to emphasize ideological purity over all else, ALMOST TO THE POINT OF IT BEING A FETISH.

    AND, THEY ARE never WRONG about ANYTHING! (to the point of rewriting history. – Remember when that wingnut accused the Democrats of “living in the reality based world while we (the GOP) create our own reality”?)

    John Dean has a well written and well sourced take on the GOP authoritarian personality complex:

    http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070905.html

  92. 92.

    ciotog

    November 15, 2011 at 2:41 pm

    @Brachiator: I stand by my point that human depravity is much more likely to be brought out by certain human contexts. Unfortunately there was a brief period, coterminous with the sexual revolution, when some liberal/radical types thought it might be okay to have sexual contact with children if the child seemed okay with it. It didn’t last very long. Certainly not as long as, say, institutional abuse of Irish children by the Catholic Church and State. Men who respect the equality of women and children don’t rape. Conservatives are far less likely to fit into that category, ideologically.

  93. 93.

    El Cid

    November 15, 2011 at 2:48 pm

    Ever since all those ‘free thought’ and ‘free love’ types started their whinings in the late 1700s, everyone knew it’d be a straight line right to Greenwich Village with Max Eastman and German Euro-trash hipster chick Emma Goldman embracing non-marriage relations, homosexuality, even contraception!

    One you have Emma Goldman running her mouth about letting people stand in the way of God’s semenly work, how is David Brooks going to know the difference between proper classical Greek tribal transitional paiderastia and anarchic, hippie-demoralized licentiousness?

  94. 94.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 15, 2011 at 2:51 pm

    @El Cid:

    Oh, according to Michelle “My husband is not gay, dammit!” Bachmann, the rot set in during the Renaissance.

  95. 95.

    sherparick

    November 15, 2011 at 2:52 pm

    First, with an upcoming an election, I think one should never underestimate a certain element of hackery here. Remember, Obama and the Democrats represent the “sixites,” and the “sixties” means child pedophilia, heh, “if it feels good do it”, so a vote for Obama is kinda a vote for child pedophilia. The culture wars serve a useful purpose of always ratching the taxes of the upper .1% down.

    Second, what struck me about Brooks, if he is not simply being dishonest, is for one who poses as such a deep intellectual, he here displays such a deep historical ignorance and total lack of historical imagination. He remembers the sixties the way he experienced it, as small child listening to ads on TV. And he confuses non-reporting with non-existence. There was plenty of evil that people looked the other way if not participated with in glee in pre-1965 America. http://www.americanlynching.com/pic3.htm

  96. 96.

    j

    November 15, 2011 at 2:56 pm

    @Culture of Truth: And of course BoBo used an urban myth to back up his case. The urban legend of 38 people watching Kitty Genovese get murdered and doing nothing because they “didn’t want to get involved”. At least 14 people called the cops but because of the architecture of the buildings they couldn’t pinpoint the exact location of the screams; and the police made it a low priority call because they thought it was just another hooker getting beat up.

    http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=17301

    Another urban legend turned into another GOP zombie lie because it fits their authoritarian narrative.

  97. 97.

    El Cid

    November 15, 2011 at 3:11 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est: Actually, I blame writing, because placing all those thoughts there on print for just anyone to see and read and think is just opening the barn door wide.

    There was good reason why things were better off when our patriarchs could be trusted to tell us what God said and thought of us.

    Once you go down that slippery road of thinking you can pick your own apples, you might as well go ahead and listen to what your wife says instead of just her doing what you say, put clothes on and not let God watch you fuck anymore.

  98. 98.

    El Cid

    November 15, 2011 at 3:18 pm

    @sherparick:

    what struck me about Brooks, if he is not simply being dishonest, is for one who poses as such a deep intellectual, he here displays such a deep historical ignorance and total lack of historical imagination. He remembers the sixties the way he experienced it, as small child listening to ads on TV.

    I think you’re coming to grips with what the conservative movement thinks “intellectual rigor” means.

    This sort of inane yet inordinately pompous and non-rigorous pseudo-intellectualizing is proper intellectualism to them — actual intellectualism is repellent.

    In both senses — they find it repels them, and to them intellectualism in its basic sense is an annoying and often toxic substance which makes their work and gatherings difficult.

    No one ever stops and looks at picnics from the point of view of the mosquitoes.

  99. 99.

    Surly Duff

    November 15, 2011 at 3:29 pm

    @Scott, PhD:

    I hate Brooks’ boner for social sciences generally and psychology specifically, especially as someone with a (pending) doctorate in Developmental Psychology.

    Don’t blame the social sciences, blame Brook’s inability to discern the truths from any scientific study. That man has a phenomenal ability to either misinterperet or (more likely) misunderstand any fact presented to him.

  100. 100.

    Brachiator

    November 15, 2011 at 3:31 pm

    @befuggled:

    Let’s look at Sandusky’s case. Sandusky clearly benefitted from being part of a conservative hierarchy.

    This case is still unfolding. But Sandusky clearly benefited from the charitable foundation he set up, which gave him ready access to kids. And the grand jury testimony notes that he took children to hotels and also had some of them sleep in a basement room at his house, where he allegedly molested them.n The association with Penn State was one aspect of a larger crime.

    @j:

    Au contraire, mon frere. It has been well established that people with the “authoritarian personality disorder” gravitate toward rigidly structured political parties such as the Tories and GOP.

    The issue of pedophilia and other crimes obviously have been going on longer, and in more areas, than has anything to do with 1970s English studies.

    @ciotog:

    Unfortunately there was a brief period, coterminous with the sexual revolution, when some liberal/radical types thought it might be okay to have sexual contact with children if the child seemed okay with it.

    What? WTF? “Sexual contact?”

    Men who respect the equality of women and children don’t rape.

    Many sexual crimes are related to a compulsion. Issues of respect or equality are absolutely irrelevant.

    A poster mentioned the sad, terrible case of Kitty Genovese. Her killer was likely a necrophile. The details of his confession are horrific.

    His motive for the attack was simply “to kill a woman.” Moseley preferred to kill women because, he said, “they were easier and didn’t fight back”.

    Mosely had a wife, whom he left sleeping at home while he searched for prey.

    As an aside, it is a huge oversimplification that no one tried to alert the police to Genovese’s attack.

    Conservatives are far less likely to fit into that category, ideologically.

    The problem is that your categories don’t really fit the facts.

  101. 101.

    ciotog

    November 15, 2011 at 4:42 pm

    We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, but I will say that numerous studies show that more hierarchical societies are more violent. And guess who likes more hierarchical societies? Hint: not liberals.

  102. 102.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    November 15, 2011 at 5:51 pm

    I think that it did come about as a result of the 60s.

    Remember the My Lai massacre? Who were the big, big, big villains? The people who committed the crimes? No… it was those awful people who made a noble institution look bad by *telling the truth*.

  103. 103.

    Scott, PhD

    November 15, 2011 at 6:36 pm

    @Surly Duff: I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear- that’s what I was doing. As someone who studies psychology, I wouldn’t blame social sciences.

  104. 104.

    j

    November 15, 2011 at 7:43 pm

    @LongHairedWeirdo: And let’s not forget that a young newly commissioned Major named Colin Powell took the first three reports of the My Lai massacre and TOSSED THEM IN THE TRASH!!

    He was Steppin Fetchet since the very beginning.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

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    […] at Balloon Juice flagged this uncommonly silly David Brooks comment: I don’t think it was just a Penn State problem. You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the […]

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