It would be irresponsible not to speculate about what Bobo is trying to tell us:
Serial killers are often charming, but have a high opinion of themselves that is not shared by the wider world. They are often extremely conscious of class and status and they develop venomous feelings toward people who do not pay them sufficient respect.
Linda Featheringill
And exactly how many serial killers does the author know?
redshirt
One rubbed his leg at a dinner event once. Not at Applebees, however.
Tractarian
Better run run run run, run run run away.
JGabriel
Bobo’s writing is so much more straightforward when he writes about those passions he knows well.
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querlvox
I get the joke being implied, but all I could think of reading that was “GINGRICH!”
Poopyman
@Linda Featheringill: I’m not sure even Bobo knows himself.
Warren Terra
Oh, the horrible crimes Moral Hazard may have witnessed …
srv
If we can have a movie with Lincoln slaying vampires, why can’t we have one with bobo killing hippies?
Carnacki
But he would be civil in how he killed the hippies — and really, that’s the important thing
Maude
Bobo has an autobiography?
BGinCHI
As my shrink used to say, “mhmmm….and?”
pat
Thanks for the link. I only go there to read the comments, and the first two readers’ picks are right on.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Has Bobo taken to boasting about himself now?
pragmatism
i wish bobo would RUN RUN RUN RUN, RUN RUN RUN AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY WOOOOAHHHOOOOHHHOOOOOOOOHHHOOOOO AYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
He’s working on his autobiography. Someone should check his garden. If you don’t believe me, replace “Serial Killer” with “NY times columnist”.
Baud
So serial killers are like New York Times columnists?
JGabriel
@srv:
Isn’t that what Falling Down was about?
I’ve never seen it, so I’m just going by impressions from the advertising campaign.
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David Koch
Someone better take some cadaver dogs to Bobo’s house.
kdaug
Where are the bodies, Bobo?
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I refuse to get out of the boat. WTF is Bobo yammering on about this time?
MariedeGournay
Someone’s got several very full chest freezers hidden in a cabin upstate.
JGabriel
@Baud:
Conservative NYT columnists, like Bobo, Douthat, Billy Kristol, John Tierney, et. al.
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Omnes Omnibus
Je me lance vers la gloire, okay?
beltane
Megan McArdle must be stalking us as we type, a least those of us who have not shown proper deference to her math skills and taste in overpriced kitchenware.
schrodinger's cat
Deleted, double comment
schrodinger's cat
I don’t know why I find Bobo so annoying, is it his smug know-it-allness or is it the obsequiousness? I am so umble, so very umble, with a sinful moral nature. Speak for yourself, psychopath.
JGabriel
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Bobo’s only a short step and a hop away from sending anonymous and incriminating mail to the police, mocking and teasing them for failing to capture him before he kills again.
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vtr
What grade is he in?
jl
Skimmed the Bobo column, which IMHO, is truly in WTF territory. It starts off about the shooter in the Afghanistan civilian massacre, then goes off into the malevolent psychology of serial killers.
Bobo natters about possible ill effects of computer games and aspects of our aggressive lizard brains left to us from evolution. And this has what exactly to do with the tragic Afghanistan massacre?
The fact that Bobo is working on his autobography gives me pause. But, my theory is that Bobo does not get specific suggestions from his paymasters about what to write every day, he has just soooo many TV appearances, and he is slothful.
So, this was the material he had at hand, for whatever reason, deadline was approaching, and he had to type something up and submit asap.
jl
@vtr: The highest grade, the very highest grade, I assure you. A sound man, if ever there was one. A very serious person, even.
JGabriel
@schrodinger’s cat:
I find the combination of Brooks’ sociopathic disregard for those less fortunate than himself, along with a writing style that treats Orwell’s Politics and the English Language as a how-to-guide rather than a prescription, to be particularly enraging.
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NCSteve
@JGabriel: A little more complex than that, actually. Wouldn’t have been disturbing enough to star Michael Douglas if it wasn’t.
Jay in Oregon
“Stop me before I kill again,” maybe?
different-church-lady
Actually I think Bobo’s off the hook on this one: rather than venom, he simply ignores the existence of people who disrespect him. In fact, I’m not sure he’s aware anyone who isn’t him exists beyond the theoretical level.
azelie
Bobo hates people when they’re not polite.
schrodinger's cat
@azelie: I think that’s Sullivan, always ready for the fainting couch, awarding Moore Awards and such for being impolite and rude.
pat
Check out Charles Pierce on this one. Sorry I can’t do a link, but you know where to find him.
And after reading Charlie’s excerpts of Brooks, I can only say… Whaaaa? This crap gets Brooks a salary…?????
danimal
Obligatory Talking Heads link.
Uncle Cosmo
@MariedeGournay: Chest, arm, leg, hand, foot, head, internal organs…
Bordel d’putain d’crétin! Je me fiche de cet imbécile trop mal élevé! (Or sumpin’ like dat…)
Amir Khalid
I am not a shrink, but as I understand it Staff Sgt Bales is accused not of being a serial killer one who makes a long-term career of murdering strangers) but a spree killer (one whose murders take place over a relatively brief span of time) or what in my neck of the woods we call an amuk. His musing about serial killers, even if it has any psychological validity, is irrelevant to understanding the killings Bales is suspected of.
Bobo doesn’t even ask why, of all the men in Bales’ unit who saw and did the same things together, only Bales himself snapped. Of course Bales’ friends and family are going to say they they never had any idea he might do this. Hell, no one ever does until the killer gets busted.
The NYT has run a column full of quack psychology which ends without a conclusion offering even a bogus insight into the mind of a spree killer. If I were the op-ed page editor, I’d have spiked the column with the comment “WTF is your point?”
Unsympathetic
The other fun part about that sentence: Bobo doesn’t have the slightest bit of clue that he could ever be describing himself. Because, you know, he’s above that sort of thing.
muddy
@Unsympathetic: The Narcissist can never look away.
srv
The absolute worst thing about Bobo? He’s only 51.
We need a billionaire to offer him something.
dedc79
I’ve been wasting way too much time to try to get to Brooks’ angle in that column.
The best i can do is this:
1) when terrorists kill us, we shouldn’t try to understand them, we should go to their countries and eliminate them and any civilians who get in the way
2) when americans terrorize people overseas, it’s time for a sociological explanation about how there’s a bit of devil in all of us.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Romney has tortured more than his dog? I guess torturing animals is one of the warning signs.
Tonal Crow
Bobo is just indirectly talking trash at Democrats, Occupy protesters, etc., implying that they’re all about envy (of upstanding Republicans, natch) and are likely to become serial killers.
It’s all propaganda of course. I tend to believe that Republicans are, generally, more envious than non-Republicans. I’m pretty sure this is the animating emotion behind, for example, Republicans’ crusade against homosexuality and non-procreative sex generally.
joeyess
Never mind the obvious joke fodder here, does Brooks even know what a serial killer is?
A serial killer methodically picks out his/her victim and then goes about the task of killing them. One. At. A. Time.
If he’s talking about this soldier that went on a rampage, Brooks is seriously off the mark and has no business giving opinion on anything.
dadanarchist
That’s a lot of hollandaise.
Larkspur
@Amir Khalid: Good point about “spree” vs. “serial”.
I actually went over to the NYT online to comment, but comments are already closed. I wish he would get a hobby, quit his job, and leave opining to someone with a conscience.
MariedeGournay
@Uncle Cosmo: LOL. Though I see him more as a wild woods hunter wannabe rather than a Jack the Ripper.
PIGL
Bobo, the pink-lipped santorum gobbling court flatterer is really trying to say that the mass murdering soldier was really a good man, as of course all American soldiers are, spotless Christian heros. Yet even they contain ineluctably —nay, tragically— within themselves the capacity to take their state sanctioned power and weaponry and slaughter a village full of innocent brown people under occupation. I mean hey, seriously, who hasn’t formulated elaborate fantasies about doing a bunch of sand-niggers?
The point of this jism-splattered brush-clearing is to establish that no blame could possibly fall on the institutions that sent the killer there, the military system that had him under command, or the corrupt and evil political system that arranges for the slaughter to run on and on and on.
I know my lizard brain is getting quite a work out designing elaborate, horrible and extremely, extremely protracted deaths for this evil fucker. Richard Morgan’s “Altered Carbon” is where I am starting from.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
So Gingrich and Romney are serial killers? Good to know.
SiubhanDuinne
@dadanarchist:
“Sunday, Monday, hollandaise,
Tuesday, Wednesday, hollandaise,
Thursday, Friday, hollandaise,
Saturdays, hollandaise,
Cookin’ all week with you.”
ET
Sounds like he is describing the Republican presidential field.