Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

No one could have predicted…

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

I really should read my own blog.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

We still have time to mess this up!

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / Conversation fear

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  1. 1.

    gbear

    I’m not going to help you. Are you still hoping for a murder/suicide? You still banned from commenting?

  3. 3.

    Baud

    I read it. And I call bullshit. DougJ is writing those pieces for the New York Times. There is no way Gail and David are real human beings.

  4. 4.

    thalarctos

    I tried to read and summarize it for you, but my brain shut down halfway through.

    It’s just that simultaneously horrible and banal.

  5. 5.

    schrodinger's cat

    @DougJ: Instead why don’t you explain to us non-mathematicians but interested in math people
    about the contributions of the mathematician, you said was the best since Euclid. This was the first time I had ever heard of him.

  9. 9.

    Triassic Sands

    Collins: David, welcome back from vacation.

    Brooks: Thanks. I’m an idiot and I have no idea what I’m talking about. My characterization of the GOP is ridiculous and everyone should just ignore me.

    That’s it in a nutshell.

  12. 12.

    Bnut

    I don’t know who has a bigger Ryan boner. Brooks for getting to remind us all again about how “brave” the Ryan Plan is, or Collins for telling us she loves how Ryan is a catfish noodler. Their chairs were positively sopping wet by the end of it I imagine.

  13. 13.

    Argon

    Summary: Dave Brooks is a git and a poor fact checker. Gail Collins is coasting through. Heck, both of them are coasting on this. Bleh.

  16. 16.

    BD of MN

    I made it this far:

    One thing that people miss is how supple a strategist he is

    then I went looking for a screwdriver to poke into my brain to make it go away….

  18. 18.

    Libby

    I’m not going to read it. I kicked the Brooks monkey off my back a couple of years ago. To the great improvement of my mental health. Not going there again. Not for love. Not for money.

  21. 21.

    ? Martin

    Ok, if we need to nominate someone to read it, I nominate mclaren. My guess is the conversation will be entirely about pie.

  22. 22.

    jwb

    This particular conversation is full of awesome like this:

    David: …Ryan and I disagree on many things and have debated them. The American Enterprise Institute even made an e-book out of one of our debates.
    __
    Gail: You know that’s pretty cool, being an e-book with the vice-presidential nominee. I’m trying to imagine what the equivalent would have been 100 years ago. Publishing your correspondence with James Sherman? Somehow this seems much niftier.
    __
    David: I have enormous respect for Ryan and I regard most of the commentary I’ve read about him by people who’ve never even interviewed him to be ludicrous.

  25. 25.

    MikeJ

    Conversation fear? Is DougJ of the appropriate age that getting high and trying to figure out REM lyrics was a dorm activity (that is, in the IRS records years)?

  26. 26.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @DougJ:

    DougJ, do you have an Erdös Number? I was just reading about Thurston and the Wiki article said he had an Erdös Number of 2. IANAM and was unfamiliar with this Higher Mathematics version of the Kevin Bacon Game.

  27. 27.

    Bruce S

    Please don’t do this. I read something I’m sensible enough to always ignore because it’s inconsequential bullshit that no one who has a life would spend time with. I thought there might be something especially egregious or entertaining based on your post, but it was just the same two bores perched at the New York Times recycling their banality. Who cares? Please don’t do this again. I’m not happy with you.

  28. 28.

    Percysowner

    Sorry, I don’t subscribe to the New York Times and I’m not going to use my limited number of hits on David Brooks. Someone else will have to take the hit.

  29. 29.

    amk

    Michelle Obama on vets’ hiring exceeding the target, both on numbers and time.

    “I thought this challenge was pretty ambitious,” Michelle Obama said at Florida’s Mayport Naval Station in a speech live-streamed by the Department of Defense to every U.S. military base around the world. “When we first started out, we only had two companies as our partners, and I wondered to myself how we were going to get from there to 100,000 new jobs in two years.”

    “But, fortunately, I didn’t have much time to sit around and worry, because before long, companies across this country started stepping up …. and today, I am so proud to announce that these 2,000 companies have not just met our challenge – they’ve exceeded it. As of today, they have hired or trained 125,000 veterans and military spouses – 125,000. And they’ve done it more than a year ahead of schedule. That’s pretty impressive”

  30. 30.

    schrodinger's cat

    @DougJ: Thanks that would be great. BTW I am back home from visiting friends near Rochester. We went to Canada this time to Niagara falls!

  31. 31.

    Anne Laurie

    You’re not being fair to Gail Collins, DougJ. Imagine being stuck with the job of baby-sitting David Brooks, which I have to assume is written into her employment contract. She does as good a job of trolling BoBo here as any spoof you’ve ever done — simultaneously praising Ryan’s catfish-noodling and saying:

    Gail: What Ryan is doing now is exactly what the Republicans did when Obama brought out his health care plan. All the allegedly serious fiscal conservatives wringing their hands about Medicare costs and taking tough stands. Then when the President actually did something about it, instead of complaining that his approach didn’t save enough, or that it would be inefficient, all the fiscal conservatives jumped up and howled: “He’s taking money away from seniors!”
    __
    David: I agree, I completely agree. But to be fair Romney and Ryan do have an incredibly brave and sensible Medicare reform package on offer. It’s written down. It’s on paper. I don’t see anything comparably brave from the Democratic side.

    David: …I don’t see how anybody can say that Ryan is unserious when, unlike most national pols, he actually has a budget detailed enough for C.B.O. to score.
    __
    Gail: Ryan is constantly bemoaning the huge amount of debt the Republicans rolled up during the Bush years, due to unfunded spending and tax cuts. It would be hard for me to take him seriously in any case, given that he did vote for all of it. But the least he could do was refrain from gearing up to do it all over again.

    Collins is offering actual political arguments, and Brooks is slobbering GOP talking points. Maybe she’s doing what I’d do in her position — trying to ensure that Brooks will be beaten to a pulp at some cocktail lounge during the Charlotte convention.

    Heck, if Brooks continues to self-satirize the GOP’s favorite flapdoodle so poorly & relentlessly, he might stand in danger during the Tampa convention. And not just from Hurricane Isaac, because I’m sure Rove has already given BoBo the secret password for the deeply serious & exclusive RNC afterhours party where he doesn’t have to worry about being accosted by vulgar strippers… of the female persuasion.

  32. 32.

    Ann Rynd

    I like Gail Collins. She made Sheamus on the car top a national hero. She seems to be able to pin prick Brooks’ bloated self love down to a simple obnoxious self referencing assholism by gently mocking him every time he tries to bloviate. Her Thursday and Saturday columns have a way of clearing the air after Brooks and that other young prick who’s name I can’t remember have stunk up the joint. She’s smart the way Modo used to be before her maidenhead grew back.

  33. 33.

    schrodinger's cat

    @SiubhanDuinne: I know that it has something to do about the centrality of a node in a network. So you are probably talking about citation networks?

  34. 34.

    t jasper parnell

    They are playing a game in which the pundit who says the dumbest most mendacious thing wins. I call it a draw.

  37. 37.

    cckids

    Everyone do yourselves a favor, skip the article (believe me, it is summarized well enough here in the comments) and read the comments over there. Brooks should be dying of blood loss from the thousand & one cuts he’s receiving. Everyone calls bullshit on him & each & every one of the commenters is more informed about the Ryan budget, the CBO and how it works. Truly a work of art.

  39. 39.

    jl

    I scanned the thing and decided it was too long and boring. Then the following caught my eye and I didn’t have to read anymore.

    ” David: You say the Ryan budget would roll up a huge amount of debt, but the C.B.O. disagrees. ”

    Brooks: ignorant or dishonest or stupid, which is it? And Collins lets it pass

    BTW, anyone know how they do these ‘talks’? How dishonest and fixed is it? People don’t talk that way, even if you transcribe it and fix up the grammar and take out the ums and buts and repeated prepositions.

    Is this totally bogus like those public affairs show ‘interviews’ you hear on radio sometimes where the schmucks are actually reading from a script?

    My impression is that however it started, it is typed up, smoothed and polished. That is, fake, just like the information gullible readers think they are getting from it.

  41. 41.

    redshirt

    So this was what the Fall of Rome was like, except with TV and a series of connected tubes.

    Also, REM ruled. Back in the day. No longer, alas!

  42. 42.

    Dennis SGMM

    @cckids:
    Thank you for that! Bobo is so full of shit that he fertilizes people’s lawns on weekends for a few extra bucks.

  44. 44.

    Ann Rynd

    @jl: They’re not really talking. They email each other, someone edits it. Done. She hates to be in the same room as this schmuck.

  45. 45.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I

    I know that it has something to do about the centrality of a node in a network.

    ::panics, thinks to self oh god oh god what does that mean I can’t fake it I was a music major for pete’s sake::

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    So you are probably talking about citation networks?

    Yes, exactly.

  46. 46.

    Steve Yoder

    Very nice R.E.M. lyric in the title. Can I request some more Pavement? Should be easy to work in “mixing cocktails with a plastic-tipped cigar.”

  47. 47.

    Todd

    Holy Christ on a stick. That looks like bukkake video without the creativity, directorial finesse or good taste that are customarily trademarks of even the lowest forms of the art.

  48. 48.

    Chuck Butcher

    thanks DougJ, now I’d like to hurt myself – I guess I still like you enough to not summarize this mess or you’d be hurting yourself…
    Well, let me think about that some more…

  50. 50.

    mainmati

    Ok, I read the whole thing. Yes, this “dialogue” is very stilted and pretty silly. Still, I have always liked Gail Collins. She is smarter and wittier than Maureen Dowd, which means she’s also far more interesting than “Bobo”. In this dialogue, “Bobo” was predictably on the one hand/on the other hand about Ryan; frankly, he has become increasingly just as blah-blah as Doubtthat but with more creds. I’ve stopped reading either one.

    Basically, Bobo totally avoided the budget question (i.e. savage the domestic sector) while wringing his hands over Ryan’s lunatic tax proposals. Gail was ineffectual on that point but all in all Bobo mostly had a sad in this “dialogue”.

  52. 52.

    jl

    @Palli: For the new new wingnut GOP, anything a real (white) he man does that takes or harms, justified or not, is brave. Everything else is girly stuff.

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @amk:

    Well, no reason we can’t have both. But yes, I’d love to see this story front-paged. Anne Laurie? You around?

  54. 54.

    divF

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Erdos number is the number of links through joint publications until you reach Paul Erdos, who was a prolific collaborator. If you wrote a joint paper with Erdos, your Erdos number is 1. If you wrote a joint paper with someone who wrote a joint paper with Erdos, your Erdos number is 2.

    A quick search indicates that my Erdos number is 4.

  55. 55.

    replicnt6

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    So you are probably talking about citation networks?

    Yes, exactly.

    Well, for modest values of exactly.

    It’s not citations, it’s a co-authorship. Erdos wrote a shit ton of papers with a shit ton of co-authors. If you wrote a paper with someone who wrote a paper with Erdos, you’re Erdos number is 2. etc.

    It literally just occurred to me as I was writing this that I am a co-inventor on a patent with someone with an Erdos number of 2. I don’t suppose patents count, though. Sad.

  59. 59.

    Platonicspoof

    . . . and summarize for me.

    See cckids at comment 37.
    I don’t understand how a waste of the MSM like Brooks can be both so vacuous and so self-contradictory in one short conversation.

  63. 63.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I drove past an Applebee’s yesterday and that’s as close to it as I will get.

    I hear the salad bar commentary sucks.

  68. 68.

    Walker

    @divF:

    Anecdotally, I get that this is a fairly common number to have if you are a mathematician. Mine is also 4 (though I have been in CS the last decade).

  74. 74.

    Sly

    Collins: David, the world has inexplicably survived withut your wisdom for the past few days. What do you think of Paul Ryan?

    Brooks: His selection is a political disaster but a policy triumph. Don’t ask me how that makes sense. Just buy some shitty e-book.

    Collins: I love you.

    Brooks: Not nearly as much as I love Paul Ryan. He managed to convince other Congressional Republicans to sign on to a budget that they already agreed with despite the fact that everyone who isn’t a Republican who reads it hates it.

    Collins: I heard he kills animals with his bear hands or some other awesome shit. That’s way cooler than all this boring talk about vulture capitalism and tax avoidance. But Ryan talks about numbers too much. Snoozefest!

    Brooks: Obama talks about numbers, too. Both sides do it.

    Collins: And now Romney wants to talk about Medicare WTF?

    Brooks: It’s because he’s brave and serious, and we know that because he wrote his plan down on paper. (ed – I’m not making that up)

    Collins: And Ryan wants to talk about tax cuts but not loopholes. That seems implausible.

    Brooks: His plan is bravely and seriously implausible.

    Collins: I’m bummed none of the candidates served in the military and we’re gonna have to hear how awesome they are anyway because they never got caught fucking around on their wives or beating their kids.

    Brooks: Even though I know there’s no correlation, someone smarter than me who does actual research should find out if shitty fathers make shitty Presidents.

  75. 75.

    ? Martin

    @SiubhanDuinne: The more interesting game is your Erdős–Bacon number. Danica McKellar has an Erdős–Bacon number of 6, as does Natalie Portman. Colin Firth has a number of 7.

    I suspect I have an Erdős number around 7 or so. It’s a little bit of a trek from him to general relativity. I’m too lazy to actually work it out, though.

    My wife has a Bacon number of 2.

  77. 77.

    Judge Crater

    Doomed. We are just doomed. This level of discourse is what the elites of doomed societies indulge in just before the center stops holding. Fatuous, self-absorbed, insensitive to the fraying fabric of government and society – this is what we can read from their ghastly dialogue.

    How we can repair our dysfunctional system is beyond me.

  80. 80.

    Davis X. Machina

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    ::panics, thinks to self oh god oh god what does that mean I can’t fake it I was a music major for pete’s sake::

    If you understand, and can give a coherent explanation of how transposing instruments work, and why they’re necessary/helpful, that’s just as good.

    There are many gifts, but only one Spirit….

  81. 81.

    Roger Moore

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I was just reading about Thurston and the Wiki article said he had an Erdös Number of 2. IANAM and was unfamiliar with this Higher Mathematics version of the Kevin Bacon Game.

    Some people have even put together an “Erdos-Bacon number” for people who have both published mathematics papers and appeared in movies. Richard Feynman has an Erdos-Bacon number of 6, the same as Natalie Portman.

  82. 82.

    burnspbesq

    @RosiesDad:

    Brooks: Ryan is a triumphant mistake.

    I read that and envisioned Brooks singing Elvis Costello at karaoke night (“Brilliant Mistake”).

    I haven’t stopped puking yet.

  84. 84.

    SatanicPanic

    I already read that dumbass column today about how 100% of women should vote for Romney. I tried to read this one, but I gave up. Brooks is a putz. Nothing more, just a putz. A boring-ass putz.

  86. 86.

    Hill Dweller

    I was watching Maddow on Letterman, and Romney’s welfare ad ran during the break. Willard is a soulless man.

  87. 87.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Instead why don’t you explain to us non-mathematicians but interested in math people
    about the contributions of the mathematician, you said was the best since Euclid.

    To be very specific, he said he was the best geometer since Euclid. Everyone knows the best mathematician since Euclid- likely since creation- was Carl Friedrich Gauss.

  89. 89.

    jl

    @jwb:

    ” David: I have enormous respect for Ryan and I regard most of the commentary I’ve read about him by people who’ve never even interviewed him to be ludicrous. ”

    Would that include the commentary written in Brit Hume’s face when Ryan could not handle the easiest softball questions imaginable, and stammered, and stared like a deer in headlights?

    But then Hume is noted liberal, so his commentary probably biased, not objective.

  90. 90.

    tomvox1

    Brooks: At least Ryan has a series of proposals that have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Under current policy, C.B.O. has the total public debt soaring from 74 percent of G.D.P. today to over 80 percent of G.D.P. by 2022. Under the last Ryan plan, C.B.O. projects that the debt will shrink to 63 percent of G.D.P. by 2022.

    Bullshit. That is a link to some deficit scold blog. It is not a link to a CBO score. Let’s see Brooks link to an independent analysis of Ryan’s proposals. Brooks is a fucking liar.

  91. 91.

    ? Martin

    @divF: Cool! My Erdos number is 5. That’s quite a bit better than I thought. Erdos apparently co-authored with a number of physicists, so that shortened things up more than I expected.

    Now I again slightly regret not finishing up that math paper I was working on a bazillion years ago. That’d have gotten me down to 3. Instead I decided to marry someone who went on to have a Bacon number of 2. Made the right decision there.

  92. 92.

    burnspbesq

    @Mark S.:

    Anything else happen today?

    The NCAA is investigating the recruitment of Nerlens Noel.

    The Calipari Hammer is fixin’ to come down on Kentucky, the same way it came down on UMass and Memphis. The guy should be a Republican Congressman: cheating comes as naturally as breathing.

    I warned you, Stuck, but did you listen?

  93. 93.

    Mark S.

    I didn’t know Brooks was on vacation. But come to think of it, the world did seem a little less stupid lately.

  94. 94.

    RaflW

    @cckids:

    Unfortunately the comments section at the NYT (or just about anywhere. Ahem) seems to do dick about Brooks actually responding to the 1,000s of fiskings he’s received there.

    No response, no change, no dice.

    He’s way too cushy in his $3mil mansion and pre-warmed PBS Friday TeeVee chair to bother to actually read or (gasp!) respond to reader feedback. That would sully his very special air of salad-bar superiority.

    (I don’t know what that last sentence means, but I like it that way.)

  95. 95.

    jl

    @tomvox1:

    Be careful. Ryan’s preferred CBO analysis is the one he ordered up, and in which he instructed the CBO to accept his own insane supply side assumptions.

    And apparently that is the very same ‘objective’ CBO analysis that the abject and sleazy humbug Brooks cites in his fake talk with Collins.

  97. 97.

    tomvox1

    Brooks: At least Ryan has a series of proposals that have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Under current policy, C.B.O. has the total public debt soaring from 74 percent of G.D.P. today to over 80 percent of G.D.P. by 2022. Under the last Ryan plan, C.B.O. projects that the debt will shrink to 63 percent of G.D.P. by 2022.

    Bullshit. That is a link to some deficit scold blog. It is not a link to a CBO score. Let’s see Brooks link to an independent analysis of Ryan’s proposals. Brooks is a fucking liar.crfb.org/blogs/ryan-budget-long-term

  99. 99.

    dance around in your bones

    David: I agree, I completely agree. But to be fair Romney and Ryan do have an incredibly brave and sensible Medicare reform package on offer. It’s written down. It’s on paper.

    Oh well, if it’s on paper…

    What fucking planet did this guy come from?

    ETA: Brooks would probably be happier if he was on methadone.

  100. 100.

    cckids

    @RaflW:

    He’s way too cushy in his $3mil mansion and pre-warmed PBS Friday TeeVee chair to bother to actually read or (gasp!) respond to reader feedback. That would sully his very special air of salad-bar superiority.

    I like your last sentence too. I am 100% sure Brooks does not read the comments. He’d never write another word for publication, unless it was a whiny, “why are you all so meeeeeean?” diatribe.

    He probably has it written into his contract that he doesn’t have to read comments, or that no on can refer to the comment section in his presence.

  101. 101.

    dance around in your bones

    If I knew what an Erdos number was I’m sure mine would be a one.

    Is that good?

  103. 103.

    dance around in your bones

    @MikeJ:

    Ooo! Ooo! Then I’m a six!

    (degrees of separation, that is. I suppose that’s all I can hope for in the mathematical world :(

  104. 104.

    evap

    Proud to say I have Erdos number 2.

    A long-time collaborator has Erdos number 1 (that’s how I got my 2), but was also an extra in a movie as a teenager and has Bacon number 2. Erdos # + Bacon # = 3, now that is cool!

  105. 105.

    1badbaba3

    Erdos numbers, n.y.times columnists, obscure three decades old musical references. Clearly I have stumbled into the egghead thread, as I understand none of it. I love it . More please.

  106. 106.

    Caravelle

    @dance around in your bones : if you’ve never co-authored a scientific paper your Erdos number is infinity.

    @SiubhanDuinne: If you want to know more about Paul Erdos I recommend reading the book “The Man Who Loved Only Numbers”; it’s basically his biography. It does talk about maths and his importance to the math world, but even if you’re not interested in that stuff you should still read it for the weirdness of his life in general. He was the Ur-absent professor.

    @evap : wow indeed. There can’t be that many people with that number.

  107. 107.

    dance around in your bones

    @Caravelle:

    @dance around in your bones : if you’ve never co-authored a scientific paper your Erdos number is infinity.

    Infinity is much cooler than one! Thanks!

  108. 108.

    steve

    I know I could just ignore it, but that’s like telling a heroin addict he doesn’t methadone.

    Is it really so hard to remember to type all the words in your sentences? Or proofread?

  109. 109.

    dance around in your bones

    @steve: I think we can all fill them in, mentally.

    Not that I haven’t (mentally) considered offering my services as a proofreader on occasion.

  110. 110.

    dance around in your bones

    @steve: I think we can all fill them in, mentally.

    Not that I haven’t (mentally) considered offering my services as a proofreader on occasion.

    ETA: Gah. Server procrastination led to the double post. I NEVER hit submit twice, I swear to pasta.

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