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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / Just win, baby

Just win, baby

by DougJ|  May 1, 201310:13 am| 102 Comments

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

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Jonathan Chait takes a shot at Bobo’s paean to “regulated sobriety”:

The latest offensive, or counter-offensive, in the passive-aggressive Cold War between David Brooks and Paul Krugman has taken the form of an entire Brooks column not very subtly lambasting Krugman as a tired partisan hack while justifying his own work as thoughtful, elevated, and intellectually independent. It’s unfortunately muddled and self-serving in a way that obscures some pretty important questions about how political commentators ought to do their job.

[…]

Oh, and here’s a final guideline, though it really only has a narrow applicability: If you’re going to write a guide to opinion writing that’s completely self-aggrandizing, you should probably own up to it.

I have only one guideline for opinion writers: get shit right. If you’re going to predict elections, do it with poll-averaging, and if that’s over your head, then shut the fuck up or just quote Nate Silver. If you like masturbating to pictures of cowboys, keep that to yourself and resist the urge to tell the world that someone’s manly characteristic proves he is a genius. If you don’t know what 1 percent of the GDP is, then don’t use percent of GDP to measure the costs of a war.

I honestly don’t care how people who get things right do it. I don’t care if Nate Silver is a careful Burkean or a raging manichean monster when he makes his predictions. I don’t care if Paul Krugman hurts people’s fee-fees when he slams austerity, as long his predictions about the effects of austerity are accurate (and they have been).

Pundits love to use sports metaphors, but they refuse to see their own profession as a sport. The reason is obvious, of course: getting things right, i.e. winning games, gets you paid in sports, sucking up to power and cranking out soft-rock soliloquies gets you paid in punditry.

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Reader Interactions

102Comments

  1. 1.

    MikeJ

    May 1, 2013 at 10:18 am

    Dear pundits: put the biscuit in the basket.

  2. 2.

    Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)

    May 1, 2013 at 10:18 am

    I have only one guideline for opinion writers: get shit right. If you’re going to predict elections, do it with poll-averaging, and if that’s over your head, then shut the fuck up or just quote Nate Silver. If you like masturbating to pictures of cowboys, keep that to yourself and resist the urge to tell the world that his manly characteristic proves he is a genius. If you don’t know what 1 percent of the GDP is, then don’t make use percent of GDP to measure the costs of a war.

    quoted for truth.

    I really wish someone would just do away with the edit/op-ed pages. We’d be a lot better off if George Will, Kraphammer, Friedman, Douthat, Brooks, etc. were unemployed.

  3. 3.

    c u n d gulag

    May 1, 2013 at 10:22 am

    Dear Bobo,
    Keep watching your dog in your mansion of many rooms, and maybe you’ll realize that, even if you CAN lick your own dick, like you just did in print, it’s not always acceptable to do that in public – especially if you do it in a once great newspaper like the NY Times.

  4. 4.

    jeffreyw

    May 1, 2013 at 10:22 am

    BoBo makes kitteh sad.

  5. 5.

    DougJ

    May 1, 2013 at 10:23 am

    @Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):

    I often enjoy reading George Will. I wish they’d rein him in on the stuff where he’s lying, though.

  6. 6.

    sb

    May 1, 2013 at 10:26 am

    @DougJ: I had the same feeling reading William Safire.

  7. 7.

    MomSense

    May 1, 2013 at 10:27 am

    I would be happy with having editorials and op-eds written on subjects or issues by people who are actually knowledgeable (experts even!) on those subjects. Same with teevee. They have the same people spinning the same crap and most of them are not qualified to do so.

  8. 8.

    BGinCHI

    May 1, 2013 at 10:27 am

    If there was assessment in punditry there would be more pundit turnover.

    I never thought I’d say this, but the time for newspapers to set the national tone is over. If they had half a brain, they’d hire smart young folks to write smart stuff and not a bunch of country club idiots.

  9. 9.

    Gin & Tonic

    May 1, 2013 at 10:28 am

    @MikeJ: Red Auerbach had it right, too: the name of the game is put the ball in the hole.

  10. 10.

    Brian R.

    May 1, 2013 at 10:30 am

    That last paragraph is gold.

    Pundits really do act like the ESPY Award for Best Sportsmanship is the Lombardi Trophy.

  11. 11.

    Wag

    May 1, 2013 at 10:31 am

    Is Bobo transgender? He consistently referred to himself as “she” throughout the entire piece.

  12. 12.

    Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)

    May 1, 2013 at 10:33 am

    @DougJ: If he stuck to baseball, he’d be tolerable. I’ve met the man. He’s as much of an asshole in person as his sunday morning persona suggests.

  13. 13.

    Chris

    May 1, 2013 at 10:38 am

    @MomSense:

    Amen.

  14. 14.

    Petorado

    May 1, 2013 at 10:40 am

    Atrios does a number on Bobo in the way that only Atrios can do it.

  15. 15.

    Mojotron

    May 1, 2013 at 10:46 am

    I actually think that’s how you win arguments with these morons- sports metaphors. Like “We’re number 1 in healthcare spending, but number 37 in results. We have the New York Yankees payroll and we’re getting a AAA farm team.” or “the GOP are complaining about (x) in order to work the refs, like an overacting yu-ro-pean flopping soccer player. It’s pathetic to watch and un-A-merican.” “We need someone with a firm hand, solid game plan, and work ethic to get the US through this 4th quarter. We need Obama, the black Vince Lombardi (or Bear Bryant :)), to step up.” etc…

  16. 16.

    Roger Moore

    May 1, 2013 at 10:52 am

    @DougJ:

    I often enjoy reading George Will.

    WTF is wrong with you?

  17. 17.

    Anya

    May 1, 2013 at 10:54 am

    Hate to go OT but the parents of the “2-Year-Old Girl Shot, Killed By 5-Year-Old Brother With Rifle He Recieved As A Gift,” should be charged with negligent homicide or something. Giving a 5-year old a gun as a gift is just insanity.

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    May 1, 2013 at 10:56 am

    The reason is obvious, of course: getting things right, i.e. winning games, gets you paid in sports, sucking up to power and cranking out soft-rock soliloquies gets you paid in punditry.

    I think you’re missing the point. They do care a lot about winning and losing; it’s just that the winning and losing they care about is advancing policy agendas, not making accurate predictions. If you see what they’re doing as propaganda rather than prognostication, it makes a lot more sense. A wrong prediction, even one that’s blatantly, knowingly wrong, is fine as long as it results in the desired policy decisions. If you measure things that way, you’ll see that the austerians are way ahead of the Keynesians as pundits.

  19. 19.

    bemused

    May 1, 2013 at 11:00 am

    I’d have a beer (or coffee) with Krugman anytime, anywhere. After trying to get him to dish on the inside stories about austerity assholes, we could talk about our kitties.

    I’d only have a beer with Brooks if it was in some Iron Range bar and then I’d abandon him there to try to communicate with drunken Iron Ranger yahoos and find his own way home to the villagers.

  20. 20.

    different-church-lady

    May 1, 2013 at 11:01 am

    Brooks keeps his gig not because of any competence, but because he is a reflection of the readership demographic of the NYTs: affluent, aging, balding*, and full of himself.

    A long time ago the NYT was a newspaper. It is now a lifestyle magazine for the rich-and-yet-struggling that’s distributed on newsprint instead of gloss. It is much more important that the product appeal to the dreams and fears of the readership than to provide actual news or information.

    (*male half of the demographic, obviously…)

  21. 21.

    different-church-lady

    May 1, 2013 at 11:03 am

    @bemused: I’d love to have a beer with Brooks because I think it would be a blast to insult him continuously without him even once picking up on the fact he was being insulted.

  22. 22.

    EconWatcher

    May 1, 2013 at 11:04 am

    K-thug recently said something pretty apt and interesting on this subject: He said people accuse him of cherrypicking data to prove he’s always right.

    His answer was, basically, “I do cherrypick, but I don’t cherrypick data, I cherrypick issues. I keep hammering on an issue (austerity) where the very serious people are dead wrong and are ignoring all of the best economic learning and empirical analysis since the Great Depression. And as long as they keep doing that, I’m going to keep hitting back, and I’ll always be right.”

    The issue is so important to the lives of so many people that this has become nearly his full-time job as a pundit, and he’s OK with that. Lucky for us, I’d say.

  23. 23.

    piratedan

    May 1, 2013 at 11:04 am

    @Anya: hey now, now is not the time to talk about gun control when you’re obviously excited about the most recent tragic event and the fact that these recent tragic events happen daily means that there will be a heightened level of emotional instability that will cloud our collective judgements regarding gun control. It’s only when we stop having these daily tragedies that we can calmly and dispassionately discuss this but by then we will have hoped to find something else to distract you like the next season opener for The Bachelor or that you’ll be so inured by it that you’ll simply accept.

  24. 24.

    Mike in NC

    May 1, 2013 at 11:05 am

    What would be more excruciating than being forced to watch Bobo sitting for an interview with David Gregory or Chuck Todd?

  25. 25.

    different-church-lady

    May 1, 2013 at 11:06 am

    @Mike in NC: I’m turned off by gay porn.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    May 1, 2013 at 11:07 am

    @piratedan:

    It’s only when we stop having these daily tragedies that we can calmly and dispassionately discuss this but by then we will have hoped to find something else to distract you like the next season opener for The Bachelor or that you’ll be so inured by it that you’ll simply accept claim that the lack of daily tragedies proves that there’s no problem for gun control to solve.

    FTFY.

  27. 27.

    Cris (without an H)

    May 1, 2013 at 11:07 am

    If you don’t know what 1 percent of the GDP is, then don’t use percent of GDP to measure the costs of a war.

    BAM this seriously never gets old

  28. 28.

    Eric U.

    May 1, 2013 at 11:09 am

    @bemused: I don’t recognize the Iron Range bar reference, but it reminds me of Flying Swords of Dragon’s Gate: the people that don’t bring their own chopsticks eat the “white meat,” which is the previous people that didn’t bring their own chopsticks

    @piratedan: there were 51 episodes of gun freedom listed in KargoX’s weekly roundup this week. You would really have to work hard to fit in a couple of hours where you could dispassionately discuss gun policy without having a gun go off somewhere in the U.S.

  29. 29.

    Anya

    May 1, 2013 at 11:11 am

    @piratedan: Can we at least keep guns from 4-year olds? What kinda of a horrible parents give their 4-year old child a gun. I hope they suffer from guilt for the rest of their miserable lives.

  30. 30.

    bemused

    May 1, 2013 at 11:12 am

    @different-church-lady:

    I was amusing myself imagining Brooks doing his anthropological culture research with real Iron Range boneheads. I think he’d feel like he was in a foreign country. Hell, I’ve lived here all my life and I feel that way all too often. Actual , I think those folks would terrify him.

  31. 31.

    Roger Moore

    May 1, 2013 at 11:14 am

    @Anya:

    Can we at least keep guns from 4-year olds?

    When guns for 4 year olds are outlawed, only 4 year old outlaws will have guns!

  32. 32.

    SatanicPanic

    May 1, 2013 at 11:18 am

    @Roger Moore: You mean like this?

  33. 33.

    Ivan X

    May 1, 2013 at 11:21 am

    “cranking out soft-rock soliloquies gets you paid in punditry”

    That’s a money phrase if I ever heard one. You should feel satisfied. Maybe take the rest of the day off.

  34. 34.

    The Moar You Know

    May 1, 2013 at 11:22 am

    White told the newspaper that the boy received the rifle made for youths last year and is used to shooting it. He said the gun was kept in a corner and the family didn’t realize a shell was left inside it.

    If you can’t clear your weapon you shouldn’t have one.

    I started shooting at age 8, but no one in my family would have been stupid enough to give me my own gun.

  35. 35.

    Linda Featheringill

    May 1, 2013 at 11:25 am

    @Anya:

    I read that article. Damn. Children who are 5 years old do not have judgment. They may not even understand “dead.”

    I think the parents are guilty of manslaughter at least.

    Take the kids away and put the parents into jail.

  36. 36.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    May 1, 2013 at 11:26 am

    I find BoBo virtually unreadable and I don’t really feel like making the effort with this one, but is Chait right that he [ETA: indirectly and anonymously] accuses Krugman of being a “partisan hack”? For Democrats? Is Keynesianism a party? Can you be a “hack” if your commitment is to policy principles? With my nodding familiarity with BoBo’s writing, I’d bet he’s been far more complimentary of Obama (Niebhur!) than Krugman has been on policy grounds over the last five years.

  37. 37.

    Cris (without an H)

    May 1, 2013 at 11:27 am

    @Anya: I hope they suffer from guilt for the rest of their miserable lives.

    They will. The big brother will too.

    I hope they go further: I hope their guilt makes them rethink their assumptions. I hope it makes them talk to their neighbors and friends, who probably also think it’s okay to give a rifle to a kid. Who think that teaching a kid to shoot means he has some sense of gun safety; that teaching a kid about gun safety means you can trust him to always practice it.

    I have a six-year-old. I teach him lots of stuff. I do not trust him to remember any of it. Especially something that’s a matter of safety, a matter of life and death.

    I’m genuinely sorry for their grief. I hope their grief brings them to actively prevent other families from experiencing the same grief.

  38. 38.

    mainmati

    May 1, 2013 at 11:28 am

    Brooks’ op-eds – never very interesting and usually fact-free – have hit a new low. But here’s an interesting take on “regulated sobriety” that must mean “Fat Tony” Scalia must be sloshed all the time since he is able to read the minds of the Founding Fathers. From here:

    “The delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention spent much of their time getting drunk. One surviving document is a bill for a party on September 15th, 1787, two days before the signing of the Constitution. Items on the bill were: 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of Claret, 8 bottles of whiskey, 8 bottles of cider, 12 bottles of beer, and 7 bowls of alcoholic punch. All of this for only 55 people.”

  39. 39.

    Villago Delenda Est

    May 1, 2013 at 11:28 am

    @MomSense:

    There is the now classic example of experts being contradicted by a dumbass talking head when Leslie Blitzer continued to ask if it was possible for the balloon boy to be floating over Denver. Fitting inside the balloon isn’t the issue, it was a simple question of weight ratios.

    Dropping the coconuts on Leslie’s empty skull would have made an interesting sound, though…

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    May 1, 2013 at 11:28 am

    @The Moar You Know:

    Exactly. My dad had guns, but they were locked up in a separate room of the house that only he had the key to. The only time he took them out of that room was in a case to take them to the shooting range or on a hunting trip.

    I really think that people don’t realize what a huge change our gun culture has gone through. Guns used to be regarded as useful but potentially dangerous tools that needed to be handled with care to avoid mistakes. Now they’re harmless toys that you give your 4-year-old on his birthday, and if he accidentally shoots his sister because he didn’t know it was loaded, whoocouldaknowed that thing was, like, dangerous?

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    May 1, 2013 at 11:28 am

    @The Moar You Know:

    If you can’t clear your weapon you shouldn’t have one.

    If you aren’t going to watch your kid like a hawk when he’s using his gun, you shouldn’t let him have one.

  42. 42.

    EconWatcher

    May 1, 2013 at 11:29 am

    I would add, just as we pressure Obama, even though most of us here think he’s mostly on the right track, I think Krugman needs some pressuring at times. For example:

    The Reinhart-Rogoff paper wasn’t just sloppy, it was a conscious fraud. And Krugman knows that perfectly well, but he’s avoided saying so.

    For example, R-R included one year when New Zealand had a disastrous waterfront strike for half a year that crippled the economy, and included the catastrophic negative growth rate from that year, while excluding four years when NZ had decent growth with high debt. Then, they weighted that one (obvious outlier) year from New Zealand as much as multiple years in the UK when there was high debt and decent growth. If any of this were remotely defensible, we would have heard a defense. Instead, R-R have offered a bunch of misdirection.

    For Krugman, it was enough that their paper was discredited and his case against austerity won the intellectual argument. Most of his focus has been on the fact that their paper never showed causation anway. Although he’s hit them on their errors and poor response once they were exposed, he’s never come close to calling the paper fraudulent. I think it’s pretty clear he doesn’t want to get into the dirty business of calling out esteemed members of his profession for this kind of misconduct.

    But you know what, his reticence is one of the reasons why the Very Serious People keep winning. They’re never accountable for anything. He almost uniquely has the stature and platform to push for some accountability. The obvious pressure point is Harvard.

    And I suspect he realizes that if it had been he who had made these kinds of “mistakes,” Princeton and the Nobel Committee would be under relentless pressure to disown him right now. His reticence is understandable, but I don’t think it’s defensible.

  43. 43.

    gogol's wife

    May 1, 2013 at 11:29 am

    @Cris (without an H):

    Don’t hold your breath.

  44. 44.

    SatanicPanic

    May 1, 2013 at 11:31 am

    @Anya: Oh sorry I didn’t see your link and posted the same link. I agree with everyone who says this is manslaughter at the least, or you’ve created a giant loophole for killing your unwanted kids. Susan Smith’s biggest mistake was not buying a gun and “accidentally” shooting her kids.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    May 1, 2013 at 11:34 am

    @Cris (without an H):

    I have a six-year-old. I teach him lots of stuff. I do not trust him to remember any of it. Especially something that’s a matter of safety, a matter of life and death.

    This. A four year old can’t be trusted to walk across the street safely. What on earth made parents think he was capable of handling a gun safely? I question the wisdom of teaching a 4 year old to shoot, but if you’re going to do it, you’d damn well better watch him like a hawk any time he’s close to a gun. Leaving the damn thing in the corner and assuming it’s unloaded is somewhere between gross negligence and insanity.

  46. 46.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    May 1, 2013 at 11:35 am

    “The little boy’s used to shooting the little gun,” White said, before saying the shooting will be ruled accidental. “Just one of those crazy accidents.”

    The five year old’s gun– let’s just pass on that phrase for now– was “kept in a corner”, and his parents couldn’t be bothered to check if it was loaded? Crazy: All kinds of it. Accident? Technically, I guess. The guy saying this is the county coroner. A law enforcement official.

  47. 47.

    Villago Delenda Est

    May 1, 2013 at 11:35 am

    @Anya:

    Firearms are not toys.

    Yet a five year old will treat it as one.

    It’s pretty clear that the parents consider firearms to be toys, as well.

    The parents need to spend time in prison for this.

  48. 48.

    Roger Moore

    May 1, 2013 at 11:38 am

    @SatanicPanic:

    Susan Smith’s biggest mistake was not buying a gun and “accidentally” shooting her kids.

    We might have believed it was an accidental shooting if you hadn’t stopped to reload…

  49. 49.

    Anya

    May 1, 2013 at 11:38 am

    @SatanicPanic: I am just amazed that any parent would risk their child like that. Talk about clinging to guns. If these parents are not charged then there’s something very wrong with our society.

  50. 50.

    negative 1

    May 1, 2013 at 11:39 am

    Here’s what I don’t get, and I’ll relate it to the sports metaphor. I’m a baseball fan, and accordingly I read a lot of baseball blogs. Many years ago it was pointed out that a lot of establishment (read: paid) writers were just spouting cliches, and that real fans pored over stats to intelligently make arguments. It became a source of pride. On my favorite site, the argument “show your work” meant not that the person was wrong, it was that the other person was intellectually lazy and could be disregarded accordingly. Eventually that attitude spilled over into the main sites (ESPN, SI, etc.) and the work was better for it – now instead of saying useless bulls^&t like “he’s a gamer!” you can show that he can get on base effectively, even if he doesn’t strike you as a great hitter.
    So all of that leads me to this question – if we can do this for something as trivial as baseball, why the hell can’t we do it for economic (or social for that matter) policy? It’s not as if it’s a field bereft of statistical analysis. When Bobo or any other talking hack speaks, why doesn’t the whole world yell “show your work”?

  51. 51.

    EconWatcher

    May 1, 2013 at 11:39 am

    Plainly, it was the 2 year old’s fault for not being armed for self-defense.

  52. 52.

    gelfling545

    May 1, 2013 at 11:41 am

    @MomSense: I feel the same. Opinions being like er… anal orifices, the only thing that would make someone’s opinion worth paying for would be that they have some expertise on the subject. Shoot, I am available and obviously willing to offer my completely inexpert opinion free for nothing.

  53. 53.

    piratedan

    May 1, 2013 at 11:42 am

    @Anya: sorry anya, i was in snark mode, wasn’t being serious, scathingly sarcastic yes, serious no.

  54. 54.

    Joey Maloney

    May 1, 2013 at 11:43 am

    o/t, there are reports that the Boston cops, or the FBI, or both have arrested 3 more people in the Marathon bombing.

  55. 55.

    Ben Franklin

    May 1, 2013 at 11:43 am

    Boston police say three more suspects have been taken into custody in the marathon bombings.

    In a tweet Wednesday morning, the police department says only that three more suspects are in custody and more details will follow. Police spokeswoman Cheryl Fiandaca confirmed the tweet but referred all other questions to the FBI.

    http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/uncle-family-claim-boston-bomb-suspects-body-19080193#.UYE4Bo7TKFJ

  56. 56.

    Ben Franklin

    May 1, 2013 at 11:46 am

    It seems the charges have to do with Harboring…

    Mustn’t be the guy who owns the holy boat. No harboring for him.

  57. 57.

    jibeaux

    May 1, 2013 at 11:47 am

    Reminds me of Moneyball, the old scouts assessing talent based on looks and skill sets and drills and not on stats, while Billy Bean says “we’re not selling jeans. Does he GET ON BASE?” Been a while since Bobo’s been on base.

  58. 58.

    SatanicPanic

    May 1, 2013 at 11:47 am

    @Anya: Giving a 5 year old is definitely over the line for what should be criminal negligence. If they can’t prosecute this, then we might as well get rid of DUI laws and laws against leaving your babies in the car, because we just don’t give a crap anymore.

  59. 59.

    TG Chicago

    May 1, 2013 at 11:49 am

    @Petorado: I was coming over to post that myself. Glad you got it in sooner. That was delightful.

  60. 60.

    negative 1

    May 1, 2013 at 11:51 am

    @jibeaux: I totally agree, my comment was on the same idea. But as I said above, it’s not like economic policy doesn’t have accessible statistics. They act as though economics can never be understood – they give degrees in it for pete’s sake. It’s just that Bobo doesn’t understand it.

  61. 61.

    jibeaux

    May 1, 2013 at 11:52 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: It drives me bonkers, “crazy accident.” No, it’s reckless child endangerment at best. My kids have had accidents, they’ve fallen off their bikes and off of steps and they’ve run into the coffee table with their face. The gun fetish is so strong with these guys that a rifle is in same category as bikes and steps and tables, it’s just something you have in your house and you don’t need to give it another thought.

  62. 62.

    Villago Delenda Est

    May 1, 2013 at 11:52 am

    @SatanicPanic:

    Ahem.

    Cars are different. They’re registered with the government, in great detail.

    There is no amendment to the Constitution that mentions “cars” like it does “arms”.

    You’ll take my Corvette from me when you pry it from my cold, dead hands, tyrants!

  63. 63.

    Cassidy

    May 1, 2013 at 11:52 am

    @Cris (without an H):

    I’m genuinely sorry for their grief.

    Not I. Their fetishism caused this. I hope the grief consumes them and seucks every ounce of joy from their miserable, ignorant lives. They deserve it.

  64. 64.

    patrick II

    May 1, 2013 at 11:53 am

    She wants to remain mentally independent because she sees politics as a competition between partial truths

    Some of those babies can be tough to cut in half. Evidently if Brooks was writing back when that partisan insider Lincoln was running the proper opinion about slavery would have been to free the slaves at 35, so they could spend half their live enslaved but half free and thus the best solution to the partial truth held by some politicians that slavery was evil.

  65. 65.

    Wag

    May 1, 2013 at 11:53 am

    @Linda Featheringill:

    But for god’s sake don’t take away the family’s guns. The guns are just innocent 2nd ammenment protected bystanders.

  66. 66.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    May 1, 2013 at 11:56 am

    @BGinCHI:

    If they had half a brain, they’d hire smart young folks to write smart stuff and not a bunch of country club idiots.

    The Kaplan Test Prep Daily has spent the bulk of the last decade doing part of that, hiring young folks. Now, based on their output, those young folks are anything but smart. Okay, they might be, I mean I’m sure Anne Kornblut (as an example) is a smart woman but you wouldn’t know it based on her banal output when she worked at the KTPD. Furthermore, there’s tons more young folks there who the (com)Post hired in some attempt to appeal to younger folk at least in terms of subject matter. The heinous Monica Hesse is poster child for that.

    Season 5 of “The Wire” gives one an idea of how newsrooms were gutted and how “young folks” really didn’t know wtf they were doing when it came to good local or political reporting.

  67. 67.

    EconWatcher

    May 1, 2013 at 11:57 am

    I have a 5 year old. That 5 year old is old enough to understand that he killed his sister, and that will be with him for the rest of his life, even though it’s not his fault. Those parents are responsible for destroying the lives of both of their children. Yes, they should be locked up.

  68. 68.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    May 1, 2013 at 11:59 am

    @Roger Moore:

    I think you’re missing the point. They do care a lot about winning and losing; it’s just that the winning and losing they care about is advancing policy agendas, not making accurate predictions. If you see what they’re doing as propaganda rather than prognostication, it makes a lot more sense. A wrong prediction, even one that’s blatantly, knowingly wrong, is fine as long as it results in the desired policy decisions. If you measure things that way, you’ll see that the austerians are way ahead of the Keynesians as pundits.

    This a thousand times. It also extends to Congress. Watch a hearing sometime, like the one Jon Stewart outlined the other night where TDS staff evicerated a Repup blowhard from GA. It doesn’t matter to them.

  69. 69.

    SatanicPanic

    May 1, 2013 at 12:00 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est: Exactly. You can’t have my car and you can’t stop me from getting plastered every time I get behind the wheel. Because I refuse to submit to the tyranny of common sense. USA USA USA

  70. 70.

    Larkspur

    May 1, 2013 at 12:04 pm

    I don’t have kids. I’m curious to know if any of you with children or grandchildren have ever asked gun questions before letting their youngsters go play at their friends’ houses, or if any of you have been asked. I imagine I’d really want to know if the family has firearms, and exactly where they are, etc. But maybe just asking is already an offensive quasi-accusation. But not knowing is insane. See? I’d have made my children’s existence a living hell. Every little detail would have been fraught.

  71. 71.

    Cassidy

    May 1, 2013 at 12:04 pm

    @SatanicPanic: I have a document stating I am a soveriegn citizen….

  72. 72.

    danimal

    May 1, 2013 at 12:07 pm

    Brooks is a team player, there can be no doubt about his team or his role on the team (the reasonable-sounding, non-threatening dude who ALWAYS finds himself swayed by reasonable-sounding non-threatening conservative ideas).

    Krugman is more of a free agent. He’s arguing for liberal ideas at present because liberal ideas are the better prescription for the national economy. He has been more of a centrist in the past, and will probably become one again. The Keynesian approach also involves running surpluses during good economic conditions, and liberals will eventulally oppose him for holding the same worldview that enamours them today.

    IOW, Brook’s is full of crap in his opinion piece. He is the team player, the partisan writer, while Krugman is the academic keeping a regulated sobriety.

  73. 73.

    Bighorn Ordovian Dolomite

    May 1, 2013 at 12:09 pm

    @Eric U.:

    The Iron Range is the iron mining district in northern Minnesota–roughly halfway between Lake Superior and Canada, sorta paralleling Lake Superior.

    It’s a pretty insular community, and demographically different from the rest of MN–more Finns and non-Swedish/Norwegian Europeans. They don’t exactly welcome outsiders–especially effete ones. Especially if you look like maybe, just maybe you live in the Twin Cities.

    And by their standards, Brooks totally looks like a Cidiot (Twin Cities idiot).

  74. 74.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    May 1, 2013 at 12:10 pm

    @BGinCHI: Funny thing, the shelf life of a pundit. I actually think Maureen Dowd was pretty damn good on the Bushes and on Clinton– didn’t bat a thousand, but pretty good. As a boomer herself, i think she got them. I quit reading her when she decided that not only was “Obambi and the Domintarix” not some pissant weak shit, it was actually brilliant! and she was gonna ride it out. I think she’s gotten worse. Today she doubles down blaming Obama for gridlock. I’d bet a large chunk of money his shot at her at the Cotillon drove her to it.

    I’m trying to think of a similar decline. I suppose Broder was useful back when there was such a thing as a moderate Republican– I wasn’t reading him then.

  75. 75.

    patroclus

    May 1, 2013 at 12:14 pm

    @EconWatcher: Krugman’s worse than Laffer – He Sold Us Out! We’re All Baader-Meinhof Now!

    The problem with using sports metaphors to judge political pundits is that not everyone is a sports fan, so “David Brooks is on the wrong side of the Mendoza line” or “Charles Krauthammer pulled a ‘Merkle'” or “George Will drives for show but doesn’t putt for dough” or “there are three things that might happen when David Broder wrote a column and two of them are bad” wouldn’t mean much to the non-sports fan.

  76. 76.

    SatanicPanic

    May 1, 2013 at 12:15 pm

    @Cassidy: How many bitcoins did it cost? I want one too

  77. 77.

    jl

    May 1, 2013 at 12:17 pm

    A lot of these GOP and reactionary hacks are acting like broken men these days. Brooks silly column was silly and dishonest and IMHO total fail right from the beginning.

    I think Chait was too generous to Brooks. Brooks loaded his ‘engaged’ versus ‘disengaged’ contrast right up front when he started off associating engaged with partisan. It was a total miss as far as Krugman (and most economists who agree with Krugman).

    As danimal says above, Krugman is a free agent, and has freely criticized Democrats and Obama when he feels they are wrong or are making mistakes. Krugman is quite open in his opinion that he personally prefers current Democratic policies, but I think he has been good about pointing out when economics alone does not support an argument that is being made by the Democrats. The economic significance of inequality is one of them.

    This is also a case where Keynesian economists disagree, for example, Stiglitz and Krugman on the role of inequality in current macroeconomic problems. Either one could be correct.

  78. 78.

    EconWatcher

    May 1, 2013 at 12:19 pm

    @patroclus:

    I didn’t say anything remotely like that. I was careful to say, Krugman’s a good guy, but I think his reticence on this point is unhelpful, and he sure wouldn’t get the benefit of the same gentility if the shoe were on the other foot.

    But hey, whatever man

  79. 79.

    jl

    May 1, 2013 at 12:22 pm

    @patroclus:

    Too bad everyone does not have the same knowledge base so we can use lots of fun metaphors.

    So, OK, sheeples, please keep yourself informed about the investigation of J. Everett Dutschke in the Ricin letter attacks.

    Then I can say: “If Brooks keeps up such incompetent hackery, he will be to hack pundits what J. Everett Dutschke is to genius master criminals.”

  80. 80.

    Chyron HR

    May 1, 2013 at 12:23 pm

    @Ben Franklin:

    Just out of curiosity, did you ever refudiate your initial claim that it was a false flag attack? Or did you just switch straight to “the bomber is a innocent political prisoner of the evil Obama regime and his Boston PD stormtroopers” without any messy rationalizations in between?

  81. 81.

    negative 1

    May 1, 2013 at 12:23 pm

    @jl: I hope you realize that your post was a better comment on economic policy than has been made by David Brooks in his entire career. Or Joe Scarborough, who also likes to believe in his role as Chairman of the Fed (TV Branch).

  82. 82.

    patroclus

    May 1, 2013 at 12:23 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Broder actually was a good columnist back when there were moderate Republicans to which he could appeal when Democrats like LBJ were doing something stupid (like Vietnam). If you read some of his stuff from the late 60’s or early 70’s, he’s actually not bad because the fetishization of the centrist philosophy was actually applicable to the then-prevailing political environment. But ever since the Republicans went bat-shit crazy, his attitude just didn’t apply anymore – how can one compromise with nihilism and a destroy the government at all costs mentality?

  83. 83.

    Ben Franklin

    May 1, 2013 at 12:27 pm

    @Chyron HR:

    initial claim that it was a false flag attack?

    cite?

  84. 84.

    patroclus

    May 1, 2013 at 12:30 pm

    @EconWatcher: Yes, I know what you said. I was attempting to make a joke about over-the-top tags by deliberately misconstruing what you said. Like many of my jokes, it evidently did not work. Sorry.

  85. 85.

    Chris

    May 1, 2013 at 12:31 pm

    @danimal:

    Krugman is more of a free agent. He’s arguing for liberal ideas at present because liberal ideas are the better prescription for the national economy. He has been more of a centrist in the past, and will probably become one again.

    This. Wasn’t there major disagreement between him and the old school left on the subject of free trade back in the nineties?

  86. 86.

    rumpole

    May 1, 2013 at 12:31 pm

    Two three thoughts:
    1. One of your better posts.
    2. I can’t wait to see what Pierce does with this. For this, he makes hundreds of thousands a year? Formula: 1. expose navel. 2. pick lint. 3. discuss.
    3. Comments closed @ NYT–too bad.

  87. 87.

    Villago Delenda Est

    May 1, 2013 at 12:32 pm

    @patroclus:

    David Brooks is so far on the wrong side of the Mendoza line that Mendoza himself cannot see him.

  88. 88.

    catclub

    May 1, 2013 at 12:33 pm

    @Cris (without an H): But is absolutely wrong. Telling people we spend $1.5B on foreign aid and they think it is a lot. Tell them it is 0.001% of our budget, and 0.0001% of our GDP tells them it is trivially small. People have no idea on all kinds of different numbers.

  89. 89.

    MomSense

    May 1, 2013 at 12:33 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I wasn’t dreaming about the balloon boy?? That is one of those stories that I can’t believe actually happened!

    One of the worst examples I can remember was when a plane full of people crashed into the ocean and the tv “journalist” asked if sharks were a concern. They had a former NTSB official who rolled his eyes and said something like ‘after plunging thousands of feet at ________ rate of speed and crashing I think sharks are the least of their concerns’.

  90. 90.

    Ksmiami

    May 1, 2013 at 12:36 pm

    @EconWatcher: stupidity and negligent homicide what a combo

  91. 91.

    jl

    May 1, 2013 at 12:39 pm

    @negative 1: Thanks. I try to stay detached, as Mr. Brooks advises.

    There is another reason that Brooks’ column was dishonest, IMHO. As I typed last night in another post on Brooks latest column, I remember reading a profile of Brooks that quoted from one of his old interviews. In that interview Brooks said he chose his major and career path because it promised good money and nice working conditions without having to study or work all that much. As far as I can see, that has always been Brooks’ real approach to writing.

    I periodically look for the profile so I can get the quote verbatim and the source,, but haven’t been able to find it. It would make a nice companion piece to Sasha Issenberg’s fact checking of Brook’s ‘research’.

    Issenberg’s piece doesn’t seem to be online anymore, but the second link in the Slate piece below has a taste.

    David Brooks
    Why liberals are turning on their favorite conservative.
    By David Plotz
    Slate
    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2004/06/david_brooks.html

    I guess I have to go through the Slate piece later today to see if I can find that interview where Brooks spills his real secrete of success.

    BTW, when Issenberg asked Brooks about the inaccuracies and made-up stuff in his ‘reporting’, Brooks used the Limbaugh dodge (ha ha, I do a little comedy, everyone knows that, no one takes it literally). And passive-aggressive harrumphing that Issenberg was being unethical in fact checking Brooks ‘research’. And apparent attempts at intimidation: as in look, your a new writer trying a new writer trick just to make splash, I know what your up to, and I think its a bad idea.

    So, there you are, the humble, ethical, thoughtful Mr. Brooks.

  92. 92.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    May 1, 2013 at 1:01 pm

    WTF does “politics is a battle between partial truths” even mean? I thought it was a battle for votes, at least here in the US.

    Boil it down and he could have written his shortest column ever: Kthug might be right, but he’s shrill. I might be wrong but I’m polite and detached. It’s better to be like me.

  93. 93.

    Scamp Dog

    May 1, 2013 at 1:19 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Are you kidding? When has she written anything except shallow, gender-based insults or adoration? Can you, as @negative 1 says, “show your work”? I guess I’m being a little lazy here myself, but based on what I know of Dowd’s work, I’m not going to spend any time dredging through years of crap columns looking for a gem that may not even be there.

  94. 94.

    PeakVT

    May 1, 2013 at 1:29 pm

    @EconWatcher: And Krugman knows that perfectly well, but he’s avoided saying so.

    I dunno. There seems to be a lot of thinking along the lines of “I’m a well-meaning guy and I’m in the academic econ phd club, so everyone in the academic econ phd club is a well-meaning guy” among left-leaning economists. They refuse to believe that a large section of the profession is (and always has been) intellectually corrupt.

    Plus, if somebody makes an accusation of fraud, they probably should have some proof of intent. There’s circumstantial evidence in this case that the authors intended to deceive, but I don’t see anything that can’t be explained by incompetence or sloppiness. Krugman may “know”, but doesn’t want to get into that discussion out of fear of libel, or because he’s afraid that without proof, an accusation will just blow back on him.

  95. 95.

    pseudonymous in nc

    May 1, 2013 at 2:13 pm

    @Anya:

    What kinda of a horrible parents give their 4-year old child a gun.

    My soon-to-be-ex in-law gave exactly that model of “My First Deadly Weapon®” to his kids.

  96. 96.

    liberal

    May 1, 2013 at 3:24 pm

    @PeakVT:

    Krugman may “know”, but doesn’t want to get into that discussion out of fear of libel…

    He can’t get sued for libel because of the public figure exemption.

  97. 97.

    Cygil

    May 1, 2013 at 3:38 pm

    @Chris:

    Krugman was a huge supporter of NAFTA and a major critic of the rhetoric of anti-globalization activists. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/22/opinion/reckonings-hearts-and-heads.html :

    [A]nyone who thinks that the answer to world poverty is simple outrage against global trade has no head — or chooses not to use it.

    [..]

    The point is that third-world countries aren’t poor because their export workers earn low wages; it’s the other way around. Because the countries are poor, even what look to us like bad jobs at bad wages are almost always much better than the alternatives: millions of Mexicans are migrating to the north of the country to take the low-wage export jobs that outrage opponents of Nafta.

    [..]

    At a conference last week I heard paeans to the superiority of traditional rural lifestyles over modern, urban life — a claim that not only flies in the face of the clear fact that many peasants flee to urban jobs as soon as they can, but that (it seems to me) has a disagreeable element of cultural condescension, especially given the overwhelming preponderance of white faces in the crowds of demonstrators

    Now one doubts that Krugman would go so far as embrace Matthew Yglesias Antoinette’s recent argument that it’s patronizing and culturally imperialist to demand Bangladeshi jobs be as safe as American jobs, and that Bangladeshi workers have clearly formed an ordinal preference for working in death trap factories, so we progressives should celebrate the 410 mangled corpses as proof of the march of true development! But that this bland corporate centrist is now held up as the model of a DFH by the VSP shows how extreme the Village has gotten under the pressure of PMS (post-millenial stress.)

  98. 98.

    Cygil

    May 1, 2013 at 3:41 pm

    @liberal: Nobody knows what a public figure is any more. Nobody ever knew what a public figure was. And all the public figure doctrine states is that one has to prove “actual malice” in the case of a public figure. It has never been a blanket exemption. Plus he can be sued in Britain if there’s even one reader of the NYTimes that lives there.

  99. 99.

    LosGatosCA

    May 1, 2013 at 4:46 pm

    Different sports, different scoring.

    Football – touchdowns
    Baseball – runs
    hockey – goals
    …….
    Punditry – bj’s

    Aint who you know, it’s who you blow, that counts.

    Metaphorically speaking, of course.

  100. 100.

    jl

    May 1, 2013 at 5:18 pm

    @Cygil:

    You should search Krugman’s NYT blog archives. He has changed his mind since the 90s, because he made some predictions based on Washington Consensus wisdom and they did not pan out.

    So, OK, he is still a left-centrist, not too far left of De Long. He is engaged in friendly running arguiment with Stiglitz about the effect of rising inequality on macroeconomic stability (edit: and I think that topic has shown up in his blog, maybe, twice). So, Krugman will never satisfy true lefties, and if you are true lefty, Krugman’s ideas should not be acceptable to you.

    I don’t think Krugman is being praised as being a paragon of wisdom. His main, almost only focus, recently has been on macroeconomics, nothing else. He is the one who has the platform to push a fact and evidence based view of macroeconomic management, against very dangerous and failed consensus that is running the world right now.

    If or when we get the macro right, and Krugman starts (edit: using his blog for) arguing with Stiglitz about inequality, then maybe people will not, and should not, like what he says so much.

  101. 101.

    Pseudonym

    May 1, 2013 at 8:39 pm

    @DougJ: George Eff Will makes me want to hate baseball. He’s the sneering condescension of William F. Buckley but with an abridged thesaurus.

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