Bobo recommends we tune in, turn on, drop by the Applebee’s salad bar:
I was surprised by Trump’s success because I’ve slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata — in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own. It takes an act of will to rip yourself out of that and go where you feel least comfortable.
[….]But this column is going to try to do that over the next months and years.Trump will have his gruesome moment. The time is best spent elsewhere, meeting the neighbors who have become strangers, and listening to what they have to say.
It’s not surprising, and hardly a crime, that many, maybe most, people socialize primarily with people similar to themselves, but….most people haven’t made a career out of pretending to be experts on “patio men” and chain restaurants.
I liked condescendingly jokey Bobo better than sad panda Bobo, I’ll admit it. But, to paraphrase the great Joe Cabot, I’ve got a joke for you. A bunch of Republican elites, sitting in the “Meet The Press Greenroom”. All wondering how the fuck Donald Trump got to be their nominee. What should we have done, what didn’t we do, who’s fault is it, is it my fault, your fault, his fault, all that bullshit. Then one of them says, hey. Wait a minute. When we were planning the conservative movement, all we did was sit around telling jokes about Al Gore and other dirty hippies. Get the message?
Trentrunner
When I saw Brooks trending on Twitter, I was hoping he was dead.
He always disappoints.
redshirt
I only frequent the upscale Ruby Tuesday’s salad bar. And the folks there tell me that entitlement reform is the 800 pound gorilla in the back booth.
? Martin
Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. TPM headline:
So, Clinton will now win CA by record margins.
BGinCHI
Least. Self-aware. Man. Ever.
Barry
‘Bougipus’ would be slumming it. BoBo hangs out with other courtiers.
piratedan
Obviously BoBo simply needs to get out more and thankfully, Applebee’s is a chain where he can find comfort nearly anywhere that has a medium sized airport. Guess even op-ed parasites need a way to build up airline miles.
BGinCHI
@Trentrunner: How can we miss him if he won’t get into the coffin?
Rand Careaga
So Brooks will boldly go where he feels “least comfortable?” I imagine he’s thinking of some shabby suburb where “Make America Great Again” signs are thick on the ill-maintained lawns. I can point him instead to some neighborhoods near me where he’ll feel way less comfortable than that.
For the rest, unlike the first commentator in this thread, I wish Brooks—the second-stupidest* man ever to hold a regular op-ed gig at the NYT (Bill Kristol is of course champion for life there)—a long career, if only because it’s so entertaining to read Charles Pierce’s eviscerations of his work.
*He’d better not rest on his laurels, though: young Douthat hath a lean and dumb-ly look.
Mike J
To answer your tweet Doug, NBCSN already did a special on Leicester City’s miracle season, but obv doesn’t have the ending.
cokane
Guess that makes Ted Cruz Mister Blonde?
? Martin
Oh, and I think last night’s surprisingly large and violent Trump rally here in OC portends a much more active role for CA in this election. I don’t think CA will be competitive in the general, but we’re 5 weeks from the CA primary and that’s a lot of time for protesters to get in front of national news cameras – something they don’t usually get out here. I suspect they will make the most of the opportunity.
BGinCHI
@Mike J: Coincidentally, Leicester made such drastic improvements by getting out of their usual bourgeois strata.
The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...
@BGinCHI: I think Bill Kristol would have a thing or two to say about that.
Seanly
What’s a grifter to do when someone comes along and you know they’re playing a grift on your grift? You can’t say “Hey, this schlub is a grifter,” because that will reveal your own grift. All you can do is play along with the new grift and hope you still get some of the money you swindle out of the old folks. Apparently, Bobo didn’t get the message.
dmsilev
@? Martin: I don’t think we can be completely sure until Bill Kristol weighs in.
tanman
Sounds like Bobo has finally arrived at stage 4 of https://twitter.com/ivortossell/status/624959591546245121?lang=en
A Ghost To Most
@dmsilev:
Have we seen Kkkarl’s math yet?
Mary G
The only consolation is that Bobo will probably speak condescendingly to some white supremacist Trump supporters and get the crap beat out of him.
singfoom
Every time Bobo opens his mouth and wonders about how did Trump happen, I want to slap him.
@BGinCHI:
Exactly. “How did this short fingered vulgarian who just uses identity politics ever get so far on our party that’s totally been based on identity politics since roughly 1968? I just can’t understand it.”
Living proof that the incompetent fail upwards….
Mike in NC
Has Bobo finally concluded that Idiocracy was a documentary?
BruceFromOhio
This made me laugh. Then realized its like a choice between drowning or being poisoned: both are slow, painful, one-way journeys. Why go there?
@Trentrunner:
This made me laugh, too.
? Martin
@dmsilev: No, I agree. But it’s a hell of a good early data point.
trollhattan
@? Martin:
If only California had a significant Hispanic cohort to counter the hoards of independents and Dems breaking for Trump. I blame Hillary.
singfoom
Does anyone here think David Brooks has ever read the comments section from one of his articles? This is a serious question. EVERY SINGLE article has hundreds of comments and about half of them are some variation of: “Why the hell are you puzzled about this, you built this over years and years….”
Shouldn’t reading the comments be part of his job? Maybe he has an assistant that only shows him the positive comments. Maybe he can’t use computers.
Brachiator
@redshirt:
Their servings are certainly kept fresh. They change with every new day.
Mike J
I really preferred Brooks when he starred in Hey Hey in the Hayloft.
rikyrah
I’m so tickled.
These are the kinds of columns where you just get a good cup of tea, and your favorite danish..
take a bite…read a bit…smile….then get a sip of tea…
repeat….
you will feel so good at the end ..LOL
The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...
@Mary G: Proving once and for all that there really is a god…
pacem appellant
@? Martin: Not a chance, Halperin or otherwise. California will be solidly blue until there is a leftward realignment, which isn’t happening this decade or next.
? Martin
@trollhattan: On that note, Hillary choosing a latino running mate could forever change the electoral makeup. Latino turnout is one of the bigger problems Democrats need to solve and having Trump on one side and a latino VP candidate on the other – particularly one that looks like a future presidential candidate, well, that could start to flip some states into the purple category.
PPCLI
@singfoom: Not just identity politics, either. There is a whole flock of chickens that are coming to roost here.
Case in point: Remember the good old “Brooks [sic!] Brothers riot”, in which an organized mob lawlessly broke in to prevent an elections board from carrying out one of the most basic functions of a democracy: counting the vote. It was very quickly established that these were all paid Republican operatives pretending to be “outraged citizens”, and that the whole shameful affair had been arranged by none other than Roger Stone.
It worked — the count was stopped, and in Jeb Bush’s Florida, there were never any legal consequences for interfering with the democratic process by mob action.
I do not recall Brooks ever condemning this as the disgraceful thuggish action it was. He was dizzy with love for W, that’s for sure, and love conquers all, it appears.
So now Roger Stone is stirring up violence and threats of it, in the service of someone Brooks doesn’t love. And Brooks is shocked, shocked to learn that shades of mob violence are being used as a political tool.
I don’t know, David: maybe if you had taken a stand against this sort of anti-democratic thuggery in 2000, it wouldn’t be biting you and your fellow “moderate” GOP enablers in the ass now.
Mnemosyne
@Seanly:
I may need to re-read “Huckleberry Finn,” but I vaguely remember that’s why the two con men ended up getting tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. Didn’t one of them start the con, then the other one showed up, and trying to make the two cons dovetail wrecked the whole thing?
If not, I know I read a book like that, but I can’t remember the details. That’s what I get for reading too much.
NobodySpecial
If you’re a Republican stooge and a propaganda spewer of the highest order like David Brooks, I have several suggestions.
1) A season in sackcloth and ashes.
2) Olympic Bleach Guzzling.
3) Sealing your garage with plastic and then running the car for a few hours.
There are more, but I think you get the gist.
singfoom
@PPCLI: Ah yes, the Brooks Brothers riot that shut down the recount and helped hand the election to W. You know, if that shit went down today I don’t think it would have worked because more people are plugged into the internet. In 2000 it didn’t have the grasp of the media narrative like it does now.
But we’re talking about Brooks here, so IOKIYAR.
I’m sure he’d find a bullshit “both sides do it” for that too.
dollared
@BGinCHI: So true. And his scope of friends truly is narrow. Because apparently nobody has done the logical thing and punched him in the nose.
oklahomo
@redshirt: Something to think about, indeed.
Marc
@Mnemosyne: It’s implied that the locals were tipped off by people they’d conned upriver. The book doesn’t say what happened in the one that went sour – it’s after they betrayed Jim and Huck, and he’s seeing the consequences. But there were plenty of earlier cases where they went in, ripped off the locals, and just barely escaped.
LAO
@singfoom:
I read somewhere — and I absolutely can’t remember where — that Brooks , intentionally, does not read the comments to his columns.
MattF
Brooks fell, in a big way, for zip-code demographics– where you take census (or other polling) data and segment populations by their preferences. You find correlations– people who subscribe to Field and Stream buy tents and people who subscribe to The New York Review of Books buy dictionaries. Understandably, people who want to sell you stuff want this kind of data analysis.
And it’s a gold mine for pop sociology, so Brooks loves it. But what it tells you is problematical– because it leaves out politics, and politics matters.
singfoom
@LAO:
Evidently I just needed to ask the internets:
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/07/david-brooks-calls-internet-comments
SNIP:
I just can’t even. I wonder if he considers the psychological damage he’s done via his columns… How the hell do you get to that level of punditry without having a thick enough skin to read the comments? I guess that’s a “comfortable perch” that he’s got where he never has to consider improving or anything.
NotMax
Real men stride past the salad and head straight for the red meat bar.
:)
dollared
@singfoom: So fucking perfect. To say that at Aspen.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc: “The Royal Nonesuch!”
D58826
OT but a cop in Fla. was fired and arrested for assault after beating a handcuffed woman. Sadly the beating part is nothing unusual but he did it in front a number of other cops. They will not be disciplined according to the police chief. The reason:
See how many cops will just ‘witness’ a civilian beating up on a fellow cop.
Paul in KY
@singfoom: I am sure he does not read them. If he read them, it would not change him doing what he is paid to do.
Major Major Major Major
@singfoom: comment sections are well known hives of scum and villainy. Worse than Applebee’s. No wonder he avoids them.
LAO
@singfoom: I can only imagine how damaged Brooks would be, if he bothered to read Charles Pierce.
ETA: and heavens forbid, a pundit challenges himself, by confronting criticism and having defend his position.
FlipYrWhig
Is this one of those things where rich people identify themselves as “middle-class”? Because I guaran-fucking-damn-tee you that David Brooks hasn’t been “in the bourgeois strata” for 30 years. He’s a pampered courtier.
daves09
The Aspen Ideas Festival-sounds like something from the salad bar at Whole Foods. Can you imagine the incredible, mind altering tedium of any confab where BoBo is an honored attendee? As they all stand around sipping a good, but not great, chenin blanc and murmuring ” Oh, it”s turrible, turrible, whatever shall we do? Better go ask some ‘real’ people.
Anybody know any?”
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@PPCLI: This, a thousand times this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
to say nothing of the physical. It was on the PBS news hour, not a column, but I remember him mewling in sorrow about Democrats who were voting against the flowering of democracy in Iraq and the ME. Said flowering being of course Shock and Awe.
ten years later Yale hired him to teach a course in humility
@Paul in KY: i wonder if he reads Charlie Pierce’s Moral Hazard pieces. I’d bet not. I suspect Tweety googles himself like a madman and reads every comment he can get his jittery eyes on, Chuck Todd too.
Trollhattan
@? Martin:
Texas and Florida come to mind–aligned with California that’s a big chunk of the nation’s population. Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico should be tippable.
It’s little wonder voter suppression is the hot ticket.
Belafon
@Rand Careaga: He wants to be uncomfortable, but it should be the kind of uncomfortable that he can go to his nice comfortable bed and forget about when he goes to sleep. Kind of an “upset stomach” type of uncomfortable.
bemused
Brooks is extremely dopey but thinks he is thoughtfully cerebral. Halperin also, too.
daves09
@LAO: If they-the pundits-tried to actually think rather than regurgitating what they said to each other at the salad bar, their heads would explode. Or alternately collapse from the vacuum.
Frankensteinbeck
@Seanly:
On the contrary, a major grifter tactic is to claim they are the only truly honest person and everybody else is ripping their marks off.
singfoom
@bemused: @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This just makes me wonder if we could somehow get the Dunning-Kruger effect renamed to Dunning-Kruger-Brooks. Fuck, I’d be willing to stand up a URL and a website and fuck around with some SEO so we can get it up in the google mentions.
I’m thinking something along the lines of what Dan Savage did with Santorum back in the day. That site was spreadingsantorum.com which is actually still operational.
Off to see if educatingdavidbrooks.com is available as a domain.
Mike in NC
@srv: Does Drumpf also have a combover on his tiny balls?
Frankensteinbeck
@FlipYrWhig:
Brooks, like a lot of the Punditariat, is convinced he’s a Heartland Real American who just happens to have been so smart and hardworking that he graduated to a wealthier society. But again, only his intellectual and moral superiority separates him. He’s sure he’s culturally the same, just a better quality. This leaves him primed to go ‘Whoops! I need to connect with the common man again!’
Turgidson
@? Martin:
Good lord. Hillary might crack 70% in California against Trumpenfuhrer. Obama cleared 60% against comparatively acceptable GOP nominees both times. After Trump drives his favorables with women down to the teens and Latino voter registration spikes, I’d be surprised if Hillary didn’t at least win 65% here, barring a YOOOOGE event or revelation that sinks her candidacy too late for the Dems to toss Uncle Joe into the fray in her place.
eemom
I hate all forms of that smug-ass buffoon. To echo what others have said, I’ll never forget my chagrin when I discovered, to my surprise, that the fuckstick is only a year or so older than me, such that I can’t realistically even hope to ever inhabit a Brooks-free world.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: Super-agree on that! He’s as bourgeois as Louis Bourbon would have been.
starscream
They’re going to steal Wisconsin. The vote suppressors in that state have been sounding confident.
Paul in KY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Why would he? He knows he’s being slagged by a better writer & slagged on stuff he can’t change, because then they’d fire him for another paid hack.
Would be cool if they strapped him in a chair ala Clockwork Orange & made him read Charles’ comments.
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: I think it’s all just a shtick. He knows he’s writing propaganda & that stuff you talked about is just his way of disseminating it.
Yes, I am a cynical SOB.
Miss Bianca
@Trentrunner: You are a *bad* person, for making me laugh at that sort of joke. That being said, bravo. : )
bemused
@Paul in KY:
I agree he knows he is writing bullshit but the pay is so sweet.
If he really wanted to get get out of his comfort zone, I’d parachute him into a small town/rural bar/eatery with motel across the street and force him stay there a week eating deep fried everything and park him on a barstool to chat with the locals plus the regular boozers. He’d get an education of an America quite different from suburban Applebee’s. Send Halperin with him.
Miss Bianca
@daves09: all they’d have to do is head over McClure Pass to Somerset and Paonia, and the remains of the CO coal-mining economy..wait, what am I saying. They might get as far as David Koch’s estate, but no further.
Paul in KY
@bemused: Would be nice to do that. Would not change his propaganda, though. Might make him hate himself more (which would be a good thing).
bemused
@Paul in KY:
I amuse myself imagining very comfortable, smug idiots like Brooks and Halperin actually experiencing people and regions they never have nor will. Won’t change their thinking at all but it would be fun to see them sweat. I think they’d be terrified.
StringOnAStick
@Miss Bianca:On his way past McClure Pass towards Paonia he could stop by the fake 1860’s western town built by the non-political Koch brother for his amusement and that of his friends, unless that particular Koch bro sold it between now and when I saw it 20 years ago. It really is the perfect metaphor: a fake town where the rich people can all pretend to be just like the heroes in the old Hollywood Oaters, only they think what Hollywood fed the public was real.
Dadadadadadada
@Belafon: Alanis Morrissette (sp?) said it best: “You like pain, but only if it doesn’t hurt too much/You like rain, but only if it’s dry.”
Mike E
@Mike in NC: He’s a honey-glazed tiger testicle already
Miss Bianca
@StringOnAStick: ’tis the same one. The same one who lends the town of Paonia a tank – a real, honest-to-God tank – from his personal collection of such things – to roll down the main drag during the Cherry Days (Fourth of July) parade. Because the blood of tyrants. Or patriots. or something.
Turgidson
@LAO:
or driftglass. I would pay good money (well, a little money anyway) to force BoBo to spend an hour reading driftglass’s takedowns of his piffle, while being recorded for youtube.
Bob2
I just feel people need to remember where the title came from.
http://crooksandliars.com/2008/06/03/memo-to-david-brooks-applebees-doesnt-have-a-salad-bar
Jeffro
@NobodySpecial:
Those are good. It’s a shame Brooks can’t wrap his head around the obvious response: Vote. For. the Democrat.
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck: Brooks (and so very many other pundits like him) really need to read this, which covers much of how they got where they are:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-luck-matters-more-than-you-might-think/476394/
“But…but…I’m different! I really did pull myself up by my bootstraps, just like Trump and Romney…”
Joel
@daves09: Mental masturbation is like the physical kind, but less chafey.
Zinsky
I don’t get the Bobo references. Sorry.
Steeplejack
@Zinsky:
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000), by David Brooks.
Wikipedia: