It always amuses me when our pundits accuse others of being self-absorbed. Bobo:
Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private “Crossfire”; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan’s egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.
Every moment of every round table on every Sunday morning show *is* one big self-celebration. I wish I could say that these celebrations were routinely interrupted by intelligent analysis, but that isn’t true.
At some level, our entire elite media functions as a strange satire: residents of Bethesda and Georgetown telling flyover country viewers about how real Americans think, millionaires telling middle-classers they need to sacrifice more, narcissists complaining about self-celebration….
Update. And, yes, how do you write this column without mentioning “Mission Accomplished”?
Update update. More generally, it’s ludicrous to claim that our civilization has been humble in anything like the recent past. Whether it’s Francis Fukuyama claiming that the west has ended history, George Wallace declaring white Americans “the greatest people that have ever trod this earth,”, or the fact that perhaps the most iconic image in the world is God giving a white guy a high five, the western world is one self-loving place and has been for quite some time.
Zifnab
What is up with the intersection of sports and politics? Is there some kind of metaphor to be made about a group of people who spend their whole lives working to join an elite crowd of highly focused, highly paid competitive television stars who go out to battle each day – some winning, some losing – but whose actions ultimately amount to nothing but fattening corporate wallets?
You see the baseball/politics intersection so often, you can’t help but wonder if there’s something else to it.
Dream On
At least in those round-table discussions, no one soils those dainty dainty hands…
It’s a Village thing.
DougJ
Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a baseball game interrupted by self-celebration.
I also wonder if he’s seen what happens when goals are scored in hockey and soccer.
Calouste
@Zifnab:
Yes, the use of borderline legal but rather immoral performance-enhancers. Pills on one side of the fence, lobbyist money on the other side.
ed
He wrote that piece of shit star-fucking column without mentioning Mission Accomplished. David Brooks, you’re fired!
DougJ
What is up with the intersection of sports and politics? Is there some kind of metaphor to be made about a group of people who spend their whole lives working to join an elite crowd of highly focused, highly paid competitive television stars who go out to battle each day – some winning, some losing – but whose actions ultimately amount to nothing but fattening corporate wallets?
Good question.
cleek
all these people with all their opinions, and they’re all SHOVING THEM DOWN MY THROAT !
Darius
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a good response to this dreck:
The Grand Panjandrum
TNC has a post on this one.
JK
A Reader’s Guide to David Brooks, the left’s favorite conservative
h/t http://www.huffingtonpost.com/archive/236/news/2008/08/12/readers_guide_david_brooks_8253.html
Memo to David Brooks: Applebee’s doesn’t have a salad bar
David Brooks: “Obama’s problem is he doesn’t seem like a guy who can go into an Applebee’s salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there. He has to change to be more like that Applebee’s guy and as he’s done that he’s become much more transactional. Much more, I’m going to deliver this and this and this to you on policy.”
h/t http://crooksandliars.com/2008/06/03/memo-to-david-brooks-applebees-doesnt-have-a-salad-bar/
The Grand Panjandrum
@The Grand Panjandrum: Oy. Darius beat me to it.
jl
This post has a point to some extent. But Brooks earnestly ponders and agonizes over vaguely deep phantoms of thought and great significance before he delivers his self-satisfied predetermined opinions. There is a Difference that must be Respected and Noted Well.
Boor vs. Weasel: an eternal contest which defines the essential nature of the significance of what we are. And our essential decency. And status-quo ante retention ratio, and smugness quotient. Of of which must be noted. Very existence as a civilized society and whatnot and therefor. Also.
Zam
I find it quite interesting that all pundits and pols will immediately bash West and various sports stars but when someone like Wilson does something like this we must have a serious debate as to whether or not it was ok.
Jay B.
Who asked him?
Zam
@Zam: I’d also like to add Kanye is just a Teapartying townhaller, if I hear any Repub criticize him my head might explode.
LoveMonkey
Whatever. This is all about me, as it should be. They make noise out there, you write about it, I post to your thread.
I am an attention vampire. As long as you are enough of a vampire to bite the idiots, I can bite you and draw your life energy for my own purposes.
Don’t stop, blogger, please don’t stop.
bedtimeforbonzo
Re: David Brooks
The people who would have preferred to have a beer with George Bush voted him in over Al Gore and John Kerry and we know how that turned out.
Stupid.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This is nothing more than a squid-cloud of false equivalence BS so Joe Wilson can make good his escape. A few entertainment and sports celebrities are ill-behaved, hence it is OK for Rep. Cracker (R-Jesustan) to yell at the Darkie-In-Chief for committing the crime of PWB (Presidenting While Black).
Jay B.
Pharisee, 33 A.D.:
Time was, you submitted to God, these days, you have others claiming to represent his will here on Earth! Can you imagine the nerve?
JK
@Zifnab: @DougJ:
It’s timing. Serena Williams’ misbehavior, Roger Federer losing his cool, and Kanye West’s comments come close on the heels of Joe Wilson’s outburst.
The MSM loves pulling together isolated events such as these and packaging them into some analysis or trend story.
I don’t care how Serena Williams, Roger Federer, or Kanye West behave in public. They’re entertainers.
Joe Wilson is an elected official. He’s a different story. He needs to conform to a code of conduct.
DougJ
@LoveMonkey
EvolutionaryDesign
@DougJ: HA! Real ‘Mercans watching soccer? Surely you jest
LoveMonkey
@DougJ:
Yes, yes, don’t stop.
slag
I can’t imagine why David Brooks didn’t mention Beyonce offering up her MTV music award speech time to Taylor Swift. What a grandstanding jackass she was!
(Yes, I’m proudly displaying my knowledge of today’s pop culture news…No, David Brooks would not be pleased with the level of self-satisfaction I’m getting from actually knowing about this.)
bedtimeforbonzo
Here’s a baseball look-at-me self-celebration — by the fans: The Wave.
Stupid.
Kayne West couldn’t spell class if you gave him the “a-s-s.”
Beyonce, giving Taylor Swift her moment, showed she was raised the right way. For someone who could be a diva, Beyonce seems pretty cool.
DougJ
Yes, yes, don’t stop.
(No offense meant, btw.)
ellaesther
Well, I think the attitude is often: a) you’re self-absorbed, because you’re not talking about what matters to me, because b) what matters to me is more important than what matters to you.
Which is bad, and yes, I do actually think that it characterizes American discourse more now than in the past — I think this not just because I’m middle aged and cranky, but because I left the country for a good long time and came back to a place that was, without a doubt, coarser and less gracious than the place I left.
BUT, having said that, you honestly have to be self-absorbed, to some extent, to be successful in any number of fields, including the arts and politics, and that’s just the way it is. It’s when that self-absorption doesn’t come with a side of humility or sense of irony that you run into trouble. (Also, when it isn’t accompanied by talent. But that’s a different conversation).
Midnight Marauder
@DougJ:
I also wonder if he’s seen what happens when goals are scored in hockey and soccer.
Seriously. Not to mention that some of the best celebration in sports history have been team celebrations.
The “Bob and Weave” of the St. Louis Rams (circa. “The Greatest Show on Turf”) and the 1980s Redskins “Fun Bunch” group high-five (which was also in Tecmo Bowl, no?) come to mind.
jl
Certainly, entertainment celebrities and sports figures acting out and behaving badly is new. Never used to happen. Look at Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth. Athletes getting upset over bad calls never happened until Hippies took over the Democrat party and corrupted stuff, and corrupted the wise and noble Conventional Authority that Brooks respects to the max.
Too bad this poor Southern Gentleman was corrupted by Kanye West and Serena Williams behavior, several days in advance. The reverse time causation is proof of their fearsome powers of corruption.
I will go ponder this, significantly.
LoveMonkey
@DougJ:
Me either. We are a team.
IndyLib
Anyone have a frikkin’ clue why Dennis Kucinich voted no on the resolution to admonish Wilson?
Leelee for Obama
In the interests of full-disclosure, I find Brooks amusing sometimes, in the way I found my Grandchildren taking a dump at inopportune moments amusing. He really isn’t doing anything important, but the adults are made uncomfortable and try not to notice what he’s doing.
He is an ass, and a narcissistic ass at that. I stopped reading him so long ago-I rarely even remember he exists. I have been happier since then.
EvolutionaryDesign
@IndyLib: Probably because he thought the whole thing was a waste of time, and didn’t want to make Wilson a marter for the right. (Too late for that though)
JK
Obama On Letterman, Sunday Shows In Media Blitz
h/t http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/15/obama-to-appear-on-letter_n_287437.html
2 weeks ago, David Brooks joked to Jim Lehrer that Obama would be guest hosting the NewsHour. Brooks followed this up by whining that Obama does too many media appearances.
George Will has been moaning and groaning, on and off since Jan 20th, that Obama does too many media appearances.
Last weekend, NPR’s Scott Simon asked David Gergen if Obama is doing too many interviews and media availabilities. Naturally, Gergen agreed that Obama is doing too many media appearances.
I voted for Obama, but I wonder if anyone in the WH pays attention to what the MSM is saying. Obama is being blasted for doing too many interviews and media appearances. So how does he respond to the criticism? He just doubles down with more of them as noted in the Huffington Post story.
Zifnab
@JK: You know, it wasn’t even the fact that he thought Applebee’s had a salad bar. Honestly, anyone could make that mistake as the flare restaurants all kinda smear together.
What gets people is Brook’s faux populism. A guy writing from his desk in some major newspaper office in some skyscraper in Manhattan telling the little people peppered out below him what they really think.
But the Applebee’s remark just made his comments extra laughable. Because you worked through the article thinking, “What the heck is this guy talking about? Is he completely out of touch or am I completely out of touch?” And then you get your answer.
ellaesther
Re: the update update, I feel a very strong need to say that you would be hard-pressed to find any people/nation (especially if that people/nation is the Great Power of its day) that does not believe itself to be pretty damn fabulous — and if, perchance, my people is not in a position of power, well then, it’s a damn disgrace and a result of the evil doings of those who are less than we.
I don’t believe that the western world in general, or the United States of America in particular, is in any way unusual in this regard, either historically or currently.
Leelee for Obama
@JK: Yeah, the WH is ignoring the media CW, and it causes me to haz a happy!
DougJ
You know, one other reason why sports are a bad example for this is that it’s an arena where failure is the norm. Most teams don’t make the play-offs, most people get cut from a team eventually, etc.
A friend of mine claims this is why athletes are superstitious and often religious (to the extent that there is a distinction between those two). It also explains why they may feel celebration is in order sometimes.
Sid Viscous
“Obama’s problem is he doesn’t seem like a guy who can go into an Applebee’s salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there.”
Yes, because that’s what you look for in choosing a candidate for the highest executive position in the world — someone who doesn’t look out of place among the obesity enthusiasts at a casual dining chain restaurant.
So very important that the dull-witted and stupid don’t feel threatened by an intelligent man, and a ‘negro’ man at that. Better to have a mumbling, lazy and ignorant asshole like Bush. I’m sick of our national culture being held hostage by the Cretin Force of scared-stupid southern trash.
JK
David Brooks has a NY Times column, is a regular panelist on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, is a regular on the Charlie Rose show for roundtable discussions on politics, is a regular on the Sunday morning news shows, and makes regular appearances on WNYC. This guy is no position whatsoever to complain about other people being self-absorbed.
JK
@Zifnab:
David Brooks can always be counted on to provide some good comic relief.
bedtimeforbonzo
I suppose going on all the Sunday shows on the same day could be viewed as self-indulgent.
I know if Bush did it I would have viewed it as over the top.
bedtimeforbonzo
I suppose going on all the Sunday shows on the same day could be viewed as self-indulgent.
I know if Bush did it I would have viewed it as over the top.
Ash Can
@JK: Probably because, unlike his predecessor, he communicates. And, since said predecessor left him with so much shit to clean up, there’s a lot to communicate about. (Frankly, I think he deserves the sobriquet of “Great Communicator” more than Reagan does, since he easily speaks as well as Reagan did, and has more of substance to say than Reagan did on top of it.)
JK
@Leelee for Obama:
I hope Obama has something genuinely new to say in his upcoming Sunday interviews. If not, George Will and his fellow wankers will be over Obama claiming that he’s an egomaniac who’s obsessed with his own celebrity status.
jl
@Sid Viscous: A presidential candidate wandering around an Applebees looking for a salad bar the the chain does not have would be serious problem, cause a stir, and pompous weasels like Brooks would have a field day ponderificating about it.
But it’s OK for Brooks to asser that every Applebees has a salad bar when none of the ones I have been into have one, and I have read that none of them have, and is OK for him to retain his credibility, because…
Because he has big money behind him, that’s why. Which also an old and respected tradition of Western Civilization (among others).
Mark S.
Everyone knows the proper way to celebrate a touchdown or home run is to leave your hand on your teammates’ inner thigh for the remainder of the game.
smiley
OK. I’m going to do something here that I’ve criticized others for doing in the past. I’m going to post without reading all the previous posts. Sorry if this is a repeat.
The Eurocentric bias here in the USA is truly stupefying. When I pointed out to my father that Chinese and Indian histories started before or at the same time as biblical history, he freaked out. Not in the bible = does not exist.
Leelee for Obama
@JK: I find that just about every time Obama is on the TV, his numbers go up, because he gets his points across so well. He may not have anything new, but then again, I don’t know-he changed minds last Wednesday night-and I didn’t hear anything new. But I could give his speeches almost verbatim. I’m not his audience. He knows how to speak and who he’s speaking to.
Midnight Marauder
@Leelee for Obama:
I find that just about every time Obama is on the TV, his numbers go up, because he gets his points across so well. He may not have anything new, but then again, I don’t know-he changed minds last Wednesday night-and I didn’t hear anything new. But I could give his speeches almost verbatim. I’m not his audience. He knows how to speak and who he’s speaking to.
You know, I don’t think he always has to say something new during his appearances, simply because there’s so much hysteria right now. If he just keeps repeating pretty much the same thing–or appearing on a slew of shows and just knocking down bullshit CW after bullshit CW–I think logic will eventually win out.
Much like someone said upthread, the man is exceptional at communicating a point, particularly in a one-on-one setting like an interview.
Leelee for Obama
@Midnight Marauder:Word!
smiley
@smiley: OK, so maybe I exaggerated a bit. Still, south/east Asian cultures are really old.
devopsych
Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.
This is code. When I lived in D.C. during the 80’s I was a big Redskins fan. John Riggins would run over these big bucks into the end zone and just coolly drop the ball ; no jubilatin’ or thankin’ jesus or minstrel’atin’. This was a point of pride in the white half of a deeply segregated community. Riggins was a dick, by the way. I hope he got sober.
bedtimeforbonzo
“John Riggins would run over these big bucks into the end zone and just coolly drop the ball ; no jubilatin’ or thankin’ jesus or minstrel’atin’. This was a point of pride in the white half of a deeply segregated community.”
Emmitt Smith and Marcus Allen were two black running backs I enjoyed watching who reacted to a touchdown as if they had been in the end zone before. Class acts.
Jason Bylinowski
Man, DougJ – there you go again being all smart & shit. Once again, though, there you are, just getting on a roll when all of a sudden the post ends! Always leave ’em wanting more I guess, but seriously, keep it up and don’t be afraid to EXPOUND ON DAT SHIT.
DougJ
@JB
Thanks.
b-psycho
I was never a fan of Jordan, but I thought his speech was hilarious. What is the uproar?
Shell
Honestly, I didn’t even think people watched music video’s anymore.
tigrismus
Christ Jesus, he compares the behavior of people at one staged event done TO COMMEMORATE THE END OF THE WAR to the behavior of people at awards shows or sporting events? Boggled, the mind is.
HyperIon
Two things:
1. I think self-effacement is a very positive personal value. I hate being around people who LOVE themselves and can hardly wait to tell you how fabulous they are. Unfortunately many famous people (sports figures and pols especially) LOVE themselves.
2. One of my favorite scenes from the film of Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” takes place in a domed stadium. Old Noam is up on the big screen holding forth on how sports is the opiate of the masses while down on the field two oblivious football players in full regalia are practicing their high five routine.
drillfork
@bedtimeforbonzo:
Also Barry Sanders. Also.
It’s funny how the older I get, the more I appreciate those players “who act like they’ve been there before.” As a Vikings fan, Robert Smith was always one of my faves for this reason. Plus he was a pot-smoking astronomy geek, which made him really, really interesting.
It’s also funny the different reaction of the world-at-large to showboating white players.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24BRveFlcKg
Fans and media just wuv player enthusiasm — when it comes from Brett Favre…
agorabum
One of those things is not like the other…
Michael Jordan being inducted into the hall of fame. It was his friggin moment. He’s got 6 rings and could have had 9. One of the greatest, and the greatest of his generation and time in basketball.
Jordan speaking about playing great ball would be more like Swift speaking after sweeping the VMAs or Obama giving a speech after passing the perfect health care bill.
mclaren
In terms of the Western world being sunk in the depths of self-congratulation, I have to step in here and point something out:
Isaac Newton, a European, invented the universal theory of gravitation and explained the processes that held the planets in their orbits. Not some Aztec priest, not a Japanese guy, not a Chinese guy, a European.
Jenner, a European, invented vaccination. Not some guy in Africa, not a Hawaiian islander, not a Maori.
Einstein thought up special relativity and general relativity. Not an Incan ruler, not a native of Madagascar, not an Australian Koori.
Europeans created the scientific method. Euro-American civilization created the germ theory of disease, antibiotics, anaesthesia, organ transplants, molecular genetics, genetic engineering, Euro-Americans deciphered the structure of DNA, landed a man on the moon, built the first airplane andthe first submarine, created the internet and the integrated circuit and the computer, invented radio and television.
That’s an impressive record. It’s probably not coincidence. A civilization can get lucky once, as the Chinese did when they discovered gunpowder, or even twice, as when a Chinese scholar invented calculus. But you don’t get that record of accomplishment with a really long lucky streak. There has to be something about a civilization that encourages those kind of achievements. A civilization that creates the scientific method and racks up that kind of track record may have something to congratulate itself for.
The uses to which the West has put inventions like atomic energy have been put, at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, prove less laudable. We have to carefully distinguish Western technological and scientific accomplishments from its demented political and military behaviour. But the technological and scientific accomplishments exist. They can’t be wiped out by jabbering about “multiculturalism.” The scientific method works.
Whick
The George Wallace quote as originally quoted by TNC was “the greatest people to have ever trod this earth,” not “the greatest people to trod this earth.” I think that’s worth correcting, just so you don’t seem to be attributing atrocious grammar to him, which is not the point.
chopper
michael jordan can give whatever the hell speech he wants to. the dude has got no mercy.
ruemara
@mclaren:
Before you slither back under that rock you inhabit, them ay-rabs want their zero back.
CMcD
Let’s say I just arrived on this planet five minutes ago. What image are you talking about? This is all I could come up with.
DougJ
What image are you talking about? This is all I could come up with.
Yes, that is right.
CMcD
Whew, thanks!
bago
The best things from Bethesda are Fallout and Oblivion. Period.
Bart
@CMcD: Except that it might not be “God”. There’s a theory that claims that the “red mass you see on that pic of the Sistine Chapel isn’t God + some angels, but Da Vinci punking the Vatican and actually painting… a brain!
Bart
Here’s a page about that theory:
http://www.thecaveonline.com/APEH/michelangelosbrain.html
mclaren
Hey,ruemara, wake up and get a clue.
The Sumerians invented writing. The Egyptians invented brain surgery. The Babylonians invented exponentials and algebraic functions. The Chinese invented gunpowder and calculus. The arabs invented the zero. The Vikings invented the first practical magnetic compass.
Lots of cultures invented lots of things. No other culture prior to Western Europe, however, invented the scientific method.
With the scientific method, you get not just one discovery, but an unlimited conucopia of discoveries. Because the scientific method works.
If you want to impress anyone with the scientific and intellectual acumen of the Arabic-speaking world, you’re going to have to reckon with the U.N. Arab Human Development Report 2002-2005 first. It’s damning.
For details, see this article: What went wrong with the Arab world? Why does it lag so far behind?
When you come across a word you don’t understand in that Economist article, ask your mommy. She’ll sound it out for you.
Hamilton-Lovecraft
If you want to impress anyone with the scientific and intellectual acumen of the Arabic-speaking world
…you could point out the etymology of the words ‘algebra’ (al-jabr), ‘alchemy’ (al-kimia), ‘algorithm’ (Al-Khwarizmi), the couple of hundred stars named by Arabian astronomers, etc, etc.