Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Republicans do not trust women.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

He really is that stupid.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Books are my comfort food!

So very ready.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

You are here: Home / The Dim Possibility of Showing Some Restraint

The Dim Possibility of Showing Some Restraint

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Man, I hate to give Brooks any attention, but this is about perfect:


In case you haven’t been following along, Brooks did what he usually does when everything is bleak, it’s the middle of the night, he’s all alone and the dummies might be right: he masturbates onto the page, rolls over and goes to bed.

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  4. 4.

    The Dangerman

    I hate to give Brooks any attention.

    Arguing with/about Brooks is roughly like arguing with someone that likes to fart in elevators.

    ETA: Oh, hell, I just gave Brooks an idea for a column about Jerusalem Artichokes.

  5. 5.

    chopper

    an imaginary cletus safari. that’s just great. meanwhile the times and its ilk won’t interview actual democratic voters.

  6. 6.

    zhena gogolia

    Wow, I couldn’t read it but it made me vomit anyway.

    I hereby publicly admit that I canceled my cancellation of the NYT. I wrestled with it, but going into the impeachment I really feel I need to know what they’re saying. I have Washington Post, BJ, and countless twitter feeds to give me the facts.

  8. 8.

    henrythefifth

    Also, that picture looks like some sort of horrific B-Movie Santa as an old-man-vampire-alien hybrid. “What would you like for Christmas, my precious!?!?!?”

  10. 10.

    PeakVT

    Brooks is a professional turd polisher, so have some sympathy. He’s working with some pretty rough source material these days.

  13. 13.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    ew…

    also…

    I haven’t bothered to read this. If Pierce takes it on I’ll read the parts he picks out. But twenty years ago or so, my first exposure to Brooks was (IIRC) a long magazine excerpt of his book on Bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians, aka Yuppies, pretty much what DougJ tagged as tote-baggers). What stood out to me was that Brooks, a self-styled conservative intellectual, clearly identified with Bobos, and was quietly sneering in his contempt for the sort of people he set up in cultural opposition to the Bobos even as he argued that they were culturally and politically dominant– what we were calling the “angry white males” in the Gingrich, which sounds like the people Brooks is pretending to empathize with in this piece. It’s an old story by now, it was then, but it’s really metastasized in the trump years: The wealthy using cultural resentments to get “non-college whites” to vote for Wall St friendly policies.

  15. 15.

    Bex

    Salad Bar Man, Salad Bar Man
    Consumed by angst and lettuce
    But the MAGAs he dreams up,
    Say he’s never met us.
    David Brooks
    Salad Bar Man

  16. 16.

    the Conster

    How much does the NYT pay him? Does he have an editor? Why doesn’t anyone tell him he’s a mediocre hack with mommy issues and he should be seeing a shrink and leave the country alone? WTF is going on over there at the NYT? He is the avatar of mediocre white patriarchy, and I have so many questions about how he keeps getting prime real estate to demonstrate it.

  20. 20.

    Amir Khalid

    @schrodingers_cat:
    Brooks is actually Barack Obama’s age and mine, 58, so he’s not old enough to have a grown granddaughter.

    Oh, wait. You were snarking. He does look older than his years, doesn’t he?

  23. 23.

    Jinchi

    Wait!?

    Is “Flyover Man” the man on the ground, or the man in the plane?

    (I refuse to read Brooks’ column).

  24. 24.

    geg6

    @Amir Khalid:

    For real? He’s more than 2 years younger than me?!?!?!?!?!?! He looks about ten years older. Of course, the jailbait on his lap doesn’t help, does she?

    He doesn’t really think she married him for his hot looks, does he?

  25. 25.

    The Moar You Know

    Brooks is actually Barack Obama’s age and mine, 58, so he’s not old enough to have a grown granddaughter.

    @Amir Khalid: There’s no way he’s 58. Refuse to believe it. I’m five years younger than him. He looks 20 years older than me. I’d have guessed him to be in his early seventies. Not quite my dad’s age but close.

    I know I’m aging well but damn, 58? Wow. Guess that Star Wars thing about evil aging you, and making you a,literal physical monster might be truer than I suspected.

  27. 27.

    Ruckus

    @geg6:
    His hot looks and his immense brain. Is his brain in any better shape than trump?
    If he wrote one bad article and 2780 mediocre ones he’d just be, well mediocre.
    He’s written 2500 very mediocre ones and 381 horrible, rambling pieces of crap, poorly or not at all sourced, it’s like he has writing diarrhea. OK not like, it is.

  28. 28.

    misterpuff

    @Amir Khalid: Dave “Cooter” Brooks of The Flyover Trailer Park (the people Bobo lionizes) certainly could have grandchillen and possibly a great grandchild in the oven.

  32. 32.

    MoxieM

    @zhena gogolia: Me too. Yesterday, maybe the day before. They gave me some poor intern on the chat machine. I think he was overwhelmed with cancellers. I gave him the spiel about why–long pause, could I wait? I waited a while. Then I just typed, “Ok thanks, Please cancel my account. Bye.”
    I consider it cancelled. Will check. I believe folks may be quitting, if not in droves, in batches. Enough to make them uncomfortable. I had subscribed since I moved to the larger NY Metro area and it’s the local paper, more than for its national coverage. But I just couldn’t take it. Notwithstanding (name drop alert!) I used to babysit Frankie Bruni in the summer from time to time. (Nice family.) So I have a soft spot for his mush. The others? Mostly, feh!

  33. 33.

    West of the Rockies

    I know him really only from NPR when he chats about politics with E.J. Dionne. Dionne is always the obvious winner, but Brooks makes a “well, that’s true” point every so often. He is one of those guys who you know knows better, but he just can’t admit he’s chosen the wrong side 40 years ago and now is going to stick with it come hell or high water.

  34. 34.

    PJ

    @West of the Rockies: No matter how low Trump and the GOP drag this country, Brooks will stick with “Well, yes, these things Republicans are doing are not ideal, but the immoral, elitist, unpatriotic Democrats would be far worse, they just don’t understand the real America” as long as the NYT and Aspen Institute checks keep rolling in.

    This is a guy who, no joke, teaches a class on “humility” at Yale. According to the Yale website, “His most recent book is The Road to Character,” (and how to avoid it). Irony is truly dead, at least at the Applebee’s salad bar.

  35. 35.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I 1st became aware of him when he was interviewed on NPR about his book on bobos. My impression from that was he thought bobo’s were nasty, entitled—and Bill was their poster child. I remember thinking, oh no, W is the poster child for your bobos. Anyway, ever since I’ve pretty much seen him as a joke.

    Saw him a few time on PBS Newshour.

    Enjoy driftglass’s devastating take-downs

  36. 36.

    Amir Khalid

    @PJ:
    I am reminded of an old joke: “I know the very best book on humility. As a matter of fact, I wrote it myself.”

  39. 39.

    Just One More Canuck

    My mind keeps running the ‘poems’ in the tweets through my head to the theme song from Spiderman (or Spider Pig), then switches it to Smelly Cat from Friends

  40. 40.

    OGLiberal

    The column was idiotic and the core problem remains that Flyover Man would never vote for a Democrat so why do Congressional Dems need to care about what Flyover man thinks? Brooks just want Dems to do things Republicans want so that when Republicans lose they still get their things done because he’s convinced Dems that the only way they can keep winning is by winning over Flyover Man, who, in reality, will never vote for a Dem….ever.

    Sadly, some elected Dems fall for this, although I think they’re getting better at not falling for it. And I know many of Brooks fellow pundit class members fall for this as well….because Flyover Man is part of the “Real America” they love obsessing over but would never, ever live in.

  42. 42.

    Jay C

    Well, I actually read Brooks’ “Flyover Man” piece to see if was really as bad as the Internet chat said it was (SPOILER: It is.) – but found the NYT’s sidebar comment page to be a lot better read. Of course, it’s a pretty low bar to hurdle to gin up a better discussion thread on an issue than a David Brooks column, but at least some people out there see through his gibberings (though unfortunately, not too many, apparently, at the NYT)…

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    I have no idea what this post is about. Was there a link to a Brooks column that I missed?

    I generally pay no attention to Brooks. Too late to stop now.

  45. 45.

    Jay C

    @Brachiator:

    Funny, mistermix seems to have forgotten the actual link to Brooks’s latest column

    Not missing much, though: basically a self-own (possibly unconscious) parody of the stock NYT “Cletus safari” Op-Ed fartings. Though this time, Brooks didn’t even bother to seek out an actual “Flyover Country Trump Supporter” but just made one up.

  46. 46.

    zhena gogolia

    @schrodingers_cat:

    No, it really wasn’t the crossword puzzle. I could have just subscribed to the puzzle without anything else. But I just feel I need to know what they’re saying as the impeachment goes forward. I have to just detach and not get emotionally invested in them as if they were “my” paper, as they were for so many years. It was a struggle. Part of me was relieved to cancel it, but then I felt that was like putting my head in the sand.

  47. 47.

    zhena gogolia

    @Jinchi:

    On the ground, in the “flyover” states.

    Or as I heard an admissions director call it once (I think unironically), “the big square states.”

  48. 48.

    Ruckus

    @Jay C:
    He would have had to travel to flyover country to interview one. All he really has to do is look inside himself and write. With very little changes to hide his identity as the subject.

  52. 52.

    SRW1

    NYT columnists must be like Supreme Court judges. Lifetime appointments. There’s no other explanation.

  53. 53.

    Neldob

    And the comments include someone saying how scared they are of the venemous, sneering liberals. Yahoo!

  54. 54.

    Shana

    @the Conster: Last time I checked the NYT had disabled comments for his column. I know he’s said he never read the comments when they were allowed.

Comments are closed.