Shorter David Brooks

Ceding the Center, 10/26/2008:

• Here are 800 words about an ideology I just made up called "progressive conservatism," which encompasses both everything and nothing, and is not an oxymoron at all.

Above: "Any questions? No? Well good then!"

Seriously. Go read it if you don't believe me. It is complete, total, utter, unadulterated nonsense from beginning to end. Basically this "progressive conservatism" amounts to supporting state intervention in the economy without actually being a scary state-intervention-supporting liberal; Brooks cites land-grant colleges and Teddy Roosevelt's trust-busting -- not generally considered a case of prudent centrism -- as examples, but my favorite is when he appropriates Alexander Hamilton for supporting "a vibrant national economy so people can grow and thrive." As opposed to, you know, everybody who opposes a growing and thriving economy. OBAMA '08: POVERTY AND SQUALOR FOR AMERICA!

I've always thought David Brooks is basically a bullshit artist, but it's been especially bad lately; did you see last week's column, which is about "Patio Man"? Patio Man. It really seems like the impending Obama landslide has scrambled his brain.

I understand that Brooks, and his crazed musings, still have a lot of fans at Harvard and in the Times' elite readership -- but why?

Krugman Wins Nobel

Princeton Professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics today. I can't say I'm always the biggest fan of his column - though he's almost always right, I'm not really an econ guy - but as a very high-profile liberal economist, this might be the Nobel committee making a political statement.

He also just happens to be a damn good economist though.

Story here

Shorter New York Times

Just about everything John McCain said about Obama in today's speech was a lie. Worth reading; it's a shockingly long list. Does McCain think he's going to get away with this? Is he?

NYTimes to McCain: Dude, You Can't Write

Forgetting for a second that McCain probably didn't write the thing himself, let's take a look at that Iraq policy op-ed of his that the NY Times refused to publish, in a move that has our favorite libertarian Frances Martel up in arms.

I’m not a John McCain fan by any means, but what glorified liberal rag The New York Times did to him and his editorial today crossed boundaries of objectivity and decency that should not have been crossed.

I think there's another answer, and it's this: McCain, or his speechwriter surrogate, submitted a genuinely unpublishable piece. Take a look for yourself over at the Drudge Report, which I commend for bringing this issue to light--not because I care about self-referential analysis of old media by new media, but because this op-ed is seriously educational, in a bad way.

Full disclosure: I think the surge worked. I thought it would, and I'm glad we did it. I do think we should think about eventually leaving a country we had no business in in the first place. But none of this has anything to do with why McCain's piece was rejected. I doubt it would have been accepted by the Crimson. It's a thinly-disguised attack ad, a shallow and partisan rhetorical stream. Case in point: It mentions Obama ten times. Ten. I'm excluding pronouns. (Examples, and much, much, much more, after the jump...)

Read more »

Bad news for Hillary from the NY Times

The New York Times, which endorsed Hillary but has since shown signs of ambivalence, finally seems to have turned against her:

 It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.

It looks like Clinton will take PA by 8 or 9 points--just about what we expected, and not enough to dislodge Obama from the lead. And this is about as far as the Times can go in the direction of telling their endorsed candidate to call it quits, it seems to me:

 It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.

Losing the NYT Opinion page won't hurt her with voters directly--but it could put off big donors and super delegates.

Everything that is wrong with David Brooks

Brooks on Wednesday, writing about the shallow ABC debate that everyone hated:

We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall. Remember how George H.W. Bush toured flag factories to expose Michael Dukakis. It’s legitimate to see how the candidates will respond to these sorts of symbolic issues.

Okay, but, see, no it's not. Only in the twisted mind of a mainstream political reporter is anything related to these issues "legitimate". The other day I had an argument with a commenter in which I suggested that our media (elite and wannabe-elite) is cognitively incapable of distinguishing the symbolic from the real; well, here you have Exhibit A. This man needs help.

...Perhaps the greatest contribution of political blogging since its inception around 2002-2003 has been its thesis that mainstream political journalism, as an institution, is intellectually bankrupt. Digby has been the most prominent and eloquent articulator of this thesis, and Atrios probably the most reliable, but it informs almost all the discussion everywhere from activist-type blogs to snark blogs to the wonkosphere and outward. It's a commonplace at this point. So maybe that's why so many bloggers were in such googly-eyed outrage on Wednesday night; ABC unabashedly and unreservedly endorsed all the transparently stupid bullshit that we've spent years trying to beat back. Moments like these, and Brooks' astonishing column, ought to remind us how far away we really are from having a media with a brain...

Bill Kristol cannot write

Here is the opening of yesterday's Bill Kristol column:

Browsing through a used-book store Friday — in the Milwaukee airport, of all places — I came across a 1981 paperback collection of George Orwell’s essays. That’s how I happened to reread his 1942 essay on Rudyard Kipling. Given Orwell’s perpetual ability to elucidate, one shouldn’t be surprised that its argument would shed light— or so it seems to me — on contemporary American politics.

Oh my god just kill me right now.

Why do we care that you were in the Milwaukee airport, or that you found a book from 1981? Also, "perpetual ability to elucidate"? Elucidate what? And isn't it a given that "it seems to you" that this random thing you read is relevant to what you write about? Why else would you be writing about it? THIS PARAGRAPH TELLS US NOTHING! It feels like an overinflated second draft from Expos 20: Literature in Social Context or some such bullshit.

No sane person, after reading this paragraph, would proceed any further into Kristol's column. Naturally I did -- and I can tell you it's a predictably stupid argument, which basically goes "Democrats have not been in government lately, therefore, they are silly." Don't bother.

I just want to say: putting this worthless crap on an editorial page next to Paul Krugman really ought to be at least a misdemeanor.

Frank Rich tears the GOP a new one

Frank Rich's latest column in the times is great. I haven't been a huge fan in the past, but this is making me a believer. This caught my eye, but read the whole thing.

"By my rough, conservative calculation — feel free to add — there have been corruption, incompetence, and contracting or cronyism scandals in these cabinet departments: Defense, Education, Justice, Interior, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. I am not counting State, whose deputy secretary, a champion of abstinence-based international AIDS funding, resigned last month in a prostitution scandal, or the General Services Administration, now being investigated for possibly steering federal favors to Republican Congressional candidates in 2006. Or the Office of Management and Budget, whose chief procurement officer was sentenced to prison in the Abramoff fallout. I will, however, toss in a figure that reveals the sheer depth of the overall malfeasance: no fewer than four inspectors general, the official watchdogs charged with investigating improprieties in each department, are themselves under investigation simultaneously — an all-time record."

(http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/opinion/13rich.html)

A Look at the Past Year Using the NY Times

So in the spring, I sprung (pun intended) for the Times Select subscription to the NY Times online. Since then, I have saved some 60 articles and columns. Tonight, I looked back through the list and saw a few things I thought I would share with you all. Google the title of the articles in quotes and I'm sure you will come up with the text. I couldn't post the links for most of them because they are only available on Times Select. I realize this post is extremely long - but I thought if you ever have a free day for reading, y'all might like to read some of these articles. They are mostly in chronological order from past to present.

Read more »