Tweet
David Brooks concludes a bizarre column explaining our love for the Olympics with the ability to keep contradictory ideas simultaneously in our mind. We admire both glory of the winner and also the nobility of the good loser.
Does David Brooks want us to reconsider Flat Earth theories too? (Photo: Marc Kjerland / Flickr)
He uses this observation to then criticize “monomaniacs:”
The world, unfortunately, has too many monomaniacs — people who pick one side of any creative tension and wish the other would just go away. Some parents and teachers like the cooperative virtues and distrust the competitive ones, so, laughably, they tell their kids that they are going to play sports but nobody is going to keep score.
Politics has become a contest of monomaniacs. One faction champions austerity while another champions growth. ….
The right course is usually to push hard in both directions, to be a house creatively divided against itself, to thrive amid the contradictions.
Obviously, the right course is usually to push hard in both directions. We should both use modern medicine to cure people of illness and also let them die because we believe the power of prayer is more important. We should both eliminate segregation and racial discrimination and preserve them because of the inherent superiority of the white race.
What the hell does Brooks think he is saying here? There are any number of issues where there is right and wrong and David Brooks believes that every bit as much as the monomaniacs he is criticizing. He has apparently decided that there is no right or wrong in the debate over fiscal policy.
That’s fine, we would then expect a columnist for the country’s most important newspaper to give us the evidence for this position, not to call people names because they believe that the evidence supports one or the other position. (It does support the case for growth.)
Oh well, at least the NYT is giving a job to a person without the skills to compete in the modern world economy.
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economy and Policy Research. He also writes a regular blog, Beat the Press, where this post original appeared.
15 Comments
C’mon Dean, you know what this cynical, mercenary scribbler is getting at: Growth for me, dirt for thee.
At least the princess had no idea what she was talking about when she said, “Let them eat cake”.
Compradors are such snakes.
Brooks’s writing has finally ascended to the George Will level of pomposity.
I skip reading Brooks b/c I fear brain damage on contact.
Thanks, Dean Baker, for the reality-check.
Every time I see this ass klown on some non-talk show or hear him on NPR I get an intense urge to look for a creme pie to toss into his smug face.
Hey, if Bobo was the final arbiter of what is acceptable behavior, thought, etc, I’m sure the world would be a MUCH better place.
/bs
Imagine a world of Bobos, in their conservative clothes, all behaving just like he thinks they should…shudder
Finally, something reasonably intelligible :-)
A breakthrough!!
It may be the Martinis!
As in: Ti many martoonies?
Doncha just love post-modern journalism?
Brooks is just a tool: I’ve believed that since I wasted a weekend reading Bobos in Paradise.
did this pompous drip reproduce? hope not….sterilization of the insipid might be a good thing
David Brooks took some LSD and saw the awesomeness of the universe in its endlessly simultaneous creation and destruction in the fiery darkness of the eternal now.
It must be very strange to be David Brooks. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
You, Mr. Baker, are hostile.
I do not mean to demean LSD or the universe. I favor deep personal investment in both. I think the former should be a high school field trip study type deal. I’m just trying to account for D. Brooks’ early attempts at poeticizing his spiritual growth.
I wish Mr. Dean had done a better critique of Mr. Brooks’ column, because it is there to be had. Mr. Brooks writes:
“The Olympics are a good example. The Olympics are a peaceful celebration of our warlike nature.”
That’s a statement crying out to be repudiated, because it emphasizes the worst characteristic of modern humanity, a characteristic which, in bloated form, repudiates and obliterates the other side of our nature, which is peaceful. How about, Mr. Brooks, a peaceful celebration of our peaceful nature? We do have a peaceful side, sir, but you wouldn’t know that from your column.
It is possible (though Michelle Obama would disagree) to approach games without so much emphasis on who wins and who loses. Native tribes used to play games in which there was no winner, the game itself was the important aspect of playing because it taught skills of endurance and agility. This win/lose thingie is very helpful to the 1% way of getting us all to subscribe to a very few folk making off with all the marbles.
I’m personally not that excited about the Olympics any longer. It has been merchandised to death and the pollution from all those fireworks and that huge cauldron, when we are all expiring (or soon to) from the heat strikes me as the height of malicious madness.
We need to go back to “It’s not who wins or loses; it’s how you play the game.”
Sorry, I did mean Mr. Baker above, no disrespect intended.