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"I know a lot of people have tried to make this a referendum on the president. I would flip it. I think instead it's a defining moment for the Democratic Party whose national leaders now have made it clear that if you disagree with the extreme left in their party, they're going to come after you," he said.
Brooks isn't the only David to say so. Writing in the WaPo, Broder sees it the same way. In the primary, Lamont found his most prominent support on the far-left flank of the Democratic Party.
His organization was a hand-me-down from the Howard Dean presidential campaign, bolstered by a blizzard of Internet blogs from outside his home state. His roster of visiting campaigners was uniformly of the same political slant -- notably Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Rep. Maxine Waters of California.
Now, with former Lieberman supporters such as Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Rosa DeLauro closing ranks behind Lamont, the novice candidate will have an opportunity -- and an urgent need -- to moderate his stance and attempt to broaden his base.
The difference is that while both Davids get the Lamont voters wrong (if they're the left wing, the WaPo editorial board must be the center), Broder gets the big tent idea right. Lamont isn't a wild-eyed radical, so broadening the base will be easy - in CT where the guy is running (sorry to remind you). And yes, that will have to happen for Lamont to win.
After all, Lamont is a candidate of the irate middle, and David Brooks is wrong again. posted by Jeff Martinek @ 11:48 AM David Brooks Pithed on Me (w/poll) David Brooks Pithed on Me by wonkydonkey David Brooks just pithed on me (and by extension, many Kossacks and other bloggers) and I'm not going to take it any more. Many readers no doubt observed that if today's prostate-aged moochers wanted to loaf around all day reading books and tossing off their vacuous opinions into the ether, they should have had the foresight to become newspaper columnists.
Others will note sardonically that the only really vibrant counterculture in the United States today is laziness. Follow me after the jump to find out why the ever-reactionary Brooks is just following a fine old aristocratic tradition of ignoring basic economics and social history to instead pass a condescending moral judgment on the lower classes. Ha!
Ha! The "vibrant counterculture" of blogs, podcasts, vlogs, zines, Move.on and Meetup is nothing more than the "laziness" of those who did not have the foresight to spend their entire lifetimes insinuating themselves into the journalistic establishment like those esteemed purveyors of Truth like Judith Miller, Bob Woodward, Jason Blair, Geraldo Rivera, and Brooks himself.
As the illustration above shows, the tradition of defending unjust upper class privilege by denigrating the alleged vices of the lower classes is an enduring intellectual pretense of those who need to maintain the status quo. This famous illustration named "Gin Lane" by William Hogarth (1751) shows the wicked social abuses the poor would perpetrate due to their indolence unless proper gentlemen made sure they were gainfully employed and kept away from strong spirits. Rather than discuss political and economic reform, or social progress like universal education, the noblesse oblige titter behind their tasteful fans and embroidered hankies at the sheer ridiculousness of moral failings of their inferiors, and cackle at the thought of what would happen should such depravity gain greater social traction.
Brooks seems amused that those without journalism degrees and New York Times paychecks actually care enough to think and write about their country and the evil corruption destroying it from within. He seems to not consider that many highly-skilled and educated people who would LOVE to be working full-time are driving cabs, making lattes or "going back to school." He sees these folks as a "Leisure Class," too good to work the menial jobs available to them because of lazy pretensions, instead of as victims of his beloved "free market" which ships whole industries overseas to add a few cents to the bottom line, while foisting all the associated social costs onto the rest of the nation to pay, as the top one percent lobby for more tax cuts.
Billions for Halliburton and Exxon, not one cent for health care or education! Wouldn't we all be working very hard, if like Mel Gibson, we could command a million dollars a day in our chosen profession? Is it just our own laziness and damn fault that we don't?
The role of family, edcuation, health care, social connections never enters into Brooks meritocracy of the extremely, very overworked rich. But then how did George W. Bush get to where he is today?
All that hard work of four hour workdays and ten weeks of vacation? Yes, there must have been some "screw-up in the moral superstructure." As an alleged "prostate-aged moocher" myself thanks to the dot.
com crash and government-supported outsourcing of tech jobs, and health conditions exacerbated by the lack of access to affordable healthcare in this country, Brooks is not the first person who would prefer to call me "lazy" than actually help make me a whole, fully-productive member of society again. Or to assert that my political opinions and blogging would disappear like a snowflake on a globally-warmed July sidewalk if only I had a "real job" to occupy my squandered "free time." Make no mistake, Brooks and others of the same historical ilk have as firm a grasp on reality as did Marie Antoinette when she said of the starving French peasantry rioting for bread, "Let them eat cake.
" They are whistling pass the graveyard of their illusions that their privileged positions are somehow secure due to their "god-given moral superiority." As people like Brooks and Lieberman notice that something is stirring up the lower classes, like Gandhi famously said: "First they laugh at you..
." So while the laughing rich dump their pisspots out the window on the heads of the poor begging for survival in the streets below, they can't help but notice something seems different now. The allegedly lazy seem to be industriously building barricades and organizing themselves.
Instead of obsequiously thanking m'lord and m'lady for the tuppence tossed into an outstretched hand, there's a sarcastic sneer and a glimmer of something angry about the eyes on the beggar's face. The streets don't feel as safe for them to parade around in their finery, and in hushed whispers in grand salons they ask each other if they have heard of the latest act of insolent disrespect. That groaning rumble in the distance couldn't be tumbrils heading for the palace, could it?
Keep laughing, David, at your Georgetown neocon cocktail parties, while DC declares a crime emergency. Keep laughing, George W, at the "bitch in the ditch" who now owns a piece of Crawford real estate just down the road apiece. Keep laughing, ex-Exxon CEO Lee "Fat Bastard" Raymond at $4/gallon a gasoline and your $400 million golden parachute.
Keep laughing, KKKarl at getting away for now, with what will almost certainly be seen by history as a piece of treason that may well bring the world to its first nuclear "war of civilizations." You keep laughing, and we poor, lazy schmucks will just keep "tossing our vacuous opinions into the ether." And that knock on your door that will come in the middle of the night in the none too distant future won't be the maid arriving early to tidy up.
You keep "standing up for traditional morality" while the housing bubble pops, Americans file record numbers of bankruptcies, and another generation of fellow citizens despairs of ever having the semblance of middle class security their parents took for granted. And remember, he who laughs last, laughs best. posted by Jeff Martinek @ 7:22 AM At Long Last Have You No Sense of Decency David Brooks?
At Long Last Have You No Sense of Decency David Brooks? by intrepidliberal The diary below was originally posted earlier today on my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal. David Brooks is a lightweight whom I typically ignore.
Other progressive bloggers critique his sophomoric punditry and infantile analysis with enthusiasm. Until Friday, I considered attacking Brooks akin to abusing the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Standing on an overcrowded A-Train with malfunctioning air conditioning, I read Brooks' column "Bye-Bye Bootstraps" while commuting to Manhattan from Brooklyn.
Brooks had the temerity to suggest that a "Wal-Mart leisure class" was emerging in America. One wonders how my fellow passengers suffering from the heat as we commuted to our jobs would've responded to this soft minded propagandist of America's plutocracy. The New York Times recently did a piece about how some people out of work were taking advantage of their free time.
Brooks cleverly exploited quotes from these individuals to suggest that today's work ethic belongs to the hard working wealthy. Even worse, Brooks' perverts the word "dignity" to claim it as the property of elites: "Once upon a time, middle-class men would have defined their dignity by their ability to work hard, provide for their family and live as self-reliant members of society. But these fellows, to judge by their quotations, define their dignity the same way the subjects of Thorstein Veblen's `The Theory of the Leisure Class' defined theirs.
They define their dignity by the loftiness of their thinking. They define their dignity not by their achievement, but by their personal enlightenment, their autonomy, by their distance from anything dishonorably menial or compulsory." You see what he's doing?
Brooks is hijacking the egalitarian concept of dignity. Dignity is a virtue that no single economic class, race, religion or nationality can lay claim to as his or her own. Dignity belongs to all of us.
As Robert Fuller has written so persuasively, dignity is a universal right. Brooks has twisted dignity into a virtue belonging to the wealthy. Obviously he hopes to justify the status of today's mega wealthy by implying elites possess superior dignity.
The wealthy are hard working souls driven to achievement while those lazy people working at Wal-Mart just don't have the same dignity of ambition. This man is a jerk. I immediately thought of my good friend known by some in the blogosphere as "Breaking Ranks.
" She is a driven person down on her luck professionally without steady work. I could think of no one more qualified to refute the garbage inside David Brooks' column. She did not disappoint.
My friend is a gentle soul but Brooks' column provoked her into posting a diary on Daily Kos entitled, "F*** YOU DAVID BROOKS AND NYT." Her title made me laugh. In nearly twenty years of friendship from our days as undergraduate classmates, I don't recall her ever dropping an F-bomb.
For her to even have "F" followed by three asterisks was a big deal. Brooks may be a mediocre scribe but he managed to provoke the most gentle and civil of souls. Her post was a tour de force and a must read.
It should've made the recommended list at Daily Kos but didn't. A talented writer she got to the point quickly: "I've been limping around in agony for three weeks. An ingrown toenail got seriously infected, and the only thing Neosporin seems to be doing is preventing it from getting worse.
Why haven't I gone to a podiatrist? I don't have any health insurance. Thus this NYT article by David Brooks makes me want to scream with rage.
Nothing is going into Social Security for me, and it's likely that I will be a renter (or possibly a homeless person) until the day I die. I've never held a full-time job that made use of my education and talents, much less enabled me to pursue my dreams. I haven't been to the movies in over three years, and I don't conspicuously consume at Wal-Mart or anywhere else.
I handwash all my clothes, and I'm down to one pair of pants. Yep, I'm sooo sure this is what Veblen had in mind when he described the Leisure Class. My take on the dignity of my condition diverges considerably from Brooks' mean-spirited screed as well.
So forgive the INAPPROPRIATE CAPS - I'm officially PISSED THE HELL OFF!" Alas, David Brooks enjoys a veneer of respectability. The New York Times is discredited from the Judith Miller fiasco and other transgressions.
However, the gray lady remains a powerful forum and Brooks is a frequent commentator on the inside the beltway talking circuit. Consequently, he has the ability to shape the terms of debate and discussion that influences political discourse. Those who control the terms of debate rule the day in politics.
Since Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat in 1964, conservatives have managed to define the social safety net as evil and taxes on wealth as immoral. With ruthless skill conservatives have promoted an ethos in America that rewards wealth over work and hyper individualism over community values. These people realize their reign of indecency may be coming to an end if the terms of debate are not altered before November.
Enter David Brooks at stage right with his mean spirited diatribe sullying the dignity and virtues of hard working people. Our corporatist policies that reward wealth over work can be justified because in Brooks' view the wealthy are the only people who are truly working. During his weekly appearance with Mark Shields on the PBS News Hour, Brooks even criticized the attempt to raise the minimum wage because it would only help "teenagers.
" Mark Shields promptly corrected him and noted that minimum wage earners are the primary earners in forty percent of households. Sadly, abstract columns by David Brooks and others that justify class warfare from the top are not effectively refuted. Media Matters is terrific at exposing disinformation and falsehoods but this sort of diatribe often survives and eventually becomes an accepted part of the lexicon.
It sounds absurd yet given Republican success at manipulating language it's not hard to imagine liberals soon having to defend that regular working people have dignity too. My friend did a beautiful job in responding to Brooks. More is needed however.
I urge anyone reading this posting to write to the New York Times and demand that Brooks recant and apologize to millions of working Americans. This should be done in a respectful tone without profanity. Blogosphere etiquette will be ineffective.
Instead, please utilize civil assertiveness to persuade the New York Times editorial board that David Brooks has created a firestorm with his indecency. One aspect of the New York Times I always appreciated is the diversity of their columnists. Columnists for the Wall Street Journal are nothing but a total echo chamber for corporate fascism.
At least the New York Times tries to promote a diversity of views with their columnists. Nevertheless, David Brooks' column on Friday requires a heavy volume response from the working people of this country. I can think of no better place to start then the netroots.
posted by Jeff Martinek @ 7:20 AM ...
"I know a lot of people have tried to make this a referendum on the president.
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