Sept 25th, 2011
I must admit, the new Chris Hayes weekend show is off to a fine start. Yesterday, he did a great job of exposing just how dishonest one very familiar conservative talking point really is. Oh, and he took a righteous shot at David Brooks, as well.
Showing posts with label David Brooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Brooks. Show all posts
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
What's The Worst That Could Happen? ctd...
July 5th, 2011
Although I generally regard the NY Times' David Brooks to be a hack and an apologist for the Republican Party, there are some signs that reason is creeping into his analyses. He wrote earlier today about the games being played by the far-right in the debt limit debate:
"The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor."
I am in complete agreement with Mr. Brooks on this one.
Although I generally regard the NY Times' David Brooks to be a hack and an apologist for the Republican Party, there are some signs that reason is creeping into his analyses. He wrote earlier today about the games being played by the far-right in the debt limit debate:
"The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor."
I am in complete agreement with Mr. Brooks on this one.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Reading Around
Jan 14th, 2011
It seems clear that Jared Loughner is profoundly mentally ill.
However, to suggest that because his worldview is warped a discussion about it's influence upon him is not germane is ridiculous.
In a column that I can only describe as exposing an outlook of detachment bordering on delusion, the NY Times' David Brooks expresses incredible shock that we have engaged in any discussion of the shooter's possible politics:
"Other themes from Loughner’s life fit the rampage-killer profile. He saw himself in world historical terms. He appeared to have a poor sense of his own illness (part of a condition known as anosognosia). He had increasingly frequent run-ins with the police. In short, the evidence before us suggests that Loughner was locked in a world far removed from politics as we normally understand it."
"...why, one has to ask, does this person with mental illness, carefully select for assassination an already targeted and demonized congresswoman, rather than, say, a supermarket, or a workplace, or a school? We don't know precisely yet - but it sure is relevant to ask that question. Why not shoot up the animal shelter he was fired from? Or the classroom he was banished from? In fact, it is a kind of bizarre suppression to avoid the obviously political fact of the target Loughner selected."
Indeed. There are 541 members of the senate and the house (including the house's 6 non-voting members). What were the odds that one of the 20 members targeted with gun-sights on the infamous Palin poster would be nearly killed in an act of gun violence by mere coincidence?
"I find this notion that in real time we should not even be discussing or airing or debating the political and rhetorical climate that preceded this to be a dangerous piety. Airing the question of how public culture affects the disturbed mind is not just legitimate in this case, but vital, in ways that Brooks of all people should understand. David is a very shrewd analyst of culture, of why it matters, of how we are all connected - and yet, suddenly, this one young man exists in a total vacuum, where politics and culture do not exist.
Such a place does not exist - however much some would now like it to."
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