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David Brooks Misses Barack Obama
So, David Brooks must have woke up yesterday morning and thought about how the “pants crease” endorsement was the Stupidest Thing He Had Ever Written. He then thought, you know, I bet I can top it. So he took out his laptop and wrote a smarmy Valentine’s Day card to Barack Obama, declaring him so much more awesomely better than those brutes that the Republican Party is running.
Obama radiates an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance that I’m beginning to miss, and that I suspect we will all miss a bit, regardless of who replaces him.
In getting to that paragraph, he commends — I am not making this up — Obama’s “remarkably scandal-free administration,” his willingness to consider points of view other than his own, and the flawless grace and class of Obama and the First Lady.
V the K, I commend you for selecting the least inflammatory or controversial quote from Mr. Brooks column.
Brooks column is completely unhinged from reality. I think a democrat would be embarrassed to author such a thing (if we can find one with shame).
It’s hard when you know your paramour is going to move across the country next year.
A man on the search for truth indeed.
To paraphrase the late great Dan Hicks, who died yesterday: “How can I miss him if he won’t go away?”
Having read the whole thing, and not being a regular Brooks reader, I half wonder if this is just a sly way of sticking the knife into Clinton, Cruz, Trump and, yes, Obama.
But only half.
[redacted for vulgarity]
Wow, didn’t see that one coming. No offense intended except to the conservative stalwart Brooks.
Thank you V the K for mucking this stable from time to time.
Good luck with that last part, Brent.
Brooks is the perfect example to demonstrate that media personalities should not get to label themselves. Brooks has chosen to be called a Republican (and allows others to call him that), but he clearly does not understand what it means.
This is nauseating. I’m sorry you had to read it, V the K, but thanks for doing the hard work some of us can’t.
Perhaps the house he grew up in was under power lines.
It’s early, but as of this writing you win Ricochet today.
I just read the whole column. I threw up a little in my mouth several times.
Why does David Brooks call himself a conservative? Why does anyone allow him to call himself a conservative? Why does anyone read David Brooks?
Why am I asking so many questions?
I am not so sure that is the case.
The Times’s idea of conservative, they mean a tame, housebroken eunuch, they would be delighted if we were all this way and frankly they don’t understand why we aren’t since Obama’s greatness is obvious.
That Barack Obama, in addition to being one heck of a President, is one heck of an op-ed writer too.
I mean, Obama did write that thing himself, right? Because that’s about the only explanation I can come up with for the adulation expressed.
By the way, if you think the column is bad, do *NOT* wade into the comments section for it.
David Brooks, asshat to the multiverse, is on a journey — following the crease in Barry’s pants — from ‘jerk’ to ‘jackwagon’. Currently he’s somewhere in between. Jerkwagon?
Don’t know why anyone would be surprised; after all, Brooks gets his news from the New York Times.
I have been wondering about this myself and am beginning to suspect it is purely opportunistic. Mr. Brooks is often served up as the voice of conservatives at the NYT, opposite Mark Shields on PBS, opposite E.J. Dionne on NPR etc.
If he were to end this charade, this claim, then what would he have? Who would he be? Why merely one of the legions of milquetoast “moderate” political commentators out there all competing for attention. His shtick is to be the designated house conservative for all his Leftists colleagues to play off of, without that he has nothing.
I never thought about that, but, damn, it makes sense.
Brooks is conservative. To him it’s a dress code, a set of manners and the ability to put on a State dinner. There are many of these on “our side” where this part of “conservatism” holds special weight, even here (especially?) on Ricochet…Mona Charen for example.
This is a luxury those of us who are without vast savings to weather Democrat administrations don’t have. We who hear harsh language on a daily basis, often from our bosses, customers, passers-by at Wal-Mart, who experience third-world manners first-hand, who ride subways and buses…
I’ll just call them Classy Conservatives, and believe me, it’s a real rift on the right.
These folks have it made no matter what and they opine and vote accordingly.
Has anyone ever googled whether President Obama has ever called a political opponent a pussy?
What I wouldn’t give to be on a Sunday morning political discussion panel with David Brooks.
Give us a hint, sounds like?
If he did I am sure it would be scrubbed from the internet in milliseconds.
No, but he did give Hillary the finger in 2008. He’s also done it to Ryan and others.
The round table discussions always try to cover a wide variety of view points, from the far Left all the way to the extreme Left.
Anyway, Salon is criticizing the Brooks piece as being to nice toward the GOP candidates.
It bothers me more how a word comes to mean something vulgar – especially by those who are the most prudish, ironically.
For communication, there must be a sender and a receiver. Pussy to my grandmother means a feline animal. To me as a kid, it meant coward, but to prudes… it means vagina (can I say that?).
So the context here was coward, but you are the one stuck with the vagina image. Too bad for you.
Well Ted does have an effeminate demeanor, so we can ask Trump which definition that he would prefer….
Pussy does not mean “effeminate” in common usage, and he just repeated the word shouted out by a female in the audience. It was about waterboarding and Cruz’s reluctance to use that method. So your strange notions that it could mean something else just shows willful ignorance on your part.