Ezra Klein: The Return of Brooks

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May 29, 2005

The Return of Brooks

David Brooks's column today is the best I've seen him write since signing on with the Times. This is what he used to be like in The Atlantic -- playful, thought-provoking, idiosyncratic. Turned out he couldn't do that on a biweekly basis, so he gratefully slumped into the waiting arms of talking points and hackery, but somewhere, deep inside reasonable and non-threatening exterior, lurks the unique cultural critic everybody used to enjoy.

Ezra

May 29, 2005 | Permalink

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Comments

I agree about one thing - Brooks has never written anything better. That's not setting the bar too high, though, is it?

Posted by: zeke | May 29, 2005 7:12:32 PM

It's better than his usual crap but it seems to misunderstands Marx's view of class and completely misrepresents the USA class system. Brooks's "educated class" doesn't seem much like the true upper class of the real world. It's in fact much more similar to the upper middle class that for some reason he seems to despise. Look how, when talking about Bush and Kerry, he emphasizes the education but desemphasizes the pretty substantial financial assets of their families (and by doing so, esentially reversing the causal relationship). By "forgetting" who owns the means of production (a small detail in Marx's theory), he paints an inaccurate and misleading portrait of Amarica dominant class.

Posted by: Carlos | May 29, 2005 9:34:38 PM

It's not better than his usual crap, it's the same old crap...

I read that column as pretty much (what I would consider) an indictment of the wealthy and the current political (currently Republican) empire more than the any "educated" elite, yet Brooks was quietly shifting the blame to the coasts. Big surprise.

"...The educated class reaps the benefits of the modern economy - seizing for itself most of the income gains of the past decades - and then ruthlessly exploits its position to ensure the continued dominance of its class."

I just call this the fucking upper class. The dominance is self-sustaining, education almost has nothing to do with it. It is merely incidental, in that they are all expected to be and wealthy enough to be well-educated. The education itself is irrelevent.

Since he casually alludes to Bush, I'll use him as an example of what I'm talking about... Bush's Andover, Yale and Harvard education has nothing to do with anything except his own family's legacies and expectations. His power and success (or lack thereof) are all due to family and political connections and nothing to do with his actual education or experience during those formative (for most) years.

He might still be President today if he had none of the degrees, he just would have been packaged and sold differently. ie: a thicker coat of down-home, reg'lar folk.

Brooks still blows. This column is more of his class crap, he is merely taking what I would consider the flaws of the upper class (predominantly Republican) and painting a picture with an extremely broad brush to include all the college educated people red-staters and Rush want to tag "educated elites."

I thought Rich's column was very good however...

Posted by: Mr Furious | May 30, 2005 1:11:32 AM

Sorry if that post is repetitive and flawed, I'm tired and only have a BFA...so I'm probably not "elite" enough to weigh in on this anyhow.

Posted by: Mr Furious | May 30, 2005 1:13:39 AM

I thought Brooks's column was crap, as usual. He takes Marx's theory and somehow makes the problem Democrats, as usual. I'm getting tired of the party of millionaires saying Democrats are the elites. It really brought it home in one of Bush's bamboozlepalooza appearences when Bush said you can still make C's and become president.

Posted by: Unstable Isotope | May 30, 2005 9:12:02 AM

It would seem that if Mr. Brooks espoused more Marxism, then this group would like him better....is that it?

Posted by: Robert Zimmerman | May 30, 2005 10:27:06 AM

Robert, if you are gonna write a whole column based on Marx's views, yes, it helps if you understand Marxism properly.

Posted by: Carlos | May 30, 2005 2:44:56 PM

I can't decide which NY Times column this weekend was worse. This one by Brooks where he jumps through flaming hoops trying to find someone other than his rich, corporatist buddies to blame for the rising inequality in this country or Kristof's heaping pile'o'crap which manages to blame Congressional democrats for Bush's sudden interest in protectionism concerning China. So much bull, so little time...

Posted by: Col Bat Guano | May 31, 2005 11:56:15 AM

Funny, I thought Brook's column rather reminded me of Mao, not Marx, with it's call for the uneducated masses to break free of their chains. Cultural revolution anyone?

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