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Ezra has a post about David-effing-Brooks. And so here is my response (as a new blog, a poor blog--oh, don't hurt me).

Deep confession time: I liked David Brooks when he wrote in The Atlantic. I looked forward to his columns there. I didn't agree with them but the writing was good and the ideas were interesting (most of the time). But ever since he started at the NYT it's like he took a bunch of stupid pills and then got stupid. Seriously, it's like a mediocre writer with some good prose decided to just suck at everything as though he were the person who wrote high school prep rally scripts to defend his absurd manichean view of a complex post-platonic world. Oh wait, it's not like that at all--it is exactly like that. Ass.

What happened? Well it is the fate of many a public intellictual. You see, he got himself a meme. Though they run the range free and pure, the memes can be roped by wiley men and women. In 2000 he wrote that cover article in The Atlantic about the Red and the Blue. As though he were Solomon, Jesus or at least Stendhal (what with the red and the black). See, the good folk of America--and Greece, Rome, France, Britain, and all the others for the last 3000 years--they cotton to a dichotomy that puts them in the right. And that's the beauty of the Blue and the Red. Whoever you are in that symbology, you are the one who wins. If you don't believe me, then email me and I will explain it to you with sources. So David Brooks got himself a meme, and idea...and he ain't letting it go. 'Cause he ain't smart enough for a NYT column...neither am I...I understand...but then again, I don't have the realestate to fill, so I don't envy him... It's a shame really. Poor man, so swamped with a lack of knowledge.