In his New York Times column today, David Brooks raved about the performance of Sarah Palin in last night's debate. Curious thing: Mr. Brooks was a talking head on PBS before and after the debate. Assume his head talked in a New York studio since his column had no dateline. So, for Mr. Brooks, the debate began at nine pm EST and lasted ninety minutes followed by post-debate debate between Mr. Brooks, Jim Lehrer and Mark Shields. After that, throw in a few minutes of saying goodnight to Mr. Lehrer and Mr. Shields and, some time around eleven PM EST, Mr. Brooks writes his column. For the Times edition in Los Angeles, you can't get the results of a night game in Yankee Stadium that ends at ten, but let's assume that debates, while less satisfying, are more important than baseball games so the Times' deadline for Mr. Brooks is loose. Let's assume -- even though, after the debate, he observed on PBS that Governor Palin mentioned John McCain repeatedly while Senator Biden barely mentioned Barack Obama the whole night -- that Mr. Brooks is a very fast writer and a very keen observer with very organized thoughts. (This, despite the fact that Senator Biden did mention Senator Obama 20 times in the first 30 minutes of the debate alone.)
I know what you're thinking: He watched the debate on PBS? Yeah, I did because I'm into uni-tasking and television is supposed to be a visual medium you watch as opposed to a written medium you read and all the other stations constantly throw crawls and graphs and meters on the screen. If I wanted to read, I would have opened a book.
Actually, I really wanted to open a book. At debate time, I was near the end of Indignation, by Philip Roth and was finding the book devastatingly heartbreaking despite the fact that Michiku Kakatani ruined one of the book's biggest surprises in the opening sentence of her Times review. Serves me right. Never read a book review. Really, never read any review. Philip Roth doesn't read them and why should he? He's a genius. One time, not in band camp, I was livid about one bad review amid twenty good ones -- and that was for a tv pilot. That was merely a case of the lowest form of journalism critiquing the lowest form of art. Roth gets reviewed for supreme literature, literature worded with exquisite detail and plotted with oppressive brilliance and he's been doing it for so long with such painstaking consistency, can't Senator Obama put forth an initiative to ban criticism of Philip Roth books? Roth is Senator Obama's favorite author too so it really seems like a natural.
And speaking of sports, what's the point of television sports criticism? Here we are in the subprime of our lives and there's some person occupying a newspaper desk to pick over what a sportscaster said about game that's over. It's not like a Broadway Musical where a bad review may keep you from seeing it. The game is over. Even if the sportscaster was so inept you'd never want to watch him/her again, you have no choice. The games are exclusive. You can't decide to watch them on another channel. There's only one outlet.
I don't know anymore. Really, I don't. Maybe in light of the financial crisis we're in, Las Vegas should change its tourism slogan. "Las Vegas: A Safe Place for Your Money." I mean, consider that Carl Icahn is constantly complaining about the management of Yahoo! when he owns 69 million shares of stock in the company. On the other hand, I met a newly-arrived immigrant recently who was assimilating so smoothly into American life he was already like 55 pounds overweight. So maybe things aren't as bad as they seem. Who knows?
All I'm saying is, it doesn't seem like Mr. Brooks, despite having a thoughtful intelligence that doesn't go excessively far astray in absolutely every column, should be doing a secondary gig at PBS ahead of his primary gig at the Times. A good column seems like something to be ruminated over, plotted, weighed and written over the gun.
Spent years consorting with crooks
With an inflated ego
He asked "How wrong did we go?"
And wrote some more boring books.
claimed the vice presidency was not for palin's hooks
then did an about face
so he could save face
with the party who'd sell its soul to win any race
the end
It may be that this election will test his stomach and skill, however. McCain and Palin seem a little much for any rational person, Brooks included.
David Brooks, incredibly, had this to say in today's NY Times:
"On Thursday night, Palin took her inexperience and made a mansion out of it."
A MANSION?!!?
Peter Loffredo
http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/
Mr. Loffredo, I like your blog.
The same talking heads on PBS, NPR, NY Times etc etc etc.
Why do we always need to hear from the same right wing apologists?
Those same old trite partisan talking-heads are the best reason to switch channel or turn off the TV completely.
By the way, where is Chomsky?
Brooks makes his LIVING by providing voice to the right wing in The Times.
He does seem like an intelligent guy, but intelligent guys have to make a living too.
The Times has plenty of other talent. If he switches sides now, he might have to find a job.
But I think the point was, Brooks wrote his column before or during the debate. Considering I had to quit watching half way through (couldn't take any more of the Moosehunter), who can blame him?
He's over that now, and luckily he managed to miss that stage entirely with David Brooks.
I sometimes miss the whiskey.
Mark Shields is a nice enough guy but to paraphrase the famous quote from a debate of the last century, he's no Robert Scheer .... or Chris Hedges...... or Amy Goodman. I hope others will forcefully suggest to the News Hour that they might even improve their ratings if they paired one of the true believers hanging out at Fox News or the National Review with just about any of the columnists at Scheer's blog "Truthdig" for discussions that might range beyond marginal shadings of "common knowledge".
Compare the column he wrote in response to Obama's stunning convention speech--it was as mean-spirited and spiteful as anything I've seen come from him. It actually took my breath away with it's unneccessary roughness, and belied Brooks' earlier "support" for Obama.
Mr. Brooks has become offensive for three main reasons:
1.He has lost one of the best aspects of conservatives; a relentless optimism even in the face of adversity.
2. Excessively praising Ms. Palin for meeting barest minimum standards at Thursday's debate.
3. Bottom line--The Right is the conservative party, the party of integrity, personal responsibility and individual excellence. Supporting the illexperienced, ill educated and chronically dishonest Gov. Palin damages his credibility in a way he might not recover from.
Note to Mr. Brooks--this campaign will be over in a month, but we (you and your public) will be together a long, long time. I'm not sure you can spare the credibility you've lost over your bizarre fawning of Palin and subtle trashing of Obama.