Great piece in Slate about David Brooks's recent divorce after 27 years of marriage...

[CTyankee]

Matthew Yglesias takes Brooks apart on so many levels...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/17/david_brooks_scant_self_awareness_divorced_pundit_suddenly_not_so_worried.html

[PCIntern]

1. Brooks is such a sanctimonious schmuck...

he's probably like that in bed as well...anytime I watch these RW asswipes, I think of what they're like during sex and just burst out laughing...really.

[CTyankee]

3. omigod, you WOULD go and plant that thought bubble in my head, wouldn't you?

People like Brooks seem sexless to me. Of course, that might be the problem here...

[Blue_Tires]

2. Brilliant...

[jsr]

4. Recommend

[mn9driver]

5. Brooks, his ex, and his children will be just fine.

Wealthy couples who get caught up in the divorce industry generally have assets and cash flow left over after the lawyers are done billing. Money to retire with, money to send their kids to college.

Middle class families, not so much. For them, divorce after a long marriage is very commonly a fast track to economic ruin. But you'll never see Brooksie write about this difference in outcomes, or the reason for it.

[riderinthestorm]

6. Stupendous ignorance on display by David Brooks

Wow, has this guy ever had ANY contact with lower and middle class families?

Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.

As though the wealthy don't self-segregate and force the lower classes into less-than desirable neighborhoods. Long commutes to work ensure less time at home to get organized, enforce discipline and be more "productive" whatever that means. Less income means you can't afford a nanny, housekeeper, restaurants, lawn care services or snow removal services etc. Doing it all yourself drains energy and precious time.

They spend enormous amounts of money and time on enrichment.

Which only underscores the income inequality issue!

They work much longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room

.

I'd love to see a study comparing whose working "longer hours". The single mom with two jobs, or Bill Gates?

David Brooks is a fucking ass.

[Squinch]

29. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what a "postmodern neighborhood" is. And why

it should be hard to be organized in one.

[bullwinkle428]

7. This fucker clearly sees himself as William Bennett v2.0. These

latest revelations prove that the level of hypocrisy matches that of Bennett.

K&R.

[NJCher]

8. I started to read it and I will finish it

But I just had to say that "self-aware" and Brooks do not belong in the same paragraph.



Cher

[Ken Burch]

9. OMG(and I've never used that term before)...Brooks ACTUALLY USES TERMS LIKE "the lower tribe"?

Jesus Christ on a Dollar Menu burger!

[CTyankee]

10. I can imagine his now ex-wife just couldn't take it any more...

If he talks that way publicly, just imagine the kinds of things he says in private...

[uponit7771]

12. Upper tribe, ... such... supremacist attitudes!!

[Ken Burch]

14. It sounds like Kipling on bath salts.

[uponit7771]

11. At first I felt sorry for Brooks but after reading his self righteous BS I'm not... I don't wish ill

... will on anyone or laugh when it comes either...

In Brooks case I still feel sad for him but... only a little bit seeing the mercy he gave others

[hfojvt]

13. think the Yg-man misses the point

in working class families children grow up poor, and households are poor, partly because of broken marriages. Thus, instead of a married, two income couple with a couple of kids. You have a guy like my co-worker who has four kids from three different women. And each of those women have two or three kids from two or three different men.

Those children are perhaps living in poverty because their parents miss out on the economic benefits of a combined household. And it's not that they got divorced after 27 years of marriage (meaning his youngest child is perhaps 16 or maybe even 22) but they never got married. So they each end up having more kids than a single stable couple would, and the kids also grow up without the benefit of two parents.

That didn't happen in Brooks' family. They got married and stayed married long enough for the kids to grow up. His kids did not grow up with an absent father and perhaps rotating boyfriends and a father paying child support to three different families.

[uponit7771]

15. +1

[Ken Burch]

16. Probably the leading cause of family breakup among the poor

it that barbaric social welfare policy that bars two-parent families in need from getting public assistance.

Whoever came up with THAT should be taken out and shot...or, if he's already dead(and we can assume this was a penis-owner that came up with it)his bones should be dug up and thrown in the nearest river(or toxic waste dump).

This is a country that could subsidize tobacco, but not intact families.

[hfojvt]

21. I'm not sure about that

the EIC will subsidize an intact family and so will food stamps, won't it? And in this case, all of the women have jobs. One even has a fairly good job (I think, she's a GS-something (federal government worker)) and that's why I said "perhaps" they grow up poor.

So in this case, at least, it is not like the women are saying "I won't marry you because then I won't be able to get TANF."

Did my girlfriend cast me aside because marrying me would have interfered with her medicaid? That would be quite silly. I think she just wasn't that in to me, and frankly, I also was not that in to her.

[CTyankee]

18. The reasons for poverty in this country are far more compliated than Brooks suggests.

We all know them pretty well: low wages or no wages, due in large part to Brooks's fellow Republicans who don't want Obama to succeed and so sabotage his legislation to create more jobs and improve the infrastructure all at the same time, and constant attempts to demolish what little safety net our society offers.

IMO, the view you are espousing here is a very crabbed one. You have to look at the big picture.

[hfojvt]

23. I did say partly

and I think Yglesias is wrong to compare Brooks' divorce to all the single parents in this country.

And it's certainly not all about Obama.

It goes back to Reagan who didn't raise the minimum wage for seven years and Bush Jr. who didn't raise it for six. And to tax policies from both of those SOBs that favored the rich and thus tilted the social playing field. And to Governors like Brownback and Christie and even Super Mario Cuomo who cut taxes for the rich and reduce wages and benefits and raise taxes on the poor.

[CTyankee]

24. But when Brooks writes the stuff he writes about the culture of the poor, he is leaving himself open

for accusations of hypocrisy when it comes to his own failings at marriage. That's how I see this.

[CreekDog]

25. you're saying that divorce is a luxury only the wealthy have

so David Brooks' own divorce is really irrelevant because he's rich. his kids will have the same outcome, divorced or not.

meanwhile, the poor and middle class that he likes to lecture, need to stay together so their kids' opportunities are no more diminished than they are now.

who better than you to support, agree with not only David Brooks but David Brooks' point on this.

who better? nobody.

[Ken Burch]

17. This is the David Brooks who, in the AARP magazine in 2000

actually wrote that we should get into wars now and then to avoid turning into Belgium.

(what sort of person would BOTHER hating Belgium, anyway? and what did the Belgians ever do to him?)

[CTyankee]

22. I think he lived in Brussels for a time and for some reason thinks their society is just awful.

I don't get it either. I went to Brussels in 2012 and had a great time. It's a lovely city and the food was excellent. It has some great museums and fine examples of Art Nouveau architecture. He must really despise high culture. He probably hates Paris and Rome, too.

If he wanted to hate on a European city, he should hate Vienna (esp. since he is Jewish). The Austrians have been pretty despicable in their anti-semitism. As late as 2003 the Belvedere Museum would not give Klimt's painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer back to the Bloch-Bauer family, claiming that it was part of Austrian "patrimony." They knew damn well that Adele's family was forced to "donate" the painting so the family could leave the country and not be killed in a concentration camp...finally an Austrian court had to face brutal reality and give the painting back...

[Paladin]

19. Be sure to check out the Brooks parody currently on Salon.com.

He made their Hacks of the Year listing, and the take-off on his writing "style" is hysterical. The one on Peggy Noonan is priceless, as well.....

[2banon]

26. And he continue to traffic his NeoCon pov weekly on PBS News Hour eom

[Berlum]

20. ...at least Brooks isn't into Diaper shenanigans, like other Repubbies

I guess that's sort of encouraging...

[cyberswede]

27. "Brooks assigned his own columns as required reading for a class on humility."

[CTyankee]

28. I don't know what possessed Yale to invite him to teach that class...

Yale pretty much has its pick of top people to lure into their Ivied walls as a guest lecturer.