In Response to David Brooks

[Stephanie]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/01/opinion/01brooks.html?oref=login&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists

A Time to Mourn
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: January 1, 2005

<cut to the end> Nature doesn't seem much like a nurse or friend this week, and when Thoreau goes on to celebrate the savage wildness of nature, he sounds, this week, like a boy who has seen a war movie and thinks he has experienced the glory of combat.

In short, this week images of something dark and unmerciful were thrust onto a culture that is by temperament upbeat and romantic.

In the newspaper essays and television commentaries reflecting upon it all, there would often be some awkward passage as the author tried to conclude with some easy uplift - a little bromide about how wonderfully we all rallied together, and how we are all connected by our common humanity in times of crisis.

The world's generosity has indeed been amazing, but sometimes we use our compassion as a self-enveloping fog to obscure our view of the abyss. Somehow it's wrong to turn this event into a good-news story so we can all feel warm this holiday season. It's wrong to turn it into a story about us, who gave, rather than about them, whose lives were ruined. It's certainly wrong to turn this into yet another petty political spat, as many tried, disgustingly, to do.

This is a moment to feel deeply bad, for the dead and for those of us who have no explanation.

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To the NYT:

David Brooks insinuates that it is out of bounds to criticize the President during this time of mourning. Just the opposite is true. When the President is loathe to interrupt his vacation to offer sympathy and support to the victims, when he does not appear in public for three days following the disaster, when his spokesperson informs the press, two days after the disaster, that the president is biking, relaxing, strolling, and clearing brush on his ranch - the only message sent is one of callous indifference to human suffering. And that message deserves the harshest and most immediate criticism.

Stephanie

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[charlyvi]

1. You go girl!!

You said it perfectly.

[intheozone]

2. WooHoo, Stephanie, very well said by you

and very well deserved by bushie!

[itzamirakul]

3. Thank you, this man...

disgusts me no end. He is so oily in his defense of this administration. He turns my stomach.

[slor]

4. Smack !

Upside db's fat pathetic head!

[PATRICK]

5. Besides Bush's typical shrug

the deepening hindsight of this story is how insecure the human is left in all areas of risk when profit and comfort of the moment poison policy.

There have been many years when the public could have benn educated or at the least local leaders concerning tsunamis and quakes. Of course you can't sleep in your running shoes or murder many people in blind stampedes until no one listens anymore. But the apparent deepest concern in ALL matters of life and death is cost and capital.

If you think your soldiers are cattle fodder for corporate wars, well so are plane passengers, tourists, and ordinary citizens chock full of petro-chemical toxins and breathing bad air, drinking bad water. In the equations of the "World" as John's Gospel ominously lists it, the absurdity of cost effective ostrich overseers is par for the gyrating course of evil. When, after all, the least that could be done is warn or give fundamental eduucation, despite the unsightly tourist inhibiting nature of "Beware of sharks" signs, the continued suppression of wisdom is an ongoing holocaust for the good of the 'economy".

When the bill comes due, all this system we praise so highly becomes revealed as the cynical sneer of Louis XV "Apres moi, le deluge."

[Dr Fate]

6. But no top Democrat will go on TV and speak that kind of truth.

Oh well, at least you can still here the truth spoken at DU, or in the grocery line.

But hearing actual well known Democrats go on TV and say this kind of stuff? Forget it.

Telling the truth about Bush is "too radical" and "confuses swing voters."

[mbee]

7. Don't ya know it's always wrong to criticize moron boy because

his handlers don't like it (tough)! What David Brooks thinks isn't of the slightest interest to me.

[Ken Burch]

8. The all time worst David Brooks comment

Was in AARP magazine a few years ago(around the time Dub was swore in after the coup.) Brooks argued that the U.S. needed to have military adventures and interventions or else, God forbid, we would turn into Belgium.

It was the sort of thing upper class Brits spent most of the 19th Century saying to each other as they nursed their gin and tonics at their clubs.

[BrklynLiberal]

9. Kudos Stephanie! David Brooks nose is so stained brown by * 's butt that

he will never be able to get it clean again.
Did you send it in to the Times?

[Stephanie]

10. I guess I might

But I think it's just as effective to answer Brooks from here.

[CatWoman]

11. where was all this "outrage"

when the Bush syndicate, when finally addressing the disaster, came out of the gate bashing Clinton?

[Stephanie]

12. Well there you go - it's completely cynical and disgusting

But you'll see that Karl's talking points are all over the place now, and they are: Do Not Criticize the President in This Time of Tragedy.

It's always the same.

Previously, it was: Do Not Criticize The President in a Time of War.

And before that, it was: Do Not Criticize the President in This Time of Tragedy.

[CBHagman]

13. Beautifully said!

Thanks for stepping up to the plate.

[Stephanie]

14. delete