David Brooks wonders how "exceedingly strange individuals" can rise to top. (Not about Bush I or II)

[BurtWorm]

He's actually talking about Al Gore! Fortunately for those of you who are not subscribers to Times Select, you need a subscription to read the whole thing on-line.

But here is a taste of the dishonesty in Brooks' piece. Note how he lets his labelling of Gore's quote as "pomposity" stand for an explanation of why it is supposedly pompous. Maybe someone can enlighten me as to how one gets "pomposity" out of a call for a genuine democratic discourse. Of course it completely escapes Brooks' sense of irony that he responds to Gore's challenge by hurling an effete insult and taking an ad hominem tack in reply:

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/opinion/29brooks.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

Op-Ed Columnist
The Vulcan Utopia
By DAVID BROOKS

If you’re going to read Al Gore’s book, you’re going to have to steel yourself for a parade of sentences like the following:

“The remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way — a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.”

But, hey, nobody ever died from contact with pomposity, and Al Gore’s “The Assault on Reason” is well worth reading. It reminds us that whatever the effects of our homogenizing mass culture, it is still possible for exceedingly strange individuals to rise to the top.

Gore is, for example, a radical technological determinist. While most politicians react to people, Gore reacts to machines, and in this book he lays out a theory of history entirely driven by them.

He writes that “the idea of self-government became feasible after the printing press.” With this machine, people suddenly had the ability to use the printed word to debate ideas and proceed logically to democratic conclusions. As Gore writes in his best graduate school manner, “The eighteenth century witnessed more and more ordinary citizens able to use knowledge as a source of power to mediate between wealth and privilege.”

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Seems to me...

Brooks is just the sort of people Gore is complaining about.

[IChing]

3. Tom Tomorrow's take on David Brooks.

Edited to say these are direct quotes from Brooks

[Captain Hilts]

2. Can you spell C-H-U-R-C-H-I-L-L-L???? nt

[tularetom]

4. Don't know if David Brooks has risen "to the top"

but he sure is an "exceedingly strange individual".

Just from what I've seen of him on the News Hour I would never leave him alone in a room with my grandkids.

[Missy M]

5. Must be in David Brooks mind if you think outside the box....

you are exceedingly strange. The way to be "normal" is to follow along like lemmings, or as he puts it be homogenized. No thanks, I'll take "exceedingly strange individuals" like Al Gore all day long. We need more like him.

[NYCGirl]

6. "Exceedingly strange" is GOP code words meaning "intelligent."

That's what passes for strange with them.

[speedoo]

7. Is that the best that Brooks can do?

Honestly, it's about as weak a criticism as I can think of.

Kinda ridiculous, and I'm glad I don't subscribe.

[rucky]

8. Hey, Brooks! "Assault On Reason" is not a how-to guide. n/t

[PCIntern]

9. Another Psycho Hose Beast...

Brooks' columns should be paired with Mo Do's as a 'He and She' set...

Screw him...that supercilious prig.

Did I spell that correctly? or is it -ck?

Fuque him.

[Jim__]

10. Talking about pomposity ...

... does brooks ever bother to define "radical technological determinist"?

But, I'm not sure whether to label Brooks pompous, or just plain stupid. For instance, "... in this book he lays out a theory of history entirely driven by them." And yet, Brooks then quotes Gore, “The eighteenth century witnessed more and more ordinary citizens able to use knowledge as a source of power to mediate between wealth and privilege.”

Just based on brooks' quote, it sounds like Gore is claiming that history was being driven by knowledge; and that technology was a tool for transmitting knowledge.

I don't subscribe to Times Select, so I may be misreading Brooks' article.

[BurtWorm]

15. Brooks claims that Gore has faith in the Internet's ability to engage the electorate

more directly in the system, and that this, somehow, exposes him for being naive and (in an exceedingly strange leap of Brooksian logic) cold-blooded:


This Age of Reason produced the American Revolution. But in the 20th century, television threatened it all. In Gore’s view, TV immobilizes the reasoning centers in the brain and stimulates the primitive, instinctive parts. TV creates a “visceral vividness” that is not “modulated by logic, reason and reflective thought.”

TV allows political demagogues to exaggerate dangers and stoke up fear. Furthermore, “conglomerates can dominate the expressions of opinion that flood the mind of the citizenry” and “the result is a de facto coup d’état overthrowing the rule of reason.”

Fortunately, another technology is here to save us. “The Internet is perhaps the greatest source of hope for re-establishing an open communications environment in which the conversation of democracy can flourish,” he writes. The Internet will restore reason, logic and the pursuit of truth.

The first response to this argument is: Has Al Gore ever actually looked at the Internet? He spends much of this book praising cold, dispassionate logic, but is that really what he finds on most political blogs or in his e-mail folder?

But Gore’s imperviousness to reality is not the most striking feature of the book. It’s the chilliness and sterility of his worldview. Gore is laying out a comprehensive theory of social development, but it allows almost no role for family, friendship, neighborhood or just face-to-face contact. He sees society the way you might see it from a speaking podium — as a public mass exercise with little allowance for intimacy or private life. He envisions a sort of Vulcan Utopia, in which dispassionate individuals exchange facts and arrive at logical conclusions.

[zbdent]

11. I think the problem Brooks had with that first sentence

is that he can't understand something that can't fit on a bumper sticker ... Gore essentially said that problems can't truly be solved with a bumper sticker ... that there are far deeper layers of what ails this world than just "shoot them" and "stick them in jail" and the like ...

[blogslut]

12. First came the harpy snark from MoDo

And now Brooks the obtuse, gets in the game. Who knew the NYT had so many part-time book reviewers? Oh David, I'll always remember you the way Jesus' General depicts you:

[Skidmore]

13. Has that smug creep looked in the mirror lately?

[hatrack]

14. Gee, Dave, compound sentences just too damn hard?

Excuse me, Brooks gets paid how much for this shit?

[Demeter]

16. I Agree

Brooks baffled by educated English. Should have written in Freeper, instead.

[PCIntern]

17. Seriesly, yu ar rite!!!!!!!!!!11 n/t

[Loki]

18. Just a reminder Mr. Brooks

Cream always rises to the top.

[KittyWampus]

19. even more bizarre, Brooks calls Gore a "Vulcan". And the NeoCons call themselves Vulcans

But hey, Brooks didn't write an entire article about Gore being fat the way Dowd did.

[EFerrari]

20. DAVID BROOKS is asking this question?

:rofl: