They've Lost Their Fucking Minds, Part 3 (David Brooks Editions):
In today's New York Times, one can witness the utter implosion of the brain of David Brooks. Brooks, of course, is supposedly the only true believer conservative on the Times's Op-Ed page, but that is an argument for another time. Here, in his column "Ward Three Morality," Brooks writes like a bitchy robot whose irony circuit is shorting out. (Go read it now so you understand the rest of this and so the Rude Pundit doesn't have to spend his time massively quoting it.)

So, let's see if we've got this straight, if we can pin back the layers of sarcasm, self-loathing, and brain damage in order to get to the bones: it's not good if rich people do stupid shit like "spend $35,000 on a commode for a Merrill Lynch washroom." But it's not gooder if upper-middle class Democrats chide the rich for doing stupid shit. For example, the people of Ward Three in DC. In fact, it would be better if the upper-middle class Democrats just went about their business of resenting the rich and worried about other stuff than how the rich spend their money.

Where do you wanna start, class, to school this elitist twink? Anyone? Show of hands? You in the back? Yes, you're right. It's not that anyone is giving a happy rat fuck about whether or not some douchebag rich guy spent $1500 on a wastepaper basket. It's that some douchebag rich guy spent $1500 on a wastepaper basket while his company was falling apart. And it's not that Wall Street executives got big bonuses for a shitty job. It's that Wall Street executives got big bonuses for a shitty job from our fucking money. And, whatever you might think of the bailout(s), that seems like improper use of emergency funding to save the ass of one's corporation.

Brooks must think that he's cleverly revealing a hypocrisy in the "Democratic staffers, regulators, journalists, lawyers, Obama aides and senior civil servants" he mocks. He's criticizing the critics, see, for daring to criticize. Because, like every other conservative right now, it's all he's got. He's experiencing an existential crisis, and it's forced him to write as if he's doing it through the flashing lights a stroke. (And this doesn't get into what a shitty writer he is. Ever tried to read one of his books? It is not unlike trying to find pleasure and knowledge in reading an old ledger.)

What the truly out of touch upper-middle class people, like Brooks and, yes, like many Republicans, are leaving out of the equation are the poor and plain old middle class, people for whom no bunch of stupid ass tax cuts and other supply side bullshit has ever done jack. 'Cause, see, we know, despite right-wing bleats to the contrary, that this whole clusterfuck of economic difficulties were caused by the very rich, in the banking industry, in the Congress, and, until recently, in the White House. As Robert Reich points out in today's Washington Post, "As late as 1976, the richest 1 percent of the country took home about 9 percent of the total national income. By 2006, they were pocketing more than 20 percent."

And as someone who has not shied away from declaiming on the necessity of certain values, moral and ethical, Brooks has all the authority here of a comatose patient whose family hopes will one day emerge from the darkness.