Sometimes, the Rude Pundit doesn't know what parts of a David Brooks "column" (if by "column," you mean, "a gleeful hammering of small mammals") deserve response. For instance, his latest for the New York Times offers a smorgasbord of Brooksian Brooksishness. You could pick one point of "The Governing Party" and use it to tear down the entire piece, leaving Brooks quivering, sweating, and shitting himself while he slowly cleans his glasses.
Take, for example, the thesis of the damn thing. Boiled down, it's "Republicans won a whole bunch on Tuesday because they didn't run those crazy fuckers; instead, they ran these respectable fuckers." See, apparently, according to Brooks, the GOP went mainstream this time, avoiding the embarrassment of voting for the deformed mutants from their basement. He takes us through these upstanding individuals, like "David Perdue, who was elected senator in Georgia, was senior vice president for Asian operations for the Sara Lee Corporation. He moved to Haggar Clothing before becoming C.E.O., successively, of Reebok, Pillowtex and Dollar General."
Now, you might think, "Hey, that's awesome. But what the fuck does he believe?" And Brooks might answer, "What kind of socialist scumlicker are you for asking that? David Perdue is a mighty capitalist who loves capitalism. That should be enough. And don't you fuckin' dare bring up how he destroyed Pillowtex."
You might look it up for yourself, and you'd discover, within about ten seconds on the mighty Google machine, that David Perdue is a pro-life, pro-gun, anti-Obamacare, anti-immigration reform, pro-business (duh) Republican. In other words, he's pretty much like Louie Gohmert with a Master's degree in Operation Research. (Note: Gohmert's got a law degree. No, really. They hand those things out like Halloween Smarties.)
The column goes on like that. Biographies are devoid of anything but career mentions or that one new governor donated to the Red Cross. You half expect to see Brooks write, "Henry Ford may have been a union-crushing, antisemitic bastard man, but he build a helluva car."
Two things, though. First, this from Brooks: "The new senator from Oklahoma, James Lankford, got a divinity degree and ran Falls Creek, the nation’s largest Christian camp." Lankford says he's a "servant of God." The Rude Pundit is pretty sure that if a candidate ran the nation's largest Muslim camp who said he was Allah's servant, it would count against said candidate. And how the fuck is that any proof that someone is mainstream? But he's from Oklahoma and they just reelected Inhofe, so fuck it.
Lastly, though, you can occasionally boil down a David Brooks column to one reference that just makes you wanna punch the screen. Talking about new Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, Brooks effuses that Cotton "graduated from Harvard before working at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, serving in the Army and going off to McKinsey." The smarter among us can figure out that Gibson, et al is a law firm. But he just plops "McKinsey" in there, like we should just know that it's a corporate consulting firm. And if we had ever heard of McKinsey and Company, it's because two of its directors were convicted for insider trading, and that would have been while Cotton was employed there.
But this is Brooks's world. And you should know this, you simpering prole. In fact, he praises McKinsey as an example of one of the "pillars of American society."
So what Brooks is really saying is that these are the same fuckers as they ever were. They're just fuckers who Brooks might actually see at the restaurants he frequents, and so they are good men all.
