david brooks vs. thomas friedman vs. ross douthat

gail collins on why she hired brooks in 03 - “I was looking for the kind of conservative writer that wouldn’t make our readers shriek and throw the paper out the window,” says Collins. “He was perfect.”

now only NPR's Robert Siegel can be in a room without gates covering the window.

kristol was a bigger hack than either (truly a feat), but more useful. you could read him and get some idea of 'here's what these morons think',

^ yup

a role played on cable news by "Morning Joe"

http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/ABC_bill_kristol_this_week_jt_130818_16x9_608.jpg

rare to find two generations of finks but Irving and Bill were, god bless'em.

morning joe is 'reasonable conservative' plus beltway politico type crap right? i watch live with kelly and michael myself. sean hannity is the one to listen to if you want to know what these fuckers think today, rush limbaugh is the one to listen to if you want to know what these fuckers will think tomorrow, george noory is the one to listen to if you want to know what these fuckers will think twenty years from now.

Barack Obama is who you listen to when these morons get it.

plus he indulges in the kind of dumb social pseudoscience and ted talk worthy ideas that malcolm gladwell and a good half dozen ilxors truck in.

― balls, Thursday, February 6, 2014 10:35 PM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

name names

\o

Surely it's more than 6. At least 8, maybe 9

a bakers half dozen

hey side note what is the deal with bakers not being able to count

Bakers are only good at counting dough

youre thinking of bankers

balls OTM re: Brooks

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/02/bill-kristol-joins-abc-news-182527.html

Facepalm. leaving Fox to join George Stephanopolis.

Bill Kristol: Palin Would Be 'Formidable' Presidential Candidate said yesterday on Morning Joe...
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Sarah-Palin-Bill-Kristol-politics-Joe-Scarborough/2014/02/06/id/551314

It should say 'rejoin" -- he was a nineties staple.

I heard that fool praise Palin yesterday morning when flipping through cable news and nearly yarfed into my oatmeal.

when you guys are saying "editorial page" you are referring to the op-eds, right? because the times editorial page ain't bad

yeah, poor phrasing on my part

acc to the article linked the reporters don't like the op-eds or the editorial page

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/way-we-live-now-by-david-brooks.html

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/3508663/travis-bickle-clap-o.gif

Murgatroid, that link is priceless.

god the suffering that you have to be willing to endure to put something like that together

"All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual."

his lack of self awareness is breathtaking.

Said forty seconds ago on NPR: "This is the problem with democracies. If we lived in a country run by elites, which I believe we should, we would" etc

woooowwwww

he shd be murdered not because he deserves it or anything just as a prank

"I was speaking out in Minnesota — my hometown, in fact — and a guy stood up in the audience, said, 'Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you’d oppose?' I said, 'No, absolutely not.' I said, 'You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/friedman-start-up-america-our-best-hope.html

"speaking out"

Minnesota isnt a town iirc

it's a village

it takes a village to create friedmans

unfuckingbelievable

spiritual experiments led by the charismatic and the zealous are essential to religious creativity and fruitful change. From the Franciscans to the Jesuits, groups that looked cultlike to their critics have repeatedly revitalized the Catholic Church, and a similar story can be told about the role of charismatic visionaries in the American experience. (The enduring influence of one of the 19th century’s most despised and feared religious movements, for instance, is the reason the state of Utah now leads the United States on many social indicators.)

challenge for ross douthat: name fruitful change or innovation resulting from outliers jim jones, reverend moon, l-ron hubbard, chas manson

this column is formulaic recycling, cherry-picked from others work (a time honored and lazy journalistic ploy when the till is empty come deadline). no surprise that douthat quotes philip jenkins who dismissed the 70s cult phenomena as hysteria fueled by secular media. i think jenkins argument is disingenuous and politically motivated. what's forgotten in this revisionist argument is the extreme psychological manipulation that was a defining characteristic of 70s-style charismatic cults. the human toll, lives ruined and personalities exploded, not to mention the suicide victims in jonestown who douthat somehow never mentions.

what has happened, from the post-moon unification church to the second-string cult a relative of mine is involved with, seems to be a backing off from the sick controlling nature of the groups (due to decades of bad publicity) and a subsequent mainstreaming of former fringe elements.

Thiel’s argument is broader: Not only religious vitality but the entirety of human innovation, he argues, depends on the belief that there are major secrets left to be uncovered, insights that existing institutions have failed to unlock (or perhaps forgotten), better ways of living that a small group might successfully embrace.

This means that every transformative business enterprise, every radical political movement, every truly innovative project contains some cultish elements and impulses — and the decline of those impulses may be a sign that the innovative spirit itself is on the wane. When “people were more open to the idea that not all knowledge was widely known,” Thiel writes, there was more interest in groups that claimed access to some secret knowledge, or offered some revolutionary vision. But today, many fewer Americans “take unorthodox ideas seriously,” and while this has clear upsides — “fewer crazy cults” — it may also be a sign that “we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered.”

correct implication to draw, that the tech-startup boom has evidently been trying to exploit our latent willingness to follow cults, and that 'managerial capitalism' is becoming (again) a cult that increasingly permeates all interactions at all levels of society

we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered, families left to be abandoned, life savings left to be handed over.

new flavors of kool-aid to have people wonder whether we have drunk

Ross DO THAT

ross DOUBT IT

fuck douting a hat

tricky dick we hardly knew ye

where to begin

reading the headline, i thought maybe ross would call for watergatesque sabotage of trump and/or carson

as if the politics of racial division as practiced by republicans in 2015 isn't 100% pulled from the nixon playbook

lmao douthat is so far out in left field, a devout catholic millennial who hates college but loves philosphy and nixon, this really is what the times shdve been looking for in its token conservative all along total irrelevance

ikr!eagerly awaiting catholic convert ross "defender of the faith" douthat's review of spotlight

Got really depressed when I saw the popup tell me that was my 10th free NYT article of 10 for this month