david brooks vs. thomas friedman vs. ross douthat

hard choice but got 2 b friedman

^^^

I actually find him the least worst of these three

this is like choosing b/w bullshit, pigshit and chickenshit.

hate to say it but friedman is the least bad of the three. at least he occasionally bothers to make an actual argument. reading brooks is like trying to get day-old caramel out of your teeth.

seriously, it's really b/w Friedman and Brooks. Douthat is awful, but he's awful b/c he's pretty upfront about being a wingnut. Brooks has his fake centrist nonsense -- and he's a Mets fan -- but only a complete pinhead who's spent the last decade or so locked in a closet can't see through his schtick at this point.

so Friedman it is.

i assume that brooks and douthat have a sinister purpose behind everything they write, so while i no doubt disagree, it at least makes sense.

friedman just seems clueless and is a terrible writer. 'my cab driver in cairo' etc good lord.

well the clueless head in the clouds thing is what makes it marginally more defensible, like he's just this crazy guy talking to you on the bus

Friedman the crazy guy on the bus talking nonsense whilst drooling on his overcoat also has the ear of the President and a shockingly large number of Democratic movers and shakers. that's why i voted for him.

I'll be the contrarian and say Douthat, the only one who creates the blip of an impression that he's read other things besides editorials and policy statements. Also, I saw him in the queer part of Dupont Circle in 2009 in the company of what looked like a Provincetown bartender.

^^^ sounds like infidelity

also, aren't we voting for the worst?

yes

Friedman's latest column is a masterpiece of cowardice and stupidity:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/opinion/friedman-one-for-the-country.html?_r=1

I'll vote for Friedman as worst because he's taken most seriously. The right wing doesn't even take Brooks seriously.

voted Douthat cause i hate the way he couches intolerant/ugly sentiments in the deceptive rhetoric of "reason" and "balance"

alfred OTM on what makes Friedman the worst of this entire sorry lot.

Brooks would win on photos alone

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/wp-content/uploads/David-Brooks.jpg

ross is "known" in conservative circles for his impeccable sense of style

http://images.nymag.com/news/intelligencer/encounter/encounter120326_250.jpg

douthat's face def bothers me the most

motherfucker just looks SOFT

http://www.charlierose.com/images_toplevel/content/10/1051/segment_10518_460x345.jpg

brooks is the worst. friedman is ok minus the globalization shtick.

Douthat looks like a late 30-something version of Paul Dano's character from the extra man.

Douthat still thinks it's 1995.

Jonah Goldberg has the same delusion.

i was hoping this thread title was something that happened.

what is douthat's shtick, as compared to brooks' red/blue staters are like *this* and friedman's absurd metaphors that lead nowhere?

He's a Christian whose hands shake at the suspicion that libs might think he hates gays and women.

he's not one of those republican extremists - heavens - tho he takes pains to diplomatically point out how liberals/women/gays/muslims/etc bring problems on themselves

that's right

a concern troll then; how innovative

if forced at gunpoint to read one of the three every day for the rest of my life i'd still choose douthat

friedman... just pull the trigger

your doppelganger

while we also talk about their merits as writers, how about we also turn this into a MFK thread?

when i was working a (very good and non-depressing) temp job at a financial planning group, the well meaning 50 something jewish libs frequently discussed friedman columns in reverent hushed tones... first time i'd ever heard anyone irl bring dude up as a serious columnist

voted Douthat cause i hate the way he couches intolerant/ugly sentiments in the deceptive rhetoric of "reason" and "balance"

― demolition with discretion (m coleman), Thursday, April 19, 2012 8:48 PM (43 minutes ago)

^^

i still find that less distasteful (or at least more garden variety) than friedman's schtick

all three are vile of course

NYT doesn't really have any 'very good' writers as columnists. i mean krugman's always worth a read but even following charles m blow on twitter has tempered my like of him

krugman is a very good writer

i'd heard that 'from beirut to jerusalem' was good, but find it a little hard to credit now -- perhaps the subject matter restrained him from making it an archetypical global fable, as with everything else?

yeah i changed my mind after i wrote his name and didn't bother to change my first statement haha xp

charles m blow seems ripe for display name puns, now that i think of it

The late William Safire was the only one who could occasionally write a sentence I'd read twice.

i agree that krugman is worth reading and i always do but i am often smh at the way he seems to be preaching to the choir, he takes such a hard line that even though he's right he sort of paints himself into an ideological corner that just inflames the right instead of engaging him

obv that's not entirely or even largely his fault but i feel like he's wielding a battle axe when should be using the rapier

lol ross douchehat

brooks is like the bill gates looking dude in the back of newsweek who even though i am on the other side of the political spectrum i find myself agreeing with or at least appreciating the differing view cause his tone is measured

really love the loyal opposition guy though

Krugman has given up on trying to talk w/ the shit-throwing baboons who call themselves conservatives these days. i don't blame him at all, it's really the most sensible approach.

i'll also stan for Nicholas Kristof.

Krugman is a classic example of a pundit with whom I agree often but whose prose is pedestrian at best (boy, does he love his rhetorical questions).

douthat = least stupid/ most hateful

krugman = shrill
brooks/douthat = reasonable

does this perception hurt k-thug or not?

friedman at the very least seems interested in interesting things

haha otm

interested in reducing them to a catch phrase?

THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT; SHUT UP

^^haha fair enough. still, the other two (esp Douthat) are kind of just dicks. if you're going to be a dick, you'd better be right and/ or interesting

I feel like I could get thomas friedman to change his mind on a lot of things if you just framed it in the 'interesting thoughts about interesting things' way, and maybe if you dressed up a a taxi driver

"what if universal health care...was an app?"

I'm going to vote for... (breaks down crying)... I can't DO IT! ... I just can't. (snivels, wipes snot on sleeve, mutters)... stupid furschlugginer dolts the lot of 'em.

friedman at the very least seems least interested in interesting things

fxed

lol

that was supposed to be to iatee

^ genuine lol, partly cuz i have heard that question raised in real life

xpost to iatee

anyhow this is so fucking easily brooks for me and probably still would be even if bill kristol was still there

daaaamn

how awesome is it that Kristol made a major factual mistake in his first 2008 column

brooks is the worst

person in history

u forgot krauthammer

http://peteykins.com/sparklepony/Krauthammer.jpg

a week ago i might've said marty peretz

what has changed

I know C-Kraut had a horrible accident but it's as if the surgeons fixed his face on purpose so that it's deformed into a smug asshole leer.

10 years ago he used to come into my bookstore in a wheelchair and kind of hand me his wallet with his wrists. he was at least pleasant in person, unlike gwill

well his writing at the new republic has been steadily diminished for a few years but apparently supposedly hopefully now w/ the sale going thru he's no longer going to be writing for them at all anymore. i'm not really expecting the new republic to become in any fashion less militantly pro-israel and i'm sure should circumstances warrant it or whatever he'll be able to chime in w/ some bigoted rant (he's still on the advisory board).

Krauthammer worked for Mondale!

yeah he was kind of standard cold warrior neocon lib w/ likudnik tendencies that grew more entrenched and extreme in those positions, gradually adopting more conservative domestic positions (esp the ones you could wrap in 'morality') as he began to spend more time/accept more checks from that crowd.

This is really impossible since reading all these dudes is like dousing your eyes with acid, but I'm going to have to say Friedman because even though he's probably the least wrong of these fuckers, he's the one of the three who people actually listen to the most (followed by Brooks and then trailed by a huge huge huge margin by Douchehead who I think most people forget exists most of the time.)

love this article so much http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/05/03/christopher-tayler/yo-douche-bag/

quotes from the social animal

Imagine a man who buys a chicken from the grocery store, manages to bring himself to orgasm by penetrating it, then cooks and eats the chicken.

guess i'll have to go w/ Ross for worst. but i'll freely admit that it has more to do with my distaste for social conservatives than anything.

friedman easy

at least everyone knows brooks is a rightwinger, for some reason everybody is convinced friedman isn't, including friedman

douthat just seems kind of hapless

yeah but he's a wunderkind, the youngest nyt op ed columinst in history

if someone can explain how exactly that happened that would be great

All three of these assholes get reprinted in the local state-wide paper; Friedman is usually the least wrong and/or objectionable but remember we're comparing him to these two schmucks

thanks to friedman at least, we have this: http://rolocroz.com/junk/friedman.html

and therefore:

http://rolocroz.com/junk/friedman.gif

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_book_club/features/2012/ross_douthat_s_bad_religion/bad_religion_book_gay_relationships_and_christianity_.html

god these fuckin shitbags

I dream of throat punching Brooks.

what a bunch of cool bros

I actually know Krauthammer, and will not be more specific than that, but he's a pretty likable guy in person.

he woulda made a great character actor in another life

ha well there's this take:

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2012/04/ive-never-been-more-certain-of-anything.html

I would not recommend torturing your brain by reading the full epistolary romance between William Saletan and Ross Douthat, but seriously, that dude is so gay.

Obviously Douthat isn't exactly writing in the most sophisticated tradition of apologetics, but you know, there is something about all this hemming and hawing over the proper, ahem, stance toward the gays that is deeply prurient, bordering on the pornographic. You know, like, let us now turn our unflinching, um, gaze upon these divinely incompatible sexual beings in order that we may, carefully and in great detail, determine the most charitable possible means to disapprove of them. If we look long enough, and hard enough, we may yet determine just how we are supposed to feel. We wish to turn away, and yet somehow we feel compelled to keep going. God, Ross, you are going to feel so guilty when you quiver to a deathlike little conclusion on the, uh, issue.

douthat also wrote a book with reihan salam arguing that republicans should maybe possibly hopefully come up with ways of not being completely balls to the wall rageful toward the bottom income quintile. i always meant to read that.

I actually know Krauthammer, and will not be more specific than that, but he's a pretty likable guy in person.

I can believe it – he projects more intelligence and sympathy than his prose.

he looks so ott evil that you can sorta see him as a darth vader character who regains compassion at the very end of his life and somehow saves everyone

http://scni.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2011/08/20/krauthammer_charles_color_t300.jpg?8aff03de2423e912a2467e97388a07f5331c05b6

"ILE...you were right. You were right about me..."

He had a lazy piece of junk in the Washington Post last Friday on the Buffet rule, and today whines that we need to find funding for NASA to keep shuttles going to the new frontier, but we also have to stop Obama's spending on everything else. Likeable in person or not, his writing projects little intelligence, sympathy or friendliness

pat buchanan is also a likable guy IRL -- that's why he's lasted so long on the Gasbag Circuit.

Being a likeable person obviously does not preclude intellectual dishonesty and deceitful rhetoric in order to 'win' a political argument.

goole, is this the book to which you refer?

read a couple reviews

obv this book did not penetrate the republican id

Friedman's disconnect from reality reminding me increasingly of John Candy as Melonville Mayor Tommy Shanks

douthat's exchange w/saletan: easy to imagine ross rationalizing the catholic church's persecution of heretics like galileo or copernicus back in the day

"burning people at the stake is messy, certainly, but serves as a necessary correction to a widespread cultural drift away from xtian orthodoxy"

One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend's parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this point--"Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?" she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn't sure what to say, but then I wasn't sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business... and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered--"You know, I'm on the pill..."

"wait did I just say all that out loud?"

wowwww i had never read that

hahahahahaha

Jesus Christ

"chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating"
About 1,970 results (0.22 seconds)

Gay relationships may be unitive in some sense, but they are not unitive in the male-female, difference-reunited sense that the Biblical narrative strongly suggests that God intended sex to be. Gay people can bear and rear children, but they cannot bear and rear them in accordance with what the Biblical narrative suggests is God’s original intention for the reproduction of the human race. Homosexuality may be innate, but recall that one of the core doctrines of Christianity is that sin itself is innate—that our innermost being is in some sense broken and fallen and turned from God’s desires for us. What a traditional Christian morality asks of gay people seems impossibly difficult, but the Jesus of the New Testament asks the near impossible of people quite frequently.

guess who

so "sux2bu" is harvard for "god hates fags", got it

they are not unitive in the male-female, difference-reunited sense that the Biblical narrative strongly suggests that God intended sex to be

It is wholly OT-based stuff like this that makes baby Jesus cry.

Wow this Douthat guy, I was not really even that aware of his views until recently. I mean at least Brooks and Friedman are faux-intellectuals of this century.

haha 'the biblical narrative strongly suggests'

what kind of punk-ass bullshitty appeal to scripture is THAT.

What a traditional Christian morality asks of gay people seems impossibly difficult, but the Jesus of the New Testament asks the near impossible of people quite frequently.

will you be getting around to any of it at any point or are you concentrating for now on not being gay

yep. this poll was easy.

I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business

maybe you should try having sex with another dude

I could see the whole xtian thing as this gag column he tried out for the harvard newspaper and then when it worked he just stuck w/ it and years later he is trapped doing this and feeling really guilty cause irl he's just a boring atheist w/ nothing to say

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

(Aimless innocently opens ILE New Answers, sees the names David Brooks, Thomas Friedman and Ross Douthat, starts sobbing like a frightened child)

Make it stop!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

backwards!

strong campaign by douthat down the stretch but he couldn't close the gap.

http://www.tnr.com/book/review/bad-religion-ross-douthat

we could've been less sexist and thrown Maureen Dowd in the mix.

yeah she's awful too

hah that book review authoritatively calls bullshit on douthat

"ROSS DOUTHAT’S ANALYSIS of religion in America is more sophisticated than the analysis of, say, Rick Santorum—but not by much. "

^^excellent lead sentence

"My problem with Douthat’s book is not that his opinions differ from my own. My problem is that he does not seem to have any idea what he is talking about."

he also got sonned in the nyt

Charles Pierce:

I refuse to accept the term "curmudgeonly annoyance" from a teenage sex-panic victim with D'Artagnan starter-kit facial hair."

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ross-douthat-post-election-14752276

i'm not a big charles pierce fan

it's okay to be a mild Charles Pierce fan

i'm from minnesota...

oh so that's a football reference right

It's a nice response to an NYT idiot

ha no i mean "not a big fan" = "i want to play around in your blood"

I'm a huge Charles Pierce fan because he writes pieces like that.

I'm a huge Charles Pierce fan because he writes pieces like that.

++

cf. Krugman’s response.

what's supposed to be wrong with charles pierce

I like Krugman's response a lot.

yep

http://observer.com/2014/02/the-tyranny-and-lethargy-of-the-times-editorial-page/#ixzz2sSv69gIu

One current Times staffer told The Observer, “Tom Friedman is an embarrassment. I mean there are multiple blogs and Tumblrs and Twitter feeds that exist solely to make fun of his sort of blowhardy bullshit.” (Gawker has been particularly hard on Mr. Friedman, with Hamilton Nolan memorably skewering him in a column entitled “Tom Friedman Travels the World to Find Incredibly Uninteresting Platitudes,” as a “mustachioed soothsaying simpleton”; another column was titled “Tom Friedman Does Not Know What’s Happening Here,” and the @firetomfriedman Twitter account has more than 1,800 followers.)

Another Times reporter brought up Mr. Friedman, unsolicited, toward the end of a conversation that was generally positive about the editorial page: “I never got a note from Andy or anything like that. But I will say, regarding Friedman, there’s the sense that he’s on cruise control now that he’s his own brand. And no one is saying, ‘Hey, did you see the latest Friedman column?’ in the way they’ll talk about ‘Hey, Gail [Collins] was really funny today.’”

times reporting staff otm. editorial is so so bad.

whatever you may think of the NYT editorial page -- I read this article a few days ago -- the WaPo page deserves reporting to the fucking Hague.

Editorial page has been a piece of shit for my entire lifetime.

Ever since the internet I've kind of scratched my head at why these particular individuals, of all people, get paid so much money to opine about stuff every week

you don't get why someone might prefer to read paul krugman vs some random dude w/ a tumblr?

that's not fair. ppl do like krugman. obv much more embarrassing is friedman + brooks + dowd etc

Paul Krugman is the one exception. I don't get what's special about most of the rest of their regular columnists though, like special enough to warrant once a week for years on end.

I love being able to avoid Krugman, too.

Friedman is embarrassing, but Brooks and that insufferable prig Douthat still worse

friedman and brooks regularly churn out bestsellers, ppl do like them. dowd won a pulitzer and is still (and once was very) taken seriously by a demographic that's very attractive to advertisers. it's not a mystery how these ppl have jobs. it might be a disgrace but it's no mystery.

and yet so easy to avoid them entirely. Makes me happy.

George H.W. Bush used to love reading Mo!

xp but i wonder if they'd be bestseller writers without the vestigial name recognition of being times columnists

douthat (esp at the time they hired him) is a 'reasonable conservative', the type the times has always thought good for their brand the way fox news used to have alan colmes. brooks is the quintessential 'reasonable conservative', to get any more reasonable you'd need aaron sorkin. he's useless as a window into current conservative thought or current conservative politics but he allows the times liberal readers to tell themselves they're exposing themselves to opposing viewpoints, to a range of opinions, that they're not like some fox news watcher. 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. 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', there's an element of this w/ douthat and evangelicals but he's not nearly as unmitigated a hack and hence not as useful, w/ brooks the only thing to be gleaned is 'here's what this moron thinks'.

brooks and friedman were both bestselling authors before they landed on the times editorial page

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

pray to God, he'll give you an 11th free NYT article. Bishop Doutaht will intercede.

what's with the not-quite-austen first line

I thought it was a truth universally accepted that Democrats who want to be president want to be Ronald Reagan.

nope sorry this human-sized ambulatory scrotum is still The Worst

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/opinion/sunday/from-obama-to-trump.html?mwrsm=Email

Reminds me of Addison DeWitt: "You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point."

no question the Obama people, understanding how social media works, have sold an image of the man that does correspond to every loathsome thing about the imperial presidency since 1945, but boomcrashpow 'that's how we got to Trump' is terrible fiction. I can imagine the delight on Brooks' editors face as they thought of the sharing/click possibilities.

boomcrashpow 'that's how we got to Trump'

IN THAT PRESIDENT...

If Obama proved that you can run a presidential campaign as an aspirational cult of personality, in which a Sarah Silverman endorsement counts for as much as a governor or congressman’s support, Trump is proving that you don’t need Silverman to shout “the Aristocrats!” and have people eat it up.

crazy that political kingmaker Sarah Silverman didn't even get an ambassadorship after all she did for Obama

such a fucking prig

James K. Polk wasn't on snapchat i'll tell you what

Chapo Trap House picking apart Douthat's book is just wonderful.

That sounds fun, there a link?

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-30-freeway-ross-douthat-pt-2-tha-harvard-plug

Not updated nearly often enough, but hilarious: https://twitter.com/ralphdouthat

They don't get to the book dissection for a little while, but the opening bit is good too.

This Chapo Trap House ep is excellent. Douthat is far more of a hyper-Catholic version of a David Mitchell character than I ever expected.

Their earlier ep covering this is here:

https://m.soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-3-freeway-ross-douthat-sailboat-dope

Yeah listened to that one too, amazing.

Honestly I've been listening to Chapo episodes like every day lately, so going through the old ones when there isn't a new one (I even signed on for the premium eps).

Ever since the internet I've kind of scratched my head at why these particular individuals, of all people, get paid so much money to opine about stuff every week

― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Thursday, February 6, 2014 10:17 PM (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol I feel like this kind of gets at what's good about Chapo, actually, it's like there's finally someone giving articulate voice to my bafflement at the punditocracy

Awesome Chapo interview:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/07/chapo-trap-house-are-the-vulgar-brilliant-demigods.html

was considering just starting a chapo thread. I feel like in the current ilx climate it wouldn't be very active though.

Just incorporate it into the comedy podcasts thread? That's what I'm going to do

yeah that makes sense

Oh boy:

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Clinton’s Samantha Bee Problem
963
SEPTEMBER 21, 2016
Ross Douthat
Ross Douthat
When the histories of the Trump era are written from exile in Justin Trudeau’s Canada, they will record that it was none other than Jimmy Fallon who brought down the republic.

Or so you might have thought, at least, listening the furious liberal reaction to Fallon’s willingness to treat Trump like any other late-night guest last week: kidding around with him, mussing up his combover and steering clear of anything that would convey to late-night television viewers that Trump is actually beyond the pale.

But the Democratic Party’s problem in the age of Trump isn’t really Jimmy Fallon. Its problem is Samantha Bee.

Not Bee alone, of course, but the entire phenomenon that she embodies: the rapid colonization of new cultural territory by an ascendant social liberalism.

The culture industry has always tilted leftward, but the swing toward social liberalism among younger Americans and the simultaneous surge of activist energy on the left have created a new dynamic, in which areas once considered relatively apolitical now have (or are being pushed to have) an overtly left-wing party line.

On late-night television, it was once understood that David Letterman was beloved by coastal liberals and Jay Leno more of a Middle American taste. But neither man was prone to delivering hectoring monologues in the style of the “Daily Show” alums who now dominate late night. Fallon’s apolitical shtick increasingly makes him an outlier among his peers, many of whom are less comics than propagandists — liberal “explanatory journalists” with laugh lines.

Some of them have better lines than others, and some joke more or hector less. But to flip from Stephen Colbert’s winsome liberalism to Seth Meyers’s class-clown liberalism to Bee’s bluestocking feminism to John Oliver’s and Trevor Noah’s lectures on American benightedness is to enter an echo chamber from which the imagination struggles to escape.

It isn’t just late-night TV. Cultural arenas and institutions that were always liberal are being prodded or dragged further to the left. Awards shows are being pushed to shed their genteel limousine liberalism and embrace the race-gender-sexual identity agenda in full. Colleges and universities are increasingly acting as indoctrinators for that same agenda, shifting their already-lefty consensus under activist pressure.

Meanwhile, institutions that were seen as outside or sideways to political debate have been enlisted in the culture war. The tabloid industry gave us the apotheosis of Caitlyn Jenner, and ESPN gave her its Arthur Ashe Award. The N.B.A., N.C.A.A. and the A.C.C. — nobody’s idea of progressive forces, usually — are acting as enforcers on behalf of gay and transgender rights. Jock culture remains relatively reactionary, but even the N.F.L. is having its Black Lives Matters moment, thanks to Colin Kaepernick.

For the left, these are clear signs of cultural gains, cultural victory. But the scale and swiftness of those victories have created two distinctive political problems for the Democratic Party.

First, within the liberal tent, they have dramatically raised expectations for just how far left our politics can move, while insulating many liberals from the harsh realities of political disagreement in a sprawling, 300-plus million person republic. Among millennials, especially, there’s a growing constituency for whom right-wing ideas are so alien or triggering, left-wing orthodoxy so pervasive and unquestioned, that supporting a candidate like Hillary Clinton looks like a needless form of compromise.

Thus Clinton’s peculiar predicament. She has moved further left than any modern Democratic nominee, and absorbed the newer left’s Manichaean view of the culture war sufficiently that she finds herself dismissing almost a quarter of the electorate as “irredeemable” before her donors. Yet she still finds herself battling an insurgency on her left flank, and somewhat desperately pitching millennials on her ideological bona fides.

At the same time, outside the liberal tent, the feeling of being suffocated by the left’s cultural dominance is turning voting Republican into an act of cultural rebellion — which may be one reason the Obama years, so good for liberalism in the culture, have seen sharp G.O.P. gains at every level of the country’s government.

This spirit of political-cultural rebellion is obviously crucial to Trump’s act. As James Parker wrote in The Atlantic, he’s occupying “a space in American politics that is uniquely transgressive, volatile, carnivalesque, and (from a certain angle) punk rock.” (The alt-right-ish columnist Steve Sailer made the punk rock analogy as well.) Like the Sex Pistols, Parker suggests, Trump is out to “upend the culture” — but in this case it’s the culture of institutionalized political correctness and John Oliver explaining the news to you, forever.

Trump’s extremism also limits his appeal, of course. But if liberals are fortunate to be facing a Johnny Rotten figure in this presidential campaign, they are still having real trouble putting him away … and if he were somewhat less volatile and bigoted and gross, liberalism would be poised to close its era of cultural ascendance by watching all three branches of government pass back into conservative hands.

Something like this happened once before: In the 1960s and 1970s, the culture shifted decisively leftward, but American voters shifted to the right and answered a cultural revolution with a political Thermidor.

That Nixon-Reagan rightward shift did not repeal the 1960s or push the counterculture back to a beatnik-hippie fringe. But it did leave liberalism in a curious place throughout the 1980s: atop the commanding heights of culture yet often impotent in Washington, D.C.

By nominating a Trump rather than a Nixon or a Reagan, the Republicans may have saved liberalism from repeating that trajectory. But it remains an advantage for the G.O.P., and a liability for the Democratic Party, that the new cultural orthodoxy is sufficiently stifling to leave many Americans looking to the voting booth as a way to register dissent.

(Pasted in full b/c fuck their paywall)

One of the better responses to this is from mr Andy Richter

When the histories of the Trump era are written from exile in Justin Trudeau’s Canada, they will record that it was none other than Jimmy Fallon who brought down the republic
When the histories of the Trump era are written from exile in Justin Trudeau’s Canada, they will record that it was none other than Jimmy Fallon who brought down the republic

Richter tweeted a link to Douthat’s article on Wednesday morning, calling it “a tub of horses—”

andy is very good at succinct summary

Douhat seems concerned about something, but I'm damned if I can figure out what kind of a problem he is trying to define that needs to be solved, other than that Hillary Clinton and the democratic party are not as reactionary as much of the electorate and he kind of wishes they'd pander more to voters who feel asphyxiated by granting equal rights to blacks or gay people.

imo the problem is people who uncritically follow one news source and sit there sharing that as the only perspective, even if it's a comedy show that is based on commenting on news and politics, not being a primary reporter

it's an issue among many groups but pointing at a single comedy central show is even more reductive than pointing at fox news

not even going to attempt to imagine someone who only bases their opinion on douthat articles

Hey Ross

http://www.census.gov/popclock/

https://twitter.com/ralphdouthat/status/779310376919953408

sadly just a stupid fallon "satire"

david thomas vs. brooks friedman

I follow Ross on twitter now, and it's fun. He's eminently clownable but less hateable than the other two.

FRIEDMAN: Mr. President-elect, I came …

TRUMP: So right now I’m in very good shape, but

FRIEDMAN: I came here thinking you’d be awed and overwhelmed by this job, but I feel like you are getting very comfortable with it.

TRUMP: I feel comfortable. I feel comfortable. I am awed by the job, as anybody would be, but I honestly, Tom, I feel so comfortable and you know it would be, to me, a great achievement if I could come back here in a year or two years and say — and have a lot of the folks here say, ‘You’ve done a great job.’ And I don’t mean just a conservative job, ’cause I’m not talking conservative. I mean just, we’ve done a good job.

ball 1

Oh boy, lookee who wrote up a reading list:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/opinion/books-for-the-trump-era.html

everybody should definitely give that publication some money
like Planned Parenthood

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8QzeViWAAASff4.jpg

https://media.giphy.com/media/HgOYozLhuONUY/giphy.gif

thats it the worst possible tweet, shut it down

lol

he also tweeted this at elizabeth bruin, referencing pence dinnergate

https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/847507297651707905

"Care to discuss them over dinner?"

Ross is thirsty.

i thought maybe ross would call for watergatesque sabotage of trump

welllllll

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/a1/7f/9fa17fce0ef1e6911470562b9df4cec7.jpg

Kind of enjoying Douthat now that he's apparently realized that his political views have no relevance to our current reality but he can get paid to write whatever he likes.

elaborate fantasies about corporate dystopias

weird seeing a conservative in the current american milieu advocating for the singaporean health care system (which is universal healthcare)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/opinion/sunday/make-america-singapore.html?_r=0

(even if it's a weird universal healthcare with large elements where the individual has to pay)

Okay what the fuck has Douthat done this week

signal boosted incel worldview garbage and took it at face value

I didn't think most of his analysis was that terrible but it was in service of a terrible end.

FWIW I think there isn't enough contemporary left analysis of how the capitalist/consumerist paradigm shapes our ideas about sex.

sex is theft

plausible

i found that piece just unconscionable. his - completely nonsensical - combination of social conservatism and libertarianism sees him equate redistributive economic policy with the idea of forcing people to have sex with incels - if you can distribute resources why can't you distribute sex, a thing completely different from a resource which results from the consensual physical congress of individuals? asks the millionaire columnist in the paper of record.

simultaneously he blames the sexual revolution for the existence of incels, as if the "halcyon days" when every man's wife was a maid he was allowed to rape and beat were preferable to the modern day sexual politics, and as if bitter sexless men didn't exist back then.

harkens back to the argument of houllebecq's protagonist in "Extension du domaine de la latte":

"The thesis is that the sexual revolution of the Sixties created not communism but capitalism in the sexual market, that the unattractive underclass is exiled while the privileged initiates are drained by corruption, sloth, and excess."

Extension du domaine de la latte

damn you autocorrect

him and brooks seem to take turns trying out dumbass each other on a biweekly basis

He's still trying to explain today

I think one mistake was assuming readers would recall that I want *ban porn* in assessing whether I really favor sex robots.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) May 4, 2018

(Of course, giving the phrasing, it sounds like he wants some subset of porn called 'ban porn,' the hottest porn of all.)

lmao

suggest ban porn

oh yea baby!

that would be some fetish

i found that piece just unconscionable. his - completely nonsensical - combination of social conservatism and libertarianism sees him equate redistributive economic policy with the idea of forcing people to have sex with incels - if you can distribute resources why can't you distribute sex, a thing completely different from a resource which results from the consensual physical congress of individuals? asks the millionaire columnist in the paper of record.

I don't think he takes this line of thinking seriously, I think he saw it as a reductio argument, like "Ok, if you accept these ideas about sex, then guess what the logical conclusion is"

simultaneously he blames the sexual revolution for the existence of incels, as if the "halcyon days" when every man's wife was a maid he was allowed to rape and beat were preferable to the modern day sexual politics, and as if bitter sexless men didn't exist back then.

But yeah this seems right.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DcPbyczV0AERINN.jpg

Remember the single stupidest statement from pro-Trump commentators after the election? It was: “The media took Trump literally but not seriously. But his supporters took him seriously but not literally.”

Actually, some of us took him seriously and literally — our only mistake was not taking him literally enough. I assumed that a candidate who lied so casually and so often in the campaign would also do so as president; I just didn’t think he would literally utter 3,001 false or misleading claims in his first 466 days in office. I feared Trump would indeed, as he vowed, tear up the Iran nuclear deal, withdraw from the Paris climate accord and start a trade war with China; I just didn’t think he’d literally do them all at once with so little expert input.

I figured Trump would try to destroy Obamacare; I just didn’t think he’d literally do it without having a better alternative — any alternative — in place. I figured Trump would seek to tighten the border with Mexico; I just didn’t believe that he’d literally ask Congress for $18 billion to extend the border wall. I knew we needed to “drain the swamp” of Washington; I just didn’t think the drain would literally have to start in Trump’s White House and the offices of his cabinet secretaries.

lol friedman

also, what is with his twitter / nyt profile pics?

https://i.imgur.com/ORGqSkZ.jpg

did someone digitally add his nyt suit?

lmao looks like it that is very odd

Karl, can you overlay them?

I was really trying to figure out when you tweeted that whether it's a weird modified pic, or if he really makes the exact same pose for every photo

its def the same photo look at the hair, moustache

what if he just keeps one of those photos by his mirror and shaves and combs his hair exactly the same every day

(lol they're totally the same pic)

so someone modified the NYT one to have a suit, and he also had his personal one modified to darken his hair? wild

Why We Miss the WASPs
Their more meritocratic, diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.

. . . I think you can usefully combine these takes, and describe Bush nostalgia as a longing for something America used to have and doesn’t really any more — a ruling class that was widely (not universally, but more widely than today) deemed legitimate, and that inspired various kinds of trust (intergenerational, institutional) conspicuously absent in our society today.

Put simply, Americans miss Bush because we miss the WASPs — because we feel, at some level, that their more meritocratic and diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.

https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/57407228/what-do-you-mean-we-white-man.jpg

i posted this extremely good and very persuasive piece on the George H.W. Bush - Classic or Dud thread earlier fyi

loved this piece, Pulitzer worthy imo

jfc lol https://splinternews.com/bret-stephens-tried-to-teach-me-how-the-world-works-bec-1832996576

Man, Stephens’ column on Rep. Omar today is fucking disgusting, even for him, any reputable editor would fire him for this shit.

i read it - it's nothing special but it's not "fucking disgusting"

One problem with the quoted remarks is that THIS IS AN INTENTIONAL MISQUOTE OF THE ACTUAL QUOTE THE WHOLE FAKE CONTROVERSY IS BUILT ON pic.twitter.com/Kdc5RGWQEN

— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) April 18, 2019

omar said "some people did something" how is this an "intentional misquote" as opposed to a rhetorically synonymous rephrasing

"some people did something"
"something some people did"

tom scocca: THIS IS AN INTENTIONAL MISQUOTE OF THE ACTUAL QUOTE etc

what a doofus

nyt opinion shd be shut down, the white supremacist but with glasses schtick has run its course

in some sense it is nothing special business as usual but on the other hand it is disgusting

whether or not it's a misquote, it's a total bad faith removal of context, and stephens is just as bad as crenshaw and the ny post and whoever else the fuck continues to pile on this woman for the crime of wearing a hijab.

you have to understand she said a sentence that diminished their favorite thing in the world 9/11

i think that's one correct response to the outrage not all this extremely stupid quibbles about context. the quote has been passed around in context and stephens is right that if trump had used similar language about other events he'd be under fire. you can say, "hey maybe minimizing 9/11 isn't such a big deal it's been many years" or even "9/11 was a response to US aggression across the globe" or even "Omar is a freshman congresswoman who cares what she says," but almost every argument trying to defend omar i have seen has been rhetorically equivalent to drooling.

voodoo chili otm

I dunno maybe I’m overreacting bc he’s a prick and awful writer in general but it’s such an obvious twisting of her words to make it sound like she’s diminishing a tragedy when he almost certainly knows what the focus of her comment was.

i find it ridiculous that her comments even need defending. They’re utterly harmless! As for Trump I think he’s faced much less outrage for his hilariously awful comments on 9/11 as it was happening.

her comments arent harmless shes breaks a ton of washington taboos re what youre allowed to talk about and what youre not all the time, same w AOC, which is the reason the washington establishment is so going after them

if theres a lesson to be learned from trump its that theres an angle in breaking those taboos

she was saying that all muslims shouldn't be punished for something perpetrated by a small group of muslims. everyone knows that 9/11 was a horrible tragedy, don't really think that she needed to belabor that in a speech about an unrelated topic

bret stephens might have an interest in that very topic https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/330615-nyt-columnist-defends-his-disease-of-the-arab-mind-comments-in

i *think* this is a poorly-formed joek? idk

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-kP8nKW4AAFuER.jpg

i prob voted Douthat. can't remember rn.

but now i'd have to say the answer is Brooks

douthat is the one that annoys me least and amuses me most

Imagine getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to write this drivel

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/opinion/biden-campaign-covid.html

the URL doesn't do it justice

What America Needs Next: A Biden National Unity Cabinet

how did douthat not win this

I def voted for him at the time lol youth but hahaha no no no he’s far and away the least worst of these clowns in 2020

lol I guess I literally just said this a few months ago.

Love to remember things better from 8 years ago than from 8 months ago. Is this being old? Am I old now

https://i.imgur.com/91A6BYo.jpg

'anthony fauci isn't omniscient, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯'

the podcast "know your enemy" had douthat on as a guest and my opinion of them went way down.

hell yeah man

Tom Friedman is on CNN right now saying the best case scenario is Biden winning and Republicans holding the senate so both will be forced to compromise.

LOL.

— Nicholas Miller (@Nick_L_Miller) November 3, 2020

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5909515e6552fa0be682bce9/master/pass/dr-strangelove-still-580.jpg

Encanto is the best Disney since Moana but also its fifth movie in a row without a meaningful love story; decadence continues:https://t.co/Qr7oe9VLRp

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) January 11, 2022

must be causation

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FSE_c0xXoAEncBu?format=png&name=small

Twitter has time today.

i wish ross would explain how it is that he is participating in the workforce given his lack of any skills or talents

blame roe v. wade

One reason I think "op-ed writer at major newspaper" should be something various people should get to do a few times a year, tops, rather than be a few people's full-time job is the staggering intellectual laziness it too often facilitates and encourages. pic.twitter.com/ApVBnYZj4J

— David Watkins (@djw172) May 6, 2022

the recent Roe news has really given Doubthat a chance to outshine the other two in the dipshit Olympics

still time for someone with the "music will get better after Roe is overturned" take

or one of those aborted fetuses could have been the next Cobain

I am curious what kind of ‘truce’ on abortion @DouthatNYT has in mind here. Because I literally can’t imagine one that would be workable in the current moment. pic.twitter.com/ruirrXDEry

— Jordan Weissmann (@JHWeissmann) September 5, 2022

They still remember that guy on Kavanaugh’s street?

Piss on this turd:

Yes yes yes:https://t.co/UFWtGzepXG

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) November 2, 2022

Israel and Hungary, huh

weirdo

A proposed screening Q for the next GOP administration: Is Swift-Kelce --
(a) a sweet thing to watch and maybe the last best hope for America, we need them to marry and procreate
(b) a psy-op to get NFL fans to get booster shots and vote for Democrats
no (b)s need apply

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) January 29, 2024

lol Stephen Miller would probably choose a)

Truly wish Lyme would have just killed him.

we need them to marry and procreate

normal!

c. *monday night football song starts playing*

it is kinda funny that b is more true than a but its not "a psy-op" its just a contrived celebrity relationship like theyve been doing in hollywood for 100 years

they're both gay?

if youve never looked into the taylor swift conspiracysphere and are interested in such things then i can recommend it

gaylor has been pretty much canon on tumblr for at least a decade

I'm pretty sure the smiley football guy op is damage control for the Matty Healy op

taylors been getting in the news for her boyfriends for 15 year now but this one is next level, multiple appearances on the most watched tv show of the week, travis kelce is booking credit card commercials, everyones winning

Celebrity creampies that can save America's bipartisan consensus.

everyones winning

i'm getting a bit tired of winning so much

Wow I had no idea all that MAGA Taylor Swift stuff was a thing. Kinda wish I still didn’t know.

Eh, it's better than when they thought she was an Aryan goddess awhile back.

On the recent grasping of Swift conspiracy by the dumbass misogynist Charlie Kirk types:

…To be acceptable in this strange crowd you gotta believe getting vaccinated is unmanly, you gotta believe Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are nefarious plants to elect Joe Biden, you gotta believe all sorts of foods and activities will make you too feminine, but that a man can ever be a woman. And so on and so forth. This set of beliefs, always paired with the need for dominant and potentially violent manhood, contributes to more and more men viewing unhealthy, dangerous masculinity and fascist beliefs as core parts of their identity. And this wave of young men is shifting right in their political beliefs. But while we can’t deny the danger of this shift, and the danger of men being taught to hate women, as evidenced by the link between domestic violence and mass shootings, there is a real possibility that this sharp edge of patriarchy can only go so far. These misogyny influencers have done and will do serious damage, but sharpen the patriarchy too much and it gets brittle and fragile. Sharpen it too much, as these men are doing, and you begin to lose people. You begin to demand too much and men start to drop off.

https://open.substack.com/pub/newmeans/p/its-expensive-to-be-a-man

I'm pretty sure the smiley football guy op is damage control for the Matty Healy op

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Monday, January 29, 2024 1:58 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i'm sure dating travis kelce is a real relief after that douchebag

the kelce family seems nice

https://i.imgur.com/IWsAEKu.jpg

https://bsky.app/profile/nonrenormalizable.bsky.social/post/3l3vlcr6obx2j

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:fp5xtbrubzj6mdgvwlcqbq27/bafkreidtrdppsppryhqtwdnylovhg6ncfnua2v2p6bgd3wlaq7curriv6u@jpeg

sad will pray for god

God switched to RFK Jr. but now he's considering just destroying the world

I swear I actually couldn’t remember who Ron DeSantis was for a minute there. I started to picture Ron Paul.

Amazing that Douthat thought DeSantis was the way to make the GOP seem less abnormal and more trustworthy, but invoking God as his direct sponsor is just abysmally stupid. ofc anyone capable of saying it is also incapable of noticing that.

douthat is so left field i almost respect it

perfect

New: David Brooks is leaving the NYT for the Atlantic, where he will be a staff writer and host a video podcast