david brooks vs. thomas friedman vs. ross douthat

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.