Clark Hoyt, public editor of the New York Times, has contracted a case of the crazies. This public editor malady consists in (a) obsessing over the nasty email they get instead of the reason for the nasty mail; (b) picking unrepresentative samples of that email to make a point about free speech or fairness. He … Continue reading The crazies
The New York Times and the Washington Post must be under some kind of obligation to run an “academia is biased to the left” piece once or twice a year (excluding, of course, the regular appearance of this theme in the columns of David Brooks and George Will, to give two examples). And yesterday’s Outlook … Continue reading More on bias in academia
As objectionable as Mitt Romney’s “Kennedy” speech was (e.g., “Freedom requires religion“), it couldn’t be worse than David Brooks’ analysis of it: > He insisted that the faithful should stick stubbornly to their religions, as he himself sticks to the faith of his fathers. He insisted that God-talk should remain a vibrant force in the … Continue reading Serious religious thinker
Paul Krugman has written much of late on Reagan and racism. David Brooks even responded, however cluelessly, to some of Krugman’s arguments. As someone at Salon pointed out, Brooks ended up giving evidence for Krugman’s position–that is, that the Republican party was cognizant of the significance of Reagan’s announcing his support for “states’ rights” at … Continue reading Incontinence
David Brooks writes a piece entitled: “The Outsourced Brain.” Finally, one might think, a confession. Nope. Instead: >Since the dawn of humanity, people have had to worry about how to get from here to there. Precious brainpower has been used storing directions, and memorizing turns. I myself have been trapped at dinner parties at which … Continue reading Dawn of time
Michael Gerson, protege of the great David Brooks, visits a coffee shop near his home in Northern Virginia. He sees pictures of radicals, makes some remarks about how they were Stalinists, or something, and draws the conclusion that the left suffers from radical chic. Not only that, but the right is so cool its uncool: … Continue reading So cool it’s uncool
More frequent than George Will’s use of “traduce” is David Brooks’ dichotomizing: >And so there are two kinds of politicians: those who become creatures of the process, and those who, like Pryce, resist and retain the capacity to be appalled by what they must do. Only two? But notice, they both do the same thing. … Continue reading Dirty hands
Stanley Fish weighs in on all the chatter about "political indoctrination" at American Universities. Once again, the question is how many of them are there? Anne Neal, president of the conservative watchdog group the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, asks that question on camera, and answers it by reporting that in a survey of … Continue reading Scent of a herring
On Sunday’s “The Roundtable” portion of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” the remorseless, but always dapper George F. Will dropped this precious nugget of compassionate conservativism in defending President Bush’s promised veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP) Bill: >COKIE ROBERTS (ABC NEWS): That’s right. Look, I think this is a really … Continue reading Kill The Poor
David Brooks writes: >Many will doubt this, but Bush is a smart and compelling presence in person, and only the whispering voice of Leo Tolstoy holds one back. >Tolstoy had a very different theory of history. Tolstoy believed great leaders are puffed-up popinjays. They think their public decisions shape history, but really it is the … Continue reading Or Tolstoy is right