David Brooks today, eulogizing Margaret Thatcher:
She was formed by her disgust with 1970s Britain. She witnessed a moral shift in those years, away from people who were competitive and toward people who were cooperative, away from the ambitious and toward those who were self-nurturing and self-exploring, away from the culture of rectitude and toward the culture of narcissism. Especially in the prestigious reaches of society, people were often uninterested in technology and disdainful of commerce.And after she blessed us mere mortals with her magisterial presence on this earth:
Today, bourgeois virtues like industry, competitiveness, ambition and personal responsibility are once again widely admired, by people of all political stripes.Everything, for Brooks, goes into two piles. In the evil pile: people who are cooperative, self-nurturing, self-exploring, technophobic, narcissistic. Y'know -- flabby, navel-gazing hippie liberals.
On the other side are those who are competitive, those who are ambitious, those who have ... rectitude? Seriously? And personal responsibility?
Yes, after the Gordon Gekko '80s, after Enron, after the last five disastrous years, David Brooks still associates ambition and competitiveness with moral uprightness. Brooks writes an entire column about how Margaret Thatcher made the world safe for go-getters and never once so much as touches on how go-getters led us to global economic calamity. It's as if he were eulogizing a postwar Southern politician and never once mentioned race. It's a remarkable demonstration of obliviousness.
Maybe Bobo could have gotten his priviged ass out of the NY Times office, or his new swanky mansion digs, and gone to some Applebee's in the 'Murkan Heartland, and talked to the people working there, and the customers not at the non-existent salad-bar, and asked them how their ol' middle class aspirations thingy's been going the last 30+ years?
ReplyDeleteOr go to some city in England besides that other hotbed of financial greed, London, and asked some working people over there how their ol' middle class aspirations thingy's been going the last 30+ years?
No.
Instead, he stayed in his den, and fwapped away at Lil' Bobo, while looking at photo's of Maggie and Ronnie, until exhausted, he cut & pasted together sh*t from his earlier obit's for Conservative icons, e-mailed it in, and fell into a deep, deep, sleep.
I was a loyal NY Times reader, and buyer, from the time I was a kid, until a little over a year ago, when I stopped buying it altogether.
And you know what?
I don't miss it.
Some of the reporting - yeah. But, the Op-Ed?
Outside of Krugman?
NAH!!!
As long as the Op-Ed page has this inane idiot, Baby Bobo Douthat, and The Great Mustache of Misinformation, I'm not spending a nickel on it.
So, people who are "cooperative" are...narcistic?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand anything anymore.
Now I suppose we'll have to kiss The Queen's lily white ass too, when she kicks off. Which the same headlines that blare at me Bush Has Alzheimers and can't be held responsible for what he's done blare it could happen any day now. She is, afterall, A HUNDRED FRICKIN YEARS OLD!
ReplyDeleteAs I recall the history literally beaten into me as a child, I recall that just before your genocidal holocaust of twelve or fifteen million of my ancestors kicked into high gear you people fought a revolution to break from all that Queen and Country shit. We helped. Your Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence are as rooted in First American tradition as "European Enlightenment", or the Magna Carta. Remember, you people fought a revolution to break from all things "British". At least that's what you "patriots" keep telling me.
We helped. So much for cooperation...
No fear.
Damn "stupid" phone.
DeleteDamn Blogger comments. (I delete the duplicate.)
ReplyDeleteEspecially in the prestigious reaches of society, people were often uninterested in technology and disdainful of commerce.
ReplyDeleteWasn't that always the case with the "presigious reaches" in the UK? Why dirty your hands when you can get some low-born Scot to do it?