Brooks: Let Them Eat Work
Unlike 90 percent of America, I was rooting for Duke last night. This was widely cast as a class conflict — the upper crust Dukies against the humble Midwestern farm boys. If this had been a movie, Butler’s last second heave would have gone in instead of clanging off the rim, and the country would still be weeping with joy.
But this is why life is not a movie. The rich are not always spoiled. Their success does not always derive from privilege. The Duke players — to the extent that they are paragons of privilege, which I dispute — won through hard work on defense.
via Redefining What It Means to Work Hard – Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com.
I know, I know, I was supposed to lay off David Brooks for a while. But how can this latest gem of his possibly be ignored? I’m beginning to absolutely love this guy — for sheer comedy value, he really doesn’t have any peers at this point, especially with Thomas Friedman seeming more subdued and gloomy than ever. In fact I’m beginning to worry that Friedman might take himself out of the comedy game for good by shaving his porno mustache, thereby eliminating the Boogie Nights factor from his work and leaving Brooks the runaway clubhouse leader.
Anyway Brooks in the above column — a sort of running conversation he has with Gail Collins — manages to take the experience of watching the recent Duke-Butler NCAA championship game and turn his impressions into the missing last chapter of Atlas Shrugged. He starts with the above observation that the reviled Dukies, who are often painted as college basketball’s spoiled children of privilege, won because they simply worked harder than those poor mid-major farm boys from Butler. Then he has a remarkably funny exchange with Collins in which he expands this observation to the rest of society. The whole passage reads as follows:
David Brooks: A few hours after that atrocity of opening day, Duke went on to beat Butler the national championship. You should know that Duke is one of my alma maters. I am very generous in my definition of alma maters. I claim that affiliation with any school I went to, taught at, lived near (Villanova and St. Johns) or parked at.
Unlike 90 percent of America, I was rooting for Duke last night. This was widely cast as a class conflict — the upper crust Dukies against the humble Midwestern farm boys. If this had been a movie, Butler’s last second heave would have gone in instead of clanging off the rim, and the country would still be weeping with joy.
But this is why life is not a movie. The rich are not always spoiled. Their success does not always derive from privilege. The Duke players — to the extent that they are paragons of privilege, which I dispute — won through hard work on defense.
Gail Collins: I’m sorry, when the difference is one weensy basket, I’d say Duke won neither by privilege nor hard work but by sheer luck. But don’t let me interrupt your thought here. I detect the subtle and skillful transition to a larger non-sport point.
David Brooks: Yes. I was going to say that for the first time in human history, rich people work longer hours than middle class or poor people. How do you construct a rich versus poor narrative when the rich are more industrious?
I had to read this thing twice before it registered that Brooks was actually saying that he was rooting for the rich against the poor. If he keeps this up, he’s going to make his way into the Guinness Book for having extended his tongue at least a foot and a half farther up the ass of the Times’s Upper East Side readership than any previous pundit in journalistic history. But then you come to this last line of his, in which he claims that “for the first time in history, rich people work longer hours than middle class or poor people,” and you find yourself almost speechless.
I would give just about anything to sit David Brooks down in front of some single mother somewhere who’s pulling two shitty minimum-wage jobs just to be able to afford a pair of $19 Mossimo sneakers at Target for her kid, and have him tell her, with a straight face, that her main problem is that she doesn’t work as hard as Jamie Dimon.
Only a person who has never actually held a real job could say something like this. There is, of course, a huge difference between working 80 hours a week in a profession that you love and which promises you vast financial rewards, and working 80 hours a week digging ditches for a septic-tank company, or listening to impatient assholes scream at you at some airport ticket counter all day long, or even teaching disinterested, uncontrollable kids in some crappy school district with metal detectors on every door.
Most of the work in this world completely sucks balls and the only reward most people get for their work is just barely enough money to survive, if that. The 95% of people out there who spend all day long shoveling the dogshit of life for subsistence wages are basically keeping things running just well enough so that David Brooks, me and the rest of that lucky 5% of mostly college-educated yuppies can live embarrassingly rewarding and interesting lives in which society throws gobs of money at us for pushing ideas around on paper (frequently, not even good ideas) and taking mutual-admiration-society business lunches in London and Paris and Las Vegas with our overpaid peers.
Brooks is right that most of the people in that 5% bracket log heavy hours, but where he’s wrong is in failing to recognize that most of us have enough shame to know that what we do for a living isn’t really working. I pull absolutely insane hours in my current profession, to the point of having almost no social life at all, but I know better than to call what I do for a living work. I was on a demolition crew when I was much younger, the kind of job where you have to wear a dust mask all day long, carry buckets full of concrete, and then spend all night picking fiberglass shards out of your forearms from ripping insulation out of the wall.
If I had to do even five hours of that work today I’d bawl my fucking eyes out for a month straight. I’m not complaining about my current good luck at all, but I would wet myself with shame if I ever heard it said that I work even half as hard as the average diner waitress.
Then again, maybe I’m looking at this from the wrong perspective. Would I rather clean army latrines with my tongue, or would I rather do what Brooks does for a living, working as a professional groveler and flatterer who three times a week has to come up with new ways to elucidate for his rich readers how cosmically just their lifestyles are? If sucking up to upper-crust yabos was my actual job and I had to do it to keep the electricity on in my house, then yes, I might look at that as work.
But it strikes me that David Brooks actually enjoys his chosen profession. In fact, he strikes me as the kind of person who even in his spare time would pay a Leona Helmsley lookalike a thousand dollars to take a shit on his back. And here he is saying that the reason the poor and the middle classes are struggling is because they don’t work hard enough. Is this guy the best, or what? Does it get any better than this?
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Not to mention that there are large numbers of people who expend time and energy taking care of kids or elderly parents around the clock, but because they receive no money for it, it is not even defined as work.
Or another Final Four team like West Virginia where more than 29 families in that state are grieving the losses of loved ones due to the rich versus poor (cost-saving efficiencies of playing defense in the coal mining business);
Reduce safety standards, create bureaucratic resistance by having key mining industry insiders become head regulators and then have them come back rich, powerfully connected and bent on siding with capital against labor….
Then, when shit happens; get in front of the camera and talk about how difficult this is to be a winner in society; how the rich have done everything in their power to make sure the poor do not have bad outcomes… this is complete horseshit… The final four analogy should be Duke versus West Virginia…. Private versus public; capital versus labor; pretty blue dukies versus rugged hard working mountaineers…. I am done here, but Brooks is a literary abuser of the narrative….
In response to another comment. See in context »just a little insult to add to injury: Fred Phelps is in to WVA (http://www.godhatesfags.com/schedule.html):
>”Church founder Fred Phelps didn’t participate in the Des Moines demonstration. He was scheduled to lead a West Virginia demonstration related to this week’s mine collapse that killed 29 people. One of Phelps’ Web sites says God killed the miners to “avenge his holy name” and the dead miners are now “burning in hell.” ” (http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100410/NEWS/100410002/-1/hawkeye_insider/Westboro-protestors-outnumbered-500-to-6-today-at-Drake)
If you’re from WVA, my heart goes out to you. I have cousins in the WVA coal mining industry and they have led fortunate lives in that they have never worked during a major accident.
In response to another comment. See in context »I am from the Midwest (originally close to Butler), but like you I have friends in the area and I am really tired of the platitudes of wealthy seeming to know what the experiences of “others” are; especially when tragedy hits and the poor and unfortunate become targets of blame….
gypsysister thanks for the links and the compassion; This Blankenship guy for some reason has really affected my relationship with world in the last few days….
In response to another comment. See in context »“the Times’s Upper East Side readership”? Hey, that’s me! Fuck Brooks. And Fuck Dook!
Oh Taibbi. You are SO right here. The trouble with this country is MOST of the people with jobs work WAY too hard, while the rest can’t get a job at all.
But Brooks is hardly alone here. Kissing the asses of the rich must be the second oldest profession and is directly related to the oldest. Preachers and academics and officers of NGOs are among the many kinds of ordinary people who spend their lives flattering the rich.
I don’t know about the academics you know, but the ones in my circle don’t fall into your categorization. Sure, we want them to keep sending their kids to our schools so we can keep a job, but flattery? mmmm, nah.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’m thinking he sees the writing on the wall and is trying to make the transition to The Heritage Institute as seamless a possible.
In response to another comment. See in context »Man, David Brooks is truly one of the best sources for so-disgusting-its-funny comedy out there. You’re right on about the New York Times’s readership. This is the same paper that had articles in early 2009 about how hard life is for laid-off investment bankers. The paper is truly a joke, and yet I can’t tear myself away.
Please feel free to whip on David Brooks as much as you want. He deserves it.
The narrative that if you work hard in this country you will get ahead is such a falsehood. People Like Brooks like to push that meme because it sounds good in their heads. The idea that the rich are wealth because they are just and work hard for it is a Calvinistic-like delusion. I would like to see a reality show where privileged morons like Brooks is forced to work jobs where they clean out septic tanks or dig for coal in non union mines for several months. That would be a show worth watching.
That show does kind of exist. It’s called Undercover Boss. Some of those CEOs “earned” their current position by luck of birth, so they’ve never had to seriously bust their hump to keep a roof over their head or food on the table.
Almost every show has an epiphany moment where the CEO is genuinely surprised how physically difficult the “little person” job is. Of course, they only have to do it for one shift, not their whole working adulthood.
In response to another comment. See in context »I heard of that show though I tend to avoid reality shows. Like you said, they have the CEOs do the job for a day, hardly an enlightening experience for the boss no matter what way they play it out for the audience. I did watch that show 30 Days though by Morgan Spurlock and he had an episode where he had to live off minimum wage for 30 days, that is more along the idea that was running through my head when I wrote that.
In response to another comment. See in context »The premise of the show is really crap. In the first place, whatever experiences the bosses have – as you note – are one-time, one-day snapshots that may linger in the boss’s mind for a day or two but is almost certainly quickly crowded out by the demands of his real job – cutting costs and “increasing shareholder value.” In the second place, how freaking “undercover” can you be when a camera crew follows you around all day filming you.” Imagine being one of these boss’s coworkers when the HR person brings around a new employee complete with his own camera and sound crew. “Hey, Joe, here’s your new colleague, Bill. He’s so excited about this job he’s hired a camera crew to film the experience for him.” How can the other employees not know something fishy is going on when they see that setup. My own feeling is that the show is meant as a way to rehabilitate the image of corporate CEOs by showing how they are willing to try yo understand their employees’ challenges and needs. What horse****. That’s like the CEO who pays an outside consultant hundreds of thousands of dollars to diagnose his company’s ills, knowing that the consultant is simply going to speak to the employees who actually do the critical work in the organization and reword their recommendations. If an employer needs to pull a stunt like “Undercover Boss” to get in touch with his employees needs he has no business in management.
In response to another comment. See in context »Thanks for your thoughtful comments ndomino and jjcomet.
“If an employer needs to pull a stunt like “Undercover Boss” to get in touch with his employees needs he has no business in management.”
Of course, you are right. Sadly, in fact, it does take the chance to play “undercover man” to get CEOs out of their comfort zones, away from their damn productivity maximizing spreadsheets and into the field. I’m glad when these guys see then end result of all their more output, lower cost formulas. They finally get a chance to see the inhumanity of those black and white numbers on the page.
The biggest benefit to the participating companies is the 1 hour commercial for their company. Plus a hand full of employees win some type of chump-change prize for interacting with the Undercover Boss.
In response to another comment. See in context »Arlie Hochschild talks about this at Cal-Berkeley: how capitalism evolved from three threads: individualism, protestant work ethic and consumption… to be American meant one had to pursue wants, work and devote energy to those wants and then demonstrate your work to others via consumption….
It then got perverted where it became more important to demonstrate than to work; working hard became a de-skilled working smarter…. where our financial community seized power and led us into the 21st century where America stands for securitization, financialization and pushing paper after more paper….
In response to another comment. See in context »Best comment. I dig the Calvinist-delusion reference. That is exactly what it is.
In response to another comment. See in context »Thank you.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] that they are paragons of privilege, which I dispute — won through hard work on defense. Via Taibbi, who brings us quickly to the highlight: Gail Collins: I’m sorry, when the difference is one [...]
Matt, who are you talking to? You’re defending the poor to your educated readers. The targets of your compassion have never heard of you and never will. This is moral mental masturbation. I still like it, though.
Warren you are so right. Us poor, illiterate peasants are just tuned-out Luddites with no internet access and no interest in this complicated gobbledy-gook. Derp!
This isn’t about compassion, it’s about underlining what stunning bullshit this popular notion really is, and shining a light on pallid slobs like Brooks. Even Warren Buffet would draw dicks on Brooks’ forehead while he sleeps.
In response to another comment. See in context »Taylor, You must excuse Warren. He is in the midst of a backslapping , moral, mental orgasm and can’t be held accountable for his intellectual produce during the cataclysmic ecstasy of his discovery that he is a mental, moral self-aggrandizing dick.
In response to another comment. See in context »You make a lot of assumptions about who does or does not read Matt Taibbi. How dare you assume no blue collar workers, past or present, read his articles?
Arrogance and short sightedness just as bad as David Brooks as far as I’m concerned.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’ll tell you who he talking to; how the 29 families of miners who lost loved one in an explosion that could have been avoided if “the winners in society” gave a shit about workers.
You have to name a problem first and then make it recognizable before groups of workers who have been preyed upon can avoid seeing their resemblance in their oppressors…..
If we don’t name it; they will always win; the roots of the noise machine in (America Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman and corporate PR) make it so that if we do not name it; they win…
Be patient, this social movement creating greater disparity has taken forty years to evolve; it will take some time to disassemble
In response to another comment. See in context »Life have a funny way of teaching, you’ll learn big shot.
In response to another comment. See in context »You assume poor means uneducated. Watch out buddy, organic intellectuals are gonna get your mama.
In response to another comment. See in context »Poor single mother here. Non-moron as well as longtime supporter of Mr. Taibbi.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] that they are paragons of privilege, which I dispute — won through hard work on defense. Via Taibbi, who brings us quickly to the highlight: Gail Collins: I’m sorry, when the difference is one [...]
You said it. I’ve tried to say before that there is a “general principle that the harder people work (as a group), the less money they make — and the less ‘productive’ they are in economic terms (meaning what they produce sells for less).” I find it a surprisingly hard sell: http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/all-work-and-no-pay/
Maybe the Times should rethink Times Select?
Keep Brooks behind the paywall, so he can metaphorically fellate the people who don’t know what real work is, without subjecting the paper to this degree of embarrassment and cultural disconnect.
Loved this!
[...] so long as they’re willing to “work hard”. Sounds like that’s something Matt Tabbai and I have in common. He quotes David Brooks: David Brooks: Yes. I was going to say that for the first time in human [...]
Brooks is a comedic godsend. My only motivation for getting rich would be so I could invite him over for brunch and them make him wait in the hall for an hour before cancelling. “I’m sorry Mr. Brooks, but the master can’t spare the time to see you because he’s working too hard. I’m sure you of all people understand.”
Not only does Brooks lack the guts it would take to work manual labor, he lacks the brains it takes to organize manual labor.
I’ve known CEOs that work 60 hours/week, but it was usually selling bullshit like business forecasting models.
One question Matt: why would he prefer she shit on his back?
[...] Posted on April 10, 2010 by bluelyon Matt Taibbi on David Brooks and real work: Brooks is right that most of the people in that 5% bracket log heavy [...]
Brooks Still a Douche
[...] even more than you do. The man who delivered the ultimate smackdown on Thomas Friedman reports a new nadir for our modern op-ed courtiers: David Brooks: … Unlike 90 percent of America, I was rooting for [...]
Being a Republican Media Sycophant: So easy a caveman can do it.
For the first time in a long time I have little to add to the above.
I wasn’t provoked by the first Brooks’ comment, but, like Matt, I did a bit of a double take on his followup. While I think in many cases he can rightly say that SOME of the people considered ‘well to do’ work longer hours than the average guy (or gal), it’s perfectly ridiculous to say that as a whole wealthy people ‘work’ longer hours than others.
I was glad to see Matt point out the subtleties which Brooks fails to see. Work can encompass all manner of activities. It would be more appropriate to speak of drudgery.
Is he (Brooks) willing to say that wealthy people experience more drudgery per unit of income earned? I don’t think even Mr. Brooks is so naive to believe that to be true; or at least I hope not.
-RLee
http://therleepost.blogspot.com
Well, to look at just how many hours one puts in at one’s “job” is an incomplete measure in the first place.
The guy pulling down a million, or even several hundred thousand a year working 60 hours a week doesn’t live 24/7 with the financial and other stresses that we plebes face. That guy, if he’s married, either has a stay-at-home wife or a nanny (or both) to care for the kids; if the kids are older he’s not worrying about how bad their schools are. A $1 per gallon increase in the cost of gasoline isn’t going to touch him, he’s probably never had to worry about losing everything if he or a member of the family has a medical problem, burglaries and shootings aren’t daily realities in his neighborhood, and if he loses his job tomorrow he probably has enough socked away to get by for a year or so without too much pain.
When you subtract all of those things from the equation, working 60 or even 80 hours a week isn’t, in and of itself, all that stressful, particularly when you’re in a higher-level type job where you can pretty much schedule your day so it doesn’t suck all that hard to put in 12-hour days. There are plenty of people in the country who work that many hours while also having to worry about all of the concerns I listed above.
In response to another comment. See in context »Thanks for your breakdown of different 60 hour work weeks, jennofark.
Another point you can add later:
In response to another comment. See in context »Some folks will still have a challenge covering their basic needs even after working a 60 hr. work week. There are a lot of working poor in the US.
He is a “yes man” thru and thru. His only concern is how much he will be paid for his column and or interview. To put it bluntly….he is just another corporate kiss ass looking to make a buck.
You wont find Brooks on the front line of anything….and he is almost always wrong. But hey, who cares right? The only people paying attention to Brooks are other media members who wish they had his bank roll.
Matt,
You are so right on here about Brooks. Talk about a guy who so could not take a punch and yet invites one every time he opens his mouth.
For an all time high or low you pick on Brooks go back to his post Kerry/Bush debate analysis for PBS. Talk about tell any lie no matter how ridiculous because you are a spineless suck up and you have Brooks picking Bush as clear winner.
Thank you for your good work,
Conrad
RE:Most of the work in this world completely sucks balls and the only reward most people get for their work is just barely enough money to survive,
Well, that may be true, but putting aside the sports nonsense, we have a new privileged class…..the public employee…..which the current obama-bush economic disaster has not even touched…..and the harshest thing to come down lately on this class of elites….is being “forced” into early retirement
Brooks is just a cog in a sea of cogs
Public employees only have what the rest of us should have – benefits plans, the right to organize, etc. Pulling the rug out from under them isn’t going to make anyone but the usual suspects any better off.
Referring to middle-class people as a “privileged class” is crazy and accomplishes nothing more than to reinforce the frame that has been so destructive to the majority of people in this country for the past 30 years – that somehow, the highest ideals of democracy can only be achieved if we transform our society into system of corporate feudalism and fealty to a wealthy aristocratic class – “the producers” as Brooks would call them, even though their wealth derives not primarily from the hours they themselves put in at any productive work, but from the increasingly large share of the profits they take for themselves from the labor of others.
In response to another comment. See in context »Yes, it’s terrible that those damn public employees – the people who repair our streets and electrical grid, run our libraries, and perform other oh-so-glamorous tasks – should get paid a decent wage and be allowed to stop working some time before they drop dead from old age. So very privileged. What is this, Communist Russia?
Speaking of Russia, I believe there is a parable about Ivan and his goat that applies in this situation.
In other news, andylevinson still a douche.
In response to another comment. See in context »What’s with this guy– he equates having a job with the clerk of courts with winning the lottery.
In response to another comment. See in context »Did his wife leave him for a firefighter?
you’re right! The public employee sucks! They’re people like me…
Let’s just do a full disclosure here: I’m a public employee (teacher) in Los Angeles. The next person that tells me that I have it “easy” is getting socked in the taint. Every day I’m at work by 630 AM and I’m usually not leaving until about 5 in the evening. Am I getting paid overtime? Of course not. After doing the job of educating our high school kids I pull in about $2,800 a month after taxes. Do you live in LA? Are you aware of the cost of rent? Or that it’s next to impossible to live in this city without a car and the highest gas prices in the country?
My point here isn’t to complain about any of this. I teach because I love it and it because, hell, I want to do something with my life to make a difference. I don’t care all that much about material bullshit so it’s easier for me to live off the low pay. But, it’s so infuriating for people to approach me like I’m gaming the system when they have no idea what I do or the absurd hours I work on a weekly basis.
And yes, being “forced” into early retirement for some people is a very very big deal. Go talk to a teacher or other public employee that has a kid in college, a mortgage, and see how they feel about being forced out…
In response to another comment. See in context »Wow! How does one even begin to wrap ones’ head around this reduction of class warfare and blue devil excrement?
To examine Brooks’ toxic methane that just blew up all over the NY Times is to miss one of the giant narratives of the last week.
Cardinal Brooks perpetrates the old yarn of rich and poor, Duke & Butler, and disparities of hard working and time consumed during one the biggest mine tragedies in our nations’ consciousness…. Upper Big Branch Massey mines in West Virginia…
I cannot think of a better example of rich versus poor being enacted where the consequences of human life for the poor become another tragedy for seemingly oblivious rich’s production of wealth…. Foregoing safety standards, long hours, hard and dangerous work
Yeah Brooks, you got the right narrative; its about how smart those Dukies are playing defense….. Instead of hitching your bandwagon to the Siglers, Schreyers of the world in an attempt to rationalize your whoredom, you might try just talking to people instead of at and about them…. You would find out what they think of you and have to adjust to survive, but that is as unlikely as Pope Benedict owning his part in covering up abuse…. The NY Times has no clothes
Revising and cherry picking the narrative that most completes your world view is not uncommon endeavor; however, the gross ineptitude of not acknowledging a group of 29 people who died because their rich boss just wanted to mine coal (screw safety)is such a colossal failure as to engender the type of anger one has for the person who runs over your dying dog and leaves the scene to avoid implication…..
My condolences to Duke Fans who have to endure David Brooks tying a prophetic socio-economic coda to a 2 point victory in one game… My suggestion is to send Bob Huggins, A group of Mining Families, and members of UTEP’s 1966 team to kick his ass….
Two words about Brooks:
Cognitive Dissonance.
I recently read an article about the “slave labor” in Dubai and one of the ruling class members had an insightful comment in which he turned the mirror back on the west and the cheap labor of outsourcing and illegal immigrants. For us, it is easy to adjust our perceptions to make ourselves good.
Legions of self-professed saints march the streets but nary a self-proclaimed self-absorbed a-hole. Thanks for admitting that those who are well-to-do DO work hard but the motivation is the far greater reward than minimum wage.
This can best be seen in how racism operates: where white only has meaning because of black’s stereotype: examples
Black sheep in family/ The Black Sox – scandal
Black out – memory loss Black death – plague
Blackball – to kickout, Blackmail – threaten
Blacklist – to prevent, Blackwater – XO (evil)
Blackhole – nothingness, Black Friday – 1929
White out- remove a black mistake
white knight industry – savior
white knuckles, white board – ideas
white house – president’s living quarters
white wash – coat over
Brooks is selectively choosing the narrative that best conforms to his version/biases; it is here he can paint others rich/poor or good/bad;
Each binary requires the other to order a level of dominance; that encapsulates what each are; some of us got passed this in 5th grade, but when you already have the narrative and very little pre-frontal cortex, it is always simpler to categorize things in terms of good and bad binaries….
however as we age, we recognize our capacity for greater diversity and range and given the right opportunities and conditions the potential to serve good, bad, or otherwise moment to moment….
In response to another comment. See in context »David Brooks and his ilk have always felt that this was case. The poor are poor because they lack the character and the drive that the rich have, as far as he is concerned. The man’s columns are proof of that old adage: there is nothing worse than fool, except a fool with ideas and education. Fuck him.
@Matt: I live Buffalo and have looked forward to reading you ever since you were writing at The Beast eight years ago. I will likely be teaching some of those “uncontrollable kids in some crappy school district with metal detectors on every door,” in Buffalo or Cheektowaga next year. Enough of the population already holds my chosen profession in contempt–including the President of the United States if his attitude towards the teachers fired in Rhode Island is any indication. Please don’t join them.
All the same, keep it up. Your fresh air amidst a whole lot of foulness.
I agree with your points. I have spent my entire career with working class people. This is hyperbole:
Most of the work in this world completely sucks balls and the only reward most people get for their work is just barely enough money to survive, if that.
Things have gotten bad and corrective action is needed. But things aren’t as bad as you think you know.
I’m so frustrated that NYT is considered a “liberal rag” at all, but particularly because David Brooks represents NYT so much lately. And then I’m frustrated that Brooks is called a centrist.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-01/the-top-25-centrist-columnists-and-commentators/
But that’s a jaw-dropper even for Brooks, a modern version of “let them eat cake.” Middle class buying power has fallen while the top tier has exploded over many decades, and Brooks wants to say this is because rich people work harder? I beg to flippin’ differ.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/category/income-disparity#Blogroll
Huh, I never would have thought a savvy political observer like DB would buy in to the banal CBS storyline pap, unless he has some ulterior motive…
So, one team has overwhelming advantages in talent, funding, coaching, name recognition, academics, recruiting, facilities, media exposure, depth, speed, and size, yet Brooks acts as if the two teams were an even match. He seems to be afflicted with the same acute myopia while analyzing basketball as he does when analyzing anything else.
And speaking of larger points, how many hours/wk does David Brooks log observing the other 90% with his gilded periscope? I can’t imagine many, what with his busy schedule of talking about it with any media outlet that will have his sad ass.
“In fact, he strikes me as the kind of person who even in his spare time would pay a Leona Helmsley lookalike a thousand dollars to take a shit on his back.”
HA HA! I am going to have to photoshop this.
That was beautiful; every word rang true. I nearly peed in my pants at:
“[Brooks] manages to take the experience of watching the recent Duke-Butler NCAA championship game and turn his impressions into the missing last chapter of Atlas Shrugged.”
Yeah, well, qu’ils mangent de la merde.
Seriously, though, “on the back”? Your typical steamer’s more likely to be on the chest or the face, so give Brooks points for originality.
Yes, well, the prone position is generally considered to be more submissive than the supine, so…draw your own conclusion.
In response to another comment. See in context »Matt, you mentioned that you worked for a while on a demolition crew. It would be interesting in your profile to post that and perhaps other expressions which relate to your working class experiences. It might provide an interesting contrast to those of, say, David Brooks.
I don’t often bother to read David Brooks in the NY Times because I know that he will so predictably try to present the Republican Party line sounding as reasonable as he possibly can.
But when I do, I also invariably read the comments that his columns receive in response using the “most recommended” option, and I find that the great majority of those who respond have the same opinion of his “work” as Matt does.
Reading the comments that way following almost anything he writes in the NY Times, I discovered that his readers generally think he’s a jackass.
I’m in accord with rlee… Heh – after reading the 1st few lines, I wanted to send you a Cornell-Kentucky reminder, so thank you for posting the entire passage as I am too lazy to click on the link today. The last paragraph is pretty disgusting. Why does the NYT – or any other publication – feel the need to print writing like this? Why? Maybe it’s because there are a number of people who fall in line with David Brooks’s line of thinking – damn, they deserve that billion or so bonus cause they worked their asses off!
Michael Salmonowicz posted a column that caused a tiny uproar between teachers and lawyers (http://trueslant.com/michaelsalmonowicz/2010/02/14/who-has-the-tougher-job-teachers-or-lawyers/#post_comments) back in February. Many of the responses reminded me of my dad chiding me for complaining about chores: “You act as if you’re gonna work harder than someone else.” It’s not as if each responder looked down on the other side, but the back and forth was a bit contentious.
Oh, wouldn’t I love to bring Brooks on some of the jobs I’ve had over the years, like the job building experimental equipment for a start-up company with diminishing funds, working 100 hours a week doing physically and mentally demanding tasks that Brooks doesn’t even know exist, let alone understand, and then paying 60% of my lousy take-home for an apartment that I depicted as the only one having a lake with a fireplace view (the floor joists sagged in the living room, the owners had sealed and urethaned the floor, and when the float valve in the furnace boiler stuck open, three stories worth of radiators in the building would fill up with water and because of the head pressure, a geyser would come out of the radiator vent valve and fill the belly in the floor, forming a lake in the living room). That region of suburban Boston had a less than 1% vacancy rate in the `80s, and one could conceivably pay all of one’s salary just for decent housing.
Then there was that summer as a common laborer in a paper mill. The time in the non-union foundry. The non-union job doing heavy construction where I got fired because I wouldn’t shinny out forty feet along an unsecured beam waving in the air thirty feet above the ground…. Or, putting in 60 hours a week teaching at a small private college, and then working another thirty or so hours at another job as a mechanic because the pay didn’t cover minimum living expenses.
It occurs to me that, for all his worldliness and feigned sophistication, Brooks doesn’t have a fuckin’ clue about how the French Revolution came about….
You’ve never been near a single mother you hypocrite. Stop acting like a populist and own up to what you are: another spoiled offspring of the American Oligarchy.
I was raised by a single mother.
In response to another comment. See in context »Quit being inconveniently factual
In response to another comment. See in context »I was a single mom. I also worked as a waitress in a diner. You get it. Thanks.
In response to another comment. See in context »And as a single mother (almost done with that highly paid job, tho) I kiss your fucking feet. Can I make you a margarine sandwich (sorry, no peanut butter and my next paycheck will clear in 4 days)? Can I mend any socks for you (rather than cough up 99 cents for socks made by Chinese wage slaves)? Can I sit up all night to tend to you next time you have a high fever before I work my ass off for the next day’s pay (and work all day next time I’m ill since I’ll have used up my own sick days to stay home with you)? Can I (while stifling my own feelings about the a-hole) coach you through how to process your disappointment in the other half of your DNA by employing a balance of humor, detachment and healthy anger?
ty *so* much Matt, clearly your single mama has done some things right raising you.
In response to another comment. See in context »Nice response and a great piece
cheers
In response to another comment. See in context »Olga-Lednichenko
[...] [Click to continue reading Brooks: Let Them Eat Work - Matt Taibbi - Taibblog - True/Slant] [...]
It’s areal toss up as to who is more dreadful, when the contestants are Friedman and David Brooks.
Who is he to favor the world with his opinions on the hardest working people in America.
Although, I have to mention that his column regarding the Earthquake in Haiti, was for me his most repulsive.
He compared the size of the earthquake and the attendant damage to The Loma Prieta Quake that struck the Bay Area in 1989.
Then he went on to attack the people working in NGO’s trying to help Haiti.
Clearly this piece of human waste hates poor people, and why shouldn’t he. He is a Republican and that’s one of their key beliefs.
As promised, Brooks’s shitty sexual fantasy illustrated:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v433/diannaruggles/brooksleona.jpg
As a general rule, I avoid such links like the plague, but for some reason I clicked on yours. Nicely done, and way more tasteful than I imagined…
In response to another comment. See in context »It’s so true that 80 hours spent doing something you love is different time than punching the clock at a low-wage, dead-end, back-breaking or demeaning job. But Brooks also fails to consider that many employers don’t pay overtime anymore, so even when workers want to be “industrious” or just make ends meet because they can’t on 40 hours of their pitiful wages, they’re denied. Even full-time jobs are hard to find nowadays, nevermind those that pay overtime and give benefits and raises. So many businesses have enacted wage freezes, and here’s this asshole suggesting poor and middle-class workers aren’t industrious enough. Please. I bet a lot of workers are quietly putting in overtime anyway just so they don’t get fired. And for those who don’t, good for them. What’s the incentive? Also, lower-end jobs tend to be more structured. You can’t get away with leisurely lunches or ducking out of work early on a sunny Friday. It’s a different world! And as for that crap Brooks spews later about parents with privileged backgrounds typically spending more time with their children. Wow. Apparently he’ll say just about anything to justify inequality. I’m glad you’re calling him out on his bullshit.
Just a side note. There’s a trend I’ve noticed on Craigslist. Job seekers post outraged responses to want ads, basically heckling employers for having the balls to offer jobs at laughable wages and with no benefits and increasingly no guarantee of steady hours. I like seeing the outrage but I’m afraid these sad offers have plenty of takers.
On another side note, this discussion reminded me of the Chris Rock skit about careers and jobs, and I went back and watched it again. Too funny. “Have you ever been so miserable at work that you spent extra time just sitting on the toilet?”
It’s time for the Wimblehack tournament to have a 2010 season, Matt.
Hahaha!!!! I think Brooks would love a freshly baked horse semen pie….
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] Shared Brooks: Let Them Eat Work. [...]
[...] David Brooks, aka the World’s Biggest Douchebag is rooting for the rich, because they work so fucking hard: David Brooks: Yes. I was going to say that for the first time in human history, rich people work [...]
Does everyone remember a woman telling Bush in 2005 that she had to work 3 jobs to support her family, and his response?
“You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.”
—President George W. Bush, to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushism-uniquelyamerican.htm [audio]
It must be backbreaking pulling facile, lick-spittle comments out of your ass for a six figure salary. Guys like Brooks should be forced to dig ditches and fill sandbags until their hands bled – for about 40 minutes in other words.
Nice work. You neglected a couple of bodily functions, but those you staged were expertly deployed.
Still, next time, would like to see a wider, more comprehensive and explicative dispersal of the ready arsenal at your command.
I mean, this is David Brooks we’re talking about, here.
Matt, This is like an invitation to an open thread, so I will only pursue one tentacle of the Monster Squid. I have had many of those shitty demo type jobs for 40 years. They do keep the electric on. We of the Shitty Job Corps do have one unpaid benefit: self respect. I had my arm a foot and a half up a cows ass last week. Never had to stick my tongue up anythings ass. Brooks is welcome to his humiliating, hubris-tic suit company of a life. I’m going fishin’ with my grand-babies. Keep the faith, man.
In response to another comment. See in context »Ditto on the Brooks kill. More fecal fecundity would be amusing and appropriate.
In response to another comment. See in context »Matt… Butler is not Purdue. It is not an agricultural college. And the draw of the two colleges is not that different in some respects: small town white protestant parents want to send their children to a sort of protected environment where they don’t have to be too worried about the kids being tainted by urban life. Butler ain’t “Hoosiers”.
I’m quoting Brooks in the piece.
In response to another comment. See in context »Unfortunately Brooks is not alone in his “mercenary” spirit. Most work/professions are valued/weighed in terms of profit/gain. The more money you make, the more valued you are in society period. The minimum wage worker can work as many hours or more than the highest paid CEO but his value will always be predicated on his pocketbook.
Shame on Brooks for shaming those who have chosen a path less profitable and for trying to make a case that those who work harder simply make more money. What a foolhardy, myopic perspective. The irony is that he gets paid big $$$$ to make such shallow observations. He is so unoriginal it’s boring. He’s not funny Matt, he’s just predictable.
[...] Taibbi takes a crack at this motherfucker Only a person who has never actually held a real job could say something like this. There is, of course, a huge difference between working 80 hours a week in a profession that you love and which promises you vast financial rewards, and working 80 hours a week digging ditches for a septic-tank company, or listening to impatient assholes scream at you at some airport ticket counter all day long, or even teaching disinterested, uncontrollable kids in some crappy school district with metal detectors on every door. [...]
As a college student (way back in 1975), I saw the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.” The hero, of course, is the rebel McMurphy (played by Jack Nicholson) and the villain is the control freak Nurse Ratched. As we were leaving the theater, I was stunned to overhear another student saying how he agreed with Ratched and thought she was perfectly right. I need to look up where Brooks went to college. That must have been him.
Its funny both sides (Brooks and Taibbi) make generalizations that are not true. Brooks: only the rich work hard – that’s why they’re successful. Taibbi: the poor are noble warriors working 80 hours a week to buy a loaf of bread, pissed on by the rich or otherwise they would be successful too. Both statements are false.
In the real world, many of the rich and poor (and middle) are incredibly lazy people who will not succeed (or carry their load) because they just don’t have it in them.
I came from the proverbial other side of the tracks and I really didn’t care how hard that I needed to work to make it. Yes, I knew the game was rigged but I didn’t make excuses or let this ultimate fact deter me. So out of my neighborhood those that felt like I did made it out. Those that made excuses never left. I am not judging them – it’s just a fact.
When I started meeting and working with rich people, I observed the exact same traits that I had seen in my lower class working neighborhood. The difference, (which is Matt’s point I think), is that the lazy rich still lived in 7000 square foot homes and drove Audi’s.
The real crux of the issue is that we need to have a fair system where opportunity is provided to all (not completely rigged against the middle like now) but recognize that not everyone is made equally and that people will fall short solely because they don’t have it in them to succeed. I would add that for those that go on to success, a little charity and humility go a long way.
Put simply, growing up the way I did, I realize that I don’t need a lot to live. So we give as much as we can to others and teach our kids that if you’re life will be successful only when you put others before yourself.
Dear Martinbreen,
In response to another comment. See in context »Are you fucking for real? Please tell me you are an avatar. How the hell can personal success or failure be determined in a rigged game? Is the winner at the craps table more skilled than the loser? More morally motivated? More humble? More charitable? More self demeaning? I don’t get it and I have been on both sides of the track. What absolute horse shit.
recognize that not everyone is made equally and that people will fall short solely because they don’t have it in them to succeed
I think you are absolutely right — there are those out there that do only as little as they have to in order to get what they want. As a liberal-leaning thinker I see that group as the reason we have gov’t programs (welfare, food stamps, etc). Sadly, in the last 20 years far too many of us that want to pull our own weight and be a part of the solution instead of the problem are now staring at a dismal retirement after 30 dismal years of never quite achieving the ‘American Dream’ and that’s what I take umbrage to — most of us don’t want that ‘palace’ that “13 families could live in” (quote from Dr. Zhivago), we just want to be able to live comfortably and peacefully in our little 3 bedroom hovel.
In response to another comment. See in context »“annlindenmuth
recognize that not everyone is made equally and that people will fall short solely because they don’t have it in them to succeed”
Your words would have more validity if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes many incompetent and mediocre people propped up in their “successful” career because they were the “right sort” of person. If those co-workers didn’t fit the appropriate profile, they’d be gone so fast, their heads would still be spinning.
People are as successful as they are given the opportunity to succeed.
In response to another comment. See in context »