Althouse: Fire David Brooks!

September 9, 2007

Fire David Brooks!

I'm still puzzling over the relevance of my "Flak" post to this angry Kos campaign.

45 comments:

rhhardin said...: This latest example, however, is not from the likes of right wing pundits typically associated with violent rhetoric, such as Ann Coulter

They won't like Mencken either.; 9/9/07, 5:06 PM
Peter Hoh said...: Who is going to stand up for the rights of besmirched ninth tier bloggers?; 9/9/07, 5:19 PM
Larry Sheldon said...: I'm puzzled over why apparently lucid people try to find "relevance" in places like KOS.

Do you look for "relevance" in a flushed toilet?; 9/9/07, 5:43 PM
Simon said...: Proof, were it needed, that the truth hurts.; 9/9/07, 5:52 PM
Jennifer said...: It's kind of cute the way they're frantically trying to come up with a kind of 6-degrees-of-logic reason that anyone would compare the speech with the rhetoric of certain blogs other than the obvious they sound the same.; 9/9/07, 5:59 PM
Jennifer said...: Holy run on sentence.; 9/9/07, 5:59 PM
Gahrie said...: 1) Watching them scream that PBS is supposed to be non-partisan is side-splittingly funny. Tell that to Bill Moyers, Kossacks....

2) Either OBL's rhetoric corresponds to the rhetoric coming from the Left, or it doesn't. Rather than scream about how wrong it is to compare OBL's words to what the Left is saying, how about pointing out how they are significantly different? The only difference I see is that OBL believes in limited taxation.; 9/9/07, 6:11 PM
Joseph said...: I agree that Feldman's citation of that Althouse post is bizarre because it does not explicitly condone the suggestion that OBL sounds like a Democrat. I found the post entertaining in the way it addressed the etymology and style of Josh Marshall's writing.

But I was a little annoyed that the Althouse post simply noted that other people were drawing an OBL-Democrat connection and then declined to comment on whether that was an offensive connection to make, which strikes me as implicitly condoning it, especially when the rest of the post went on to criticize Marshall on relatively petty other grounds.

I personally think its an offensive and absurd connection to draw. Just as its offensive and absurd to suggest the terrorist mass murderer is like a Republican because of his objections to feminism or his religious fundamentalism.; 9/9/07, 6:15 PM
John Stodder said...: "Baaahaaahaaa! Mom! Make him say sorry!"

Oh for Pete's sake Kossites!

I know, the right sometimes gets into this apology vortex -- Hugh Hewitt is a great demander of apologies -- but God it is grating.

In his emotional hissy fit, Kos's diarist missed the point of Brooks' comment. Brooks is saying OBL is aping language from left wing blogs. How does that reflect on left wing blogs? An insult would be to allege the reverse, that the left-wing blogs are imitating Bin Laden's rhetoric. To say that OBL, in an attempt to curry favor with what he thinks is a major part of the American electorate, has adopted left-wing blogs' talking points is only to say OBL is trying to be clever. It reflects on OBL, and perhaps gives some understanding of how OBL's mind works. It's a perfectly fair comment, and the oversensitive left is wrong to take offense.; 9/9/07, 6:21 PM
Gahrie said...: John Stodder:It's a perfectly fair comment, and the oversensitive left is wrong to take offense.

The left is so sensitive because they know deep in their hearts that they are providing aid and comfort to our enemies yet again.

Our enemies know that the Left puts partisian domestic politics over national interest everytime, and are purposefully using that fact to try and defeat us.; 9/9/07, 6:26 PM
Joseph said...: Gahrie, you are despicable. Talk about putting partisan politics over substantive concerns...; 9/9/07, 6:30 PM
Brian Doyle said...: I hadn't read the whole text of your earlier post but it's stupid and offensive in a couple of ways, and obviously irrelevant to the anger directed at Brooks.

"Flack" is an alternate spelling of "flak," for one thing. Even if it weren't, correcting Marshall on the point does not make you the military expert you seem to think it does.

As for the "Bin Laden sounds like a Democrat line", refraining from expressing approval or disapproval is not a mark of centrist prudence.

It's clearly done in the service of the ongoing wingnut campaign to portray war opponents as traitors or Al Qaeda sympathizers.

But then that campaign worked pretty well on you, didn't it?; 9/9/07, 6:32 PM
Gahrie said...: Joseph Hovsep:

Again with the ad hominen.

Try replying substantially. How is what OBL was saying significantly different from what the Left is saying?

The Left has spent the last two years either drumming responsible Democrats out of the party. like Lieberman, or forcing them to kowtow to defeatism, like Hillary.

It really is 1973-1975 all over again.; 9/9/07, 6:33 PM
Brian Doyle said...: Gahrie, you can't accuse the majority of Americans who oppose this war of being in league with Bin Laden, and then whine about ad hominem responses.

You're a lunatic, and should be identified as such.; 9/9/07, 6:36 PM
AmPowerBlog said...: Folks, it's a hard-left smear campaign against Brooks. All he said is it perhaps OBL has been reading some lefty blogs, which doesn't sound too far off the mark considering the wild stuff spewing the Kos, FDL, and lord knows how many other Bush-bashing blogs.; 9/9/07, 6:39 PM
Gahrie said...: you can't accuse the majority of Americans who oppose this war of being in league with Bin Laden, and then whine about ad hominem responses.

I'm not accusing everyone who is opposed to the war with being in league with OBL. I am aware that it is possible to be responsibly against the war.

What I am doing is pointing out the fact that no one can point to one single thing that OBL has said that wouldn't be greeted with loud approval if it was posted over at DailyKos.; 9/9/07, 6:44 PM
Brian Doyle said...: Ah yes, the suggestion that OBL reads liberal blogs is just dispassionate analysis, clearly rooted in fact. Whereas objection to Brooks's comment is a smear campaign.

You do know that the term "smear campaign" implies that the accusations aren't true, right? Was Brooks misquoted in the video?; 9/9/07, 6:51 PM
Palladian said...: If the beard fits...; 9/9/07, 6:58 PM
Brian Doyle said...: Gahrie - I don't know how much you know about Osama Bin Laden, but he masterminded this big terrorist attack in 2001 that killed over 3,000 Americans. He has since continued to make threatening statements and calls for violent jihad against the United States and Israel.

So your assertion that American liberals approve of him in any meaningful way makes you sound crazy. There are a lot of people like you, and a lot of them spend time here and at Instapundit, LGF, etc., but you're either suffering from paranoid delusions or are just a tremendous a--hole.; 9/9/07, 6:58 PM
Joseph said...: The ad hominem is saying liberals put partisan politics above national security. Liberals (and Americans) think that the Bush Administration's policies have made us less safe and that Iraq has been a major distraction from securing our nation.

I'm not going to respond substantively to your demand to show how OBL is different from a Democrat because its not a substantive question to begin with.; 9/9/07, 7:01 PM
Brian Doyle said...: By the way, why hasn't our fierce terror-fighting president caught the guy yet?

Oh that's right. We have to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan. And Saudi Arabia, which brought us the actual 9/11 hijackers and supply most of the foreign fighters in Iraq? We've got a good thing going on with them, too, so best not disrupt it.

But that Saddam character was clearly the one to topple, what with the WMDs and the moderate Chalabi government waiting in the wings.; 9/9/07, 7:01 PM
John Stodder said...: Speaking only for myself, I think the campaign against Brooks is rooted in a misunderstanding of what he said.

If I point out that someone is trying to win your approval by insincerely imitating your politics, I'm not insulting you. I'm pointing out the strategy of the person who's trying to win you over.

If Brooks had added, "...and the left-wing bloggers are falling for it, claiming OBL as their kin," that would be an insult. But that's not what he said. Not close to what he said.

Brooks has nothing to apologize for, and certainly the McCarthyite tactic of trying to get him fired is beneath contempt.; 9/9/07, 7:03 PM
Brian Doyle said...: Saying OBL sounds like he reads liberal blogs is a McCarthyite tactic if ever there was one.; 9/9/07, 7:07 PM
Joseph said...: John Stodder: Whatever Brooks meant, plenty of other conservative commentators have said explicitly what lefty bloggers are upset at Brooks for. Its that meme so well expressed by Gahrie above that liberals are in league with Islamic terrorists. Perhaps Feldman, et. al., is being too defensive but that whole conservative line of rhetoric is both way more defensive and offensive in my humble opinion.; 9/9/07, 7:12 PM
Palladian said...: "So your assertion that American liberals approve of him in any meaningful way makes you sound crazy."

I don't think that's what Brooks was saying. I think there's a big difference between "liberals" and "lefty blogs", just as I think there's a big difference between real liberals and lefties. Liberalism is a noble tradition with roots in the 18th century and in the founding of our country. Leftism is a rolling snowball of dead-end negative ideology with roots in anarchism and Marxist class hatred.

I don't believe that Bin Laden (or whoever is operating the Bin Laden puppet these days) actually means anything he says in these messages. He's just playing divide-and-conquer and pushing the right buttons. It's the same tactic that leads to people passing out copies of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" at "peace" marches. Actual liberals who opposed the war in Iraq were just so bent on being tolerant that they unwittingly allied themselves with all sorts of dangerous and stupid people.

Bin Laden's interim goals are actually not significantly different than the goals of the farther reaches of the nihilist left: smash the state, destroy Israel, etc. But his ultimate goal, the ideology that will fill that vacuum, is a fundamentalist Islamic planet. In that worst-case scenario, liberalism and even anarchic leftism will be snuffed out under a hideous black veil.

But you can't be seriously offended when someone point out that the rhetoric Bin Laden has adopted is the rhetoric of the far left. Either laugh it off as a stupid comment (I mean, how many times have the same people who have the faux-vapors over David Brooks compared Bush to Hitler?) or do something to differentiate yourself from the nihilist vision that Bin Laden is using toward his dreadful cause.; 9/9/07, 7:15 PM
John Stodder said...: Doyle, don't you think it's possible that someone "reads" blogs, the newspapers, monitors TV and radio, for Bin Laden, and suggests things that, in the Al-Queda bizarro world, strike him as politically astute things for him to say? In addition to being a mass-murderer, he's a politician. Evidently he's trying to be like Tokyo Rose now.

I repeat, I think you and the left generally are being way oversensitive about this. Brooks never compared your views with Bin Laden's. He's not that stupid and not even that partisan, if you've read him lately.; 9/9/07, 7:16 PM
Gahrie said...: 1) Attacking me, instead of addressing my arguement, further proves my arguement.

2) doyle: You first mistake is using the fact that OBL was behind the attacks as a reason why the liberals wouldn't agree with him. The KosKiddies don't believe OBL was behind the attacks.

3)For those of you actually attempting to satisfy my challenge, I'll make it easy for you. There are three things that OBL said that the Kossacks would not greet with loud applause.

A) OBL and Al Queda were behind the 9/11 attacks.

B) The goal of Al Queda is to overthrow the West and install Islam and Shariah law worldwide.

C) Taxes in the United States are too high.; 9/9/07, 7:19 PM
John Stodder said...: Whatever Brooks meant, plenty of other conservative commentators have said explicitly what lefty bloggers are upset at Brooks for.

So Brooks should be fired because a bunch of right wingers tried to make hay over the comments of a crazy man?

No sane person thinks the left is in league with Bin Laden or agrees with his views. The doubts about the left have to do with their vigilance and awareness of the scope of the threat posed by the jihad movement. Those who want rapid withdrawal from Iraq aren't on Bin Laden's side, they just don't have an accurate understanding of what dire consequences would ensue.; 9/9/07, 7:27 PM
Gahrie said...: Those who want rapid withdrawal from Iraq aren't on Bin Laden's side,

They are on Bin Laden's side. You can argue that they are there unknowingly, or uncaringly, but you can't argue that their actions do not provide aid and comfort to him.; 9/9/07, 7:37 PM
Anonymous said...: Oh that's right. We have to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan. And Saudi Arabia

Yes, Doyle. Because if you send your military into a country to fight there, it's called invading that country. That's what war is. You are, therefore, suggesting that we invade the land of Mecca and the only country that was manifestly founded on Islam.

In the mind of the leftist, we can just drop our military into places willy-nilly and accomplish objectives. No one will mind. There will be no soldiers killed.

Just like in Iraq, right? Right?

Sometimes, I really do feel as if I am debating intellectually stunted circus freaks.; 9/9/07, 7:38 PM
Joseph said...: John, No, I don't think Brooks should be fired. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you. Just explaining that the dispute is not just about something Brooks may or may not have meant in a statement he made today.; 9/9/07, 7:46 PM
Brian Doyle said...: In the mind of the leftist, we can just drop our military into places willy-nilly and accomplish objectives. - Seven Machos' impression of a liberal, 9/9/07

As I stated in a speech in the lead-up to the war, a liberated Iraq has showed the power of freedom to transform the Middle East by bringing hope and progress to the lives of millions. So we are helping the Iraqi people build a lasting democracy that is peaceful and prosperous, and an example for the broader Middle East. - GWB 12/14/05

No one will mind. - Seven Machos impression of a liberal, 9/9/07

My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. Dick Cheney; 9/9/07, 7:53 PM
Anonymous said...: 7:53 PM. Point goes completely over head of brilliant leftist.

Above, Doyle, you suggest above that we should insert our military into two sovereign, tribal-oriented semi-states. Then you suggest that doing this in Iraq didn't work out as well as the Bush administration hoped in the sovereign, tribal-oriented semi-state of Iraq.

Which is it?

I guess we should bomb places to smithereens like we did under Clinton.; 9/9/07, 7:58 PM
Peter Hoh said...: Okay, I'll admit it. We liberals want OBL to take over. Really, it's the only way we can think of to get Ann Coulter off the airwaves.; 9/9/07, 8:01 PM
Palladian said...: If you stop engaging Doyle, it will go away! It's like feeding a stray cat. Do it once, and the flea-bitten scamp will keep coming back.

Peter Hoh, at least you have a sense of humor.; 9/9/07, 8:05 PM
Brian Doyle said...: Okay Seven. You win. I'll concede that we shouldn't invade Pakistan or Saudi Arabia if you concede that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq.; 9/9/07, 8:14 PM
Anonymous said...: Doyle -- I don't know that we should have invaded Iraq or not. I do know that we did, and that we must win because we must win every war we enter.; 9/9/07, 8:38 PM
rcocean said...: I agree - fire Brooks. We don't need two conservative, bow-tied fusspots on TV. And Will has seniority.; 9/9/07, 9:32 PM
Simon said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/9/07, 10:20 PM
garage mahal said...: Brooks must feel real bad losing so many sales to, and from the likes of Kos. Had it all to himself for all those years - before all those blogs sprung up - and now he's selling a completely inferior product the public isn't buying anymore. I for one, couldn't be happier.; 9/9/07, 11:13 PM
Fen said...: So your assertion that American liberals approve of him in any meaningful way makes you sound crazy.

But thats not what he asserted. Liberals don't approve of Bin Laden, they just happen to share many of his goals...

There are a lot of people like you, and a lot of them spend time here and at Instapundit, LGF, etc.

...to be more precise, Al Queda terrorist attacks are not aimed at those they blow up, they are aimed at American Copperheads back here in the states, to sap their will and force a retreat they can't muster on the battlefield. Al Queda has already admitted to stealing that concept from the Viet Cong's playbook: propaganda aimed at the surrender weasels in the US.

The ad hominem is saying liberals put partisan politics above national security.

Sometimes ad homs are also true. Its a fact that the Left places power of their Party over the good of the Nation.; 9/9/07, 11:34 PM
John Stodder said...: Brooks must feel real bad losing so many sales to, and from the likes of Kos. Had it all to himself for all those years - before all those blogs sprung up - and now he's selling a completely inferior product the public isn't buying anymore. I for one, couldn't be happier.

Couldn't resist. This is incredibly ill-informed in some obvious ways.

1. Kos isn't "selling" anything. His whole site is free. The NY Times sells Brooks on paper and in cyberspace. He also regularly appears on TV and radio, for which he is presumably paid and around which ads/sponsorships are sold.

2. Kos is hardly the first anti-corporate-media liberal. They existed before the Internet -- decades before. They existed on the Internet, before Kos got going in earnest.

3. Corporate-owned media has long sponsored far left, radical commentators. The LA Times employed Bob Scheer for yeara and he had a regular column. I recall reading columns by Alexander Cockburn in my daily newspaper. Noam Chomsky's political views were available from mainstream publishers going back to the 60s. Radical feminists like Catherine McKinnon were also frequently featured in mainstream news outlets.

Don't feed Kos' overgrown ego by redefining him as a pioneer. He's not. The main thing Kos has going for him are his comment threads -- outlets for expression by the herd of independent minds. But comments are a feature of about 1,000,000 blogs. Or you can start your own in five minutes. He's a beneficiary of the revolution in communications. He didn't invent it.; 9/9/07, 11:40 PM
Methadras said...: Hmmm...

Bin Laden or Kos. Kos or Bin Laden. Tough decision. Sorry, I'm practically seeing the same thing here. Incoherent ramblings from an entity that pretends to know what they are talking about, but look like deranged mental cases instead. Oh well. Give me some time. I think I might be able to find a distinction.; 9/9/07, 11:58 PM
garage mahal said...: John Stodder
"Losing sales to Kos" was an obvious metaphor because that's how I see people like Brooks, as a salesman with nothing to sell. He's trying to pitch "we are winning in Iraq", and "we can never leave Iraq". Tough assignment. That's why you hear "Democrats are terrorists". They have nothing.; 9/10/07, 12:03 AM
Meade said...: Oh poor poor Kos lefties.

What about the 9th tier bloggers? (thank you, Peter Hoh.)

Or how about us huddled 10th tier bloggers yearning to breath free up there with the 9thers? Collecting aluminum cans isn't nothing. We can't all be fascist oil barons from Texas. Just because we're no more coherent or comprehensible than Osama bin Laden doesn't mean we don't want to see Ann Coulter in a burka two. A too-piece burka. Or a burka tutu.

We have feelings to, you know. And sometimes our feelings hurt. We bleed. We get the shakes. We cry real tiers.

Look, I don't know this David Brooks character from Adam Gadahn but, yes, fire him. FIRE HIM NOW! Fire on all of them. Wait, let me just get my fric and flac jacket on. Now, FIRE!

Then maybe we can all move up a tear or too.; 9/10/07, 7:10 AM