We All Love David Brooks
My friend Crispin Sartwell wasn’t in his usual Splice Today slot on Monday—he was in a now-standard bureaucratic mess in Colorado over a rental car—but I don’t think he’ll mind an incursion into his David Brooks-yuk-it-up territory. Everybody loves Brooks for obvious reasons: he’s an ice cream sandwich for those who don’t possess a to-the-moon-Alice level of narcissism (more than any New York Times columnist, Brooks resembles Donald Trump) for me, myself and I condescension.
It’s never taken me long to fall asleep at night, two or three minutes, and while getting comfy Sunday night, a stanza from Bob Dylan’s 1967 “Clothes Line Saga” rattled around my semi-conscious state:
“The next day everybody got up/Seein’ if the clothes were dry/The dogs were barkin’, a neighbor passed/Mama, of course, she said ‘Hi!’/’Have you heard the news?’ he said, with a grin/’The Vice-President’s gone mad!’/’Where?’/’Downtown.’ ‘When?’ ‘Last night’/’Hmm, say that’s too bad!’/’Well, there’s nothin’ we can do about it,’ said the neighbor/’It’s just somethin’ we’re gonna have to forget’/’Yes, I guess so,’ said Ma/Then she asked me if the clothes was still wet.”
I don’t believe Kamala—is she (or did she ever?) functioning as Sippy Cup’s veep?—has gone mad, since a person has to possess a reasonable slice of intelligence to gain admission to the funny farm.
Who wears short-shorts? We wear short-shorts. Who likes eating cats? (Not me, although when I lived in Manhattan and had meals in Chinatown—mostly dumps, save the supremo and now-closed Canton—there was always a suspicion that cat, pigeon, dog or rat made it into the “chicken” fried rice.) The probably apocryphal Springfield hubbub has mostly zipped past me, but the memes are pretty cool, especially Kamala as Marie Antoinette. One of my sons thinks it’s a near Trump-killer, while the other says the very idea of cat stew in America will stick with horrified voters who aren’t crazy about migrants to start with.
Beats me, just like the second guy trying to knock off Trump, another mystery that you know the DOJ won’t give their lickety-split attention. Can’t deny that America, and the world, is awash in conspiracy theories, but can anyone provide definitive proof that the government isn’t trying to kill Trump? Paraphrasing Jackie O in 1968, the United States is now perilous for the GOP candidate’s family, though eliminating Melania or Barron would be counter-productive. The moronic older sons—forgetting their names right now—wouldn’t merit a 12-hour news cycle. Slap me silly, Floyd or Goober, that was a damn mean comment to make.
Hmm, time to stop avoiding the latest Brooks history lesson. In his Sept. 12th column, “How a Cultural Shift Favors Harris,” the TDS scholar demonstrates that his feet, just like Kamala and Trump, are not planted, or stuck, in the quicksand of reality. (But I’m on the sunny side of the dirt road in Springfield, and believe he’ll take his weirdo act on the road, a stand-up routine alternating nights with the presidential candidates, his old boss Bill Kristol, Michael Stipe, Mason Reese, Mr. Wilson, Meathead, the Ghosts of Betty White and Weezy Jefferson, New York’s Jonny Chait and maybe even “axis of evil” David Frum. I’d take an Amtrak to D.C.’s Verizon Center—whether or not America’s now-third-world transportation “infrastructure” would get me to the “church” on time is another matter—to see the show. SRO, every fucking night.)
Shiny, Happy Brooks wrote: “The wearier we grow with American carnage catastrophizing, Trump seems not just monstrous but, worse, stale… We’re still an exhausted and battered nation, but if history is a guide, [Brooks lets on that flappers flapped around in the 1920s (Prohibition doesn’t merit inclusion) and “New Age mellowness” helped define the 1970s] then just over the horizon there is some new cultural moment coming. I suspect that Harris’s happy strength gives us a glimpse of the zeitgeist of tomorrow.” Boy howdy, that’s some really funny shit. Get them ducats now, friends, enemies, frenemies, countrymen and surviving tabby cats, Brooks’ tour will be The Greatest Show On Earth.
Slinking back to the woodshed of Everything Serious, I must note that the Times’ Bret Stephens, in a Sept. 15 column, isn’t sharing Brooks’ vibes. He thinks Trump is a buffoon, but says that the vacant Harris must earn his vote (which he admits counts for little since he lives in cat-centric New York). Stephens: “The argument that Trump is our Mussolini, scheming with ever-greater malevolence and cunning to end the Republic is getting a little long in the tooth… Trump may be the much worse sinner, but Democrats aren’t blameless when it comes to weaponizing the instruments of state power to interfere with the will of the voters.”
Stephens won’t cast a ballot for Trump, but his column is more than a hint that a lot of voters—citizens or otherwise—may sit it out on Election Day.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023