Oh, this feels like low-hanging fruit, but a part of me *sorely* wants to tear apart a David Brooks column for next week's newsletter.
If I do, it won't *solely* be about Brooks, because it's not my style to fixate on people who get it wrong, so much as to try to figure out how to be less wrong together, but still...
Oof.
David, why you always gotta make it so easy? 🙃
I got to the Game of Thrones Walk of Shame part and immediately thought "oh, no one needs to see that - who are we trying to punish here?!" 😂 But you had me covered with the parentheses.
And yes, yes we are going to talk about that article - with some express Brooks "dragging" but also in a bigger way, looking at some of the rhetorical moves we need to be on high alert for as we wade through more nonsense like that pap in the coming weeks and months of attempts to retcon history.
@MLClark i'll look forward to seeing your take on it. The original article made quite a splash in a state political group i'm in over on FB. A few centrists loved it. A lot of others hated it but there was no one conclusive response to it. It feels like someone needs to address why trump found his tribe, but with some constructive criticism as to how to take at least part of that tribe back.
The problem I'll be addressing is one common to Brooks's entire career: his anecdotal conflation of two vaguely truth-y sets of data or problems, and the willingness of readers to allow the mere existence of a comparison to stand in for genuine argument.
So you're absolutely right that we need "constructive criticism as to how to take at least part of that tribe back"--and it starts with improved media literacy, so folks won't keep falling for bad arguments like this one here.
@MLClark If it's the Brooks column about how the elites (and b/c of them, all liberals and progressives) are somehow responsible for people voting for trump, then please do write that article, call Brooks by name, and drag him through the town square, make him do the full Game of Thrones Walk of Shame (but with clothes on, b/c nobody needs to see that).