DAVID BROOKS: THE VOICE OF YOUNG AMERICA. I like Ben Adler‘s headline, “David Brooks Does Andy Rooney…” It captures the most annoying undertone of Brooks’ column on “hipster parents” (which was not totally unfunny — let’s be honest, there are parents who go too far in trying to make their kids into replicas of their own hipper selves; I confess I might have played some role in the fact that my 5-yr-old declares her favorite type of music to be “post-punk”). But when someone harrumphs like this —

I�m not against the indie/alternative lifestyle. There is nothing more reassuringly traditionalist than the counterculture. For 30 years, the music, the fashions, the poses and the urban weeklies have all been the same. Everything in this society changes except nonconformity.

— that person had better be at least 75 years old. If you have so little interest in culture that you think the 30 years from Television to the Decemberists, or from the Village Voice of the mid-70s to today’s corporate shell, are indistinguishable, then you certainly shouldn’t be writing about culture. (In neither case, however, do you have to consider it forward progress.)

One reason David Brooks drives everyone crazy when his dentures get loose and he goes on like this is that he speaks for us. His is the voice of youth on these op-ed pages! Here are the regular op-ed columnists for the New York Times and the Washington Post in ascending order of age:

    Anne Applebaum, Washington Post, 42. (Does not live in the U.S.)

    Sebastian Mallaby, Washington Post, early 40s, graduated Oxford 1986.

    David Brooks, Times, 45

    Nick Kristof, Times, 48

and up they go from there. And they wonder why young people don’t read newspapers! (The post-Kinsley L.A. Times has a totally different profile, with Jon Chait, Jonah Goldberg, Rosa Brooks, Gregory Rodriguez, Meghan Daum, Erin Aubry Kaplan, and others — proof that it’s not impossible to find Youth with something to say! And, of course, if you look younger, you’ll automatically find a group that’s more diverse in various other ways as well.

It’s also notable that of the Times/Post columnists under 50, all but Kristof are basically conservative, though Mallaby is more of an economic neoliberal than anything else. At a time when young people are overwhelmingly liberal, once again, the only voices reflecting their politics are those of Baby Boomers.

–Mark Schmitt