BROOKS CONTRA BROOKS. The thoughtful, not merely glib, David Brooks made two appearances this week -- but they managed to cancel each other out. The other day, Brooks used a discussion he had with a trucker in restaurant in Virginia and a gloss of a terrific comparative study of working class men in France and the U.S. by Harvard sociologist Michele Lamont to argue that the American, white, male working class frames its world view via a moral code, "not in economic terms", and therefore the argument by the left that the rich systematically exploit them will always fail. (The Lamont book is particularly shrewd in revealing the racial differences within both countries of how men perceive their class position, and how notions of racial superiority "color" their perceptions of class -- so Brook's choice of white trucker is congruent with the her argument of about a certain segment of the white, male working class.) Left unsaid, but implicit, is that these folks aren't very interested in the government programs that the left proposes, either. What people like the trucker really want, writes Brooks, is to work hard, own their little piece of the American dream (like the truck and home this hardy owner-operator has for himself), and to respect the same about others, no matter how much money they've got or how big their houses are. This truck driver is "inner directed," he doesn't "try to ingratiate," Brooks tells us. In short, he's not a professional smoothie, the kind of office con-man we computer jockeys see around us everyday. But he's not angry at the wealthy, the people who control the commanding heights of the economy. This trucker, like Lamont's subjects, according to Brooks, was interested in the "moral centrality of work", and could care less about the those who had greater wealth than himself. Men like the trucker value honesty and transparency above all; manipulation, rather than sheer wealth, is held in greatest contempt. In summary, as Brooks says, "This is why their [the working class] protests are directed not against the rich, but against the word manipulators -- the lawyers, consultants and the news media." Today, Brooks writes a sympathetic column about John Edwards,a son of the working class, who becomes a millionaire trial attorney by "beating and beating again" in the courtroom corporations who systematically exploit working-class people. Brooks note that a "fierce" "resentment toward those born to privilege" drives Edwards's ambition and is entirely consonant with his world view. Brooks has followed Edwards on the campaign trail in this cycle and in 2004, and writes that he has a terrific ability to connect to white, working-class voters. Edwards also proposes, in great detail, government programs -- income-transfer programs -- that he purports will help these white, working-class voters. If Brooks had bothered to write about Edwards's stirring support for labor unions -- non governmental, yet collective, voluntary, activist, working-class institutions of civil society -- his head might have exploded because he could not readily integrate unions into how he read class in either of these columns. In short, today Brooks writes in praise of a superb lawyer, a quintessential "word manipulator, "fueled by resentment of the privileged," shoveling government programs by the truckload at apparently enthusiastic working-class voters. When we add the fact that Edwards is also praising unions, and urging these same voters to join these communitarian organizations rather live the romantically desolate life of the truck driver Brooks met (five marriages, one truck) -- we must conclude that, yet again, David Brooks is not making sense, while doing so with a depth and sensitivity he has not displayed in months. And this time he did it without misreading a single piece of economic data, the critique of which I leave to those more competent to do so than I. In his first column, Brooks writes that class in America is "complex." Indeed. --Rich Yeselson
