RE: BROOKS. But Mark, that's David Brooks' whole schtick! He hints at progressivism so he can criticize it, proclaims his BoBo-ness so he can mock it, plays up his youth so he can deride the "counterculture." It is, of course, pure rhetorical affectation. Does anyone think David Brooks' has spent enough time smearing fluids on Wall Street Journal archives to proclaim Dash Snow's counterculture a doppelganger of some other underground moment? But this is his approach, time and again. By adopting a tone of bemused sympathy for whatever he's marginalizing, Brooks' criticisms appear superficially loving, and thus all the more credible. But you shouldn't confuse what Brooks' does with writing about culture. He's writing about liberals -- or at least a particular stereotype of liberals -- and calling it culture, because doing so allows him to evade the political filters that would easily sift through his insinuations and leave only a couple cute neologisms and some adjectives. In this case, liberals are not only bad parents, but they're the same irresponsible louts who mucked up the Democratic convention in 1968. Were he to say it explicitly, of course, it would look like an absurd partisan attack. Better to look crotchety and be called a bad culture writer. Such descriptors in no way to degrade his ability to be a partisan and launch effective political attacks. --Ezra Klein
