What's happened to David Brooks? I mean that seriously -- no snark. What's gone wrong there? The other day I picked up BoBos in Paradise at a used bookstore and it's great. Funny and light-hearted and incisive in a way that really rings true, at least for me and my crowd. It's got great one-liners ("At that point, it had not yet become unfashionable to get sick and die") and chapter-long meditations, like the opening riff on professional weddings, that are actually intellectually provocative.
And then...what? His last column was on the difficulty of taking kids on airplanes. Not the laws of it, not the sociology of it, just the fact that kids misbehave and parents are at a loss. Way to cover new ground, David! His political columns skim hackery a few times before sinking into party-line talking points.
This guy was good. He was funny and personable and insightful. What happened? And where do we find another one?
