NP- David Brooks, Joe Klein, and the Courtier Press

[Monte Davis]

Charlie Pierce is on a tear this year, as much fun as Mencken at his best.
He's been honing for months those Brooks-in-the-manor scenes with Moral
Hazard, the lugubrious Irish setter. Esquire as magazine/site never mattered
much to me, but now his blog is my coffee companion every morning. 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of David Morris
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 4:10 PM
To: P-list
Subject: NP- David Brooks, Joe Klein, and the Courtier Press

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/david-brooks-joe-klein-romney-10753130

That we have, in the main, a courtier press bringing us our political news
every day has been beyond question ever since Tim Crouse blew the whistle in
The Boys on the Bus back in 1973, only to have every problem he identified
in that book get immeasurably worse after he published it. It is very simple
these days. The primary job of an elite political reporter - Joe Klein of
Time, say, or David Brooks of The New York Times - is to entertain and to
comfort the real owners of the country and its politics, to assure them from
time to time that they are really doing the right thing in their stewardship
of what was supposed to be a fractious, unruly self-governing republic. It
is the elite political reporter's job, upon request, to sing to the real
owners of the country a pleasant tune in a charming soprano voice. In
return, they become very important players in the increasingly worthless
puppet show that the real owners of the country are making out of the
politics of the country.

[...]

Both Klein and Brooks have taken to the public prints to reassure Willard
Romney - and, by proxy, all of the country's Willard Romneys - that he is
being treated so terribly unfairly, darling, by that man in the White House
who plainly does not know his place. First, we have Brooks, who never saw a
plutocrat for whom he wouldn't happily serve as a footstool....

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Romney is going to have to define a vision of modern capitalism. He's going
to have to separate his vision from the scandals and excesses we've seen
over the last few years. He needs to define the kind of capitalist he is and
why the country needs his virtues. Let's face it, he's not a heroic
entrepreneur. He's an efficiency expert. It has been the business of his
life to take companies that were mediocre and sclerotic and try to make them
efficient and dynamic. It has been his job to be the corporate version of a
personal trainer: take people who are puffy and self-indulgent and whip them
into shape. That's his selling point: rigor and productivity. If he can
build a capitalist vision around that, he'll thrive. If not, he's a punching
bag.
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All those steelworkers, and the people at that paper company, they were
puffy and self-indulgent - and not hunks of iron-reinforced man-flesh like,
you know, David Brooks - and that's why none of them have jobs anymore.
People at the business end of the "system" that so charms David Brooks over
the canapes know the real score: The "scandals and excesses" are the system.
Take them away, and Romney is clipping coupons back in Michigan.