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

[Joe Allonby]

...and his sports commentary is really funny.

On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 7:38 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:
> 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....
>
> ---------------------------
> 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.
> ---------------------------
>
> 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.
>