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

[David Morris]

I think Pierce started in sports commentary.

On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...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.
>>