Wow

I have apparently offended the karma gods by whining about how stupid David Brooks sounded talking about how Iraqis should behave for the last few years. How else to explain the unholy punishments of reading his last two columns? As you may remember, Saturday's outing was about how "people who don't like Social Security privatization have an irrational hatred and paranoia about 'markets'". Today's uses the Potemkin economic "conference" the WH is organizing for Wednesday as fodder for a classic Brooks special: disguising the well-worn jabs at Democrats with this charade of being a 'self-deprecating' conservative. "Hehe, just some even handed ribbing" he says as he drives his (admittedly lame) shiv deeper. It's only bothersome in the sense that his unfunny, completely unserious garbage is considered A) mainstream B) fit for the NY Times and C) readable.

But, as always, the liberal bashing isn't really the point. He's always figuring out some way to carry the administration's water, to varying degrees of subtlety. In this case, the plan is to write a knowing column about policy wonks and their nerdiness, and how the white house conference will be super full of that stuff, thereby sneakily adding legitimacy to a farce which actually involves very few real policy wonks. See this LA Times story. Looks like the tone is going to be less nerdy panel discussion, more Fortune 500 executive meet and greet.