Brooks on Obama, 2005:
"...and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I'm thinking, a) he's going to be president and b) he'll be a very good president."
Brooks, "Social Animal," in "Annals of Psychology," The New Yorker, January 17, 2011.
"You can see a paragon of the Composure Class having an al-fresco lunch at some bistro in Aspen or Jackson Hole. He’s just back from China and stopping by for a corporate board meeting on his way to a five-hundred-mile bike-a-thon to support the fight against lactose intolerance. He is asexually handsome, with a little less body fat than Michelangelo’s David. As he crosses his legs, you observe that they are immeasurably long and slender. He doesn’t really have thighs. Each leg is just one elegant calf on top of another. His voice is so calm and measured that he makes Barack Obama sound like Sam Kinison. He met his wife at the Clinton Global Initiative, where they happened to be wearing the same Doctors Without Borders support bracelets. They are a wonderfully matched pair; the only tension between them involves their workout routines. For some reason, today’s high-status men do a lot of running and biking and so only really work on the muscles in the lower half of their bodies."
New York, September 23, 2014.
The status of David Brooks's marriagemay have long been a subject of media speculation, but one aspect about his home life has remained relatively unknown: The New York Times columnist has a son who's currently serving in the IDF. Although the fact mostly went under the radar during this summer's conflict in Gaza, Brooks discussed his son's service in a recent Hebrew-language interview with Ha'aretz, raising the inevitable questions about bias and disclosure.
...
It's by no means uncommon for American Jews to have close family ties to Israel, but it is surprising that Brooks, who writes about the country with some frequency, never mentioned that his son volunteered to serve.
New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, October 8, 2014.
I don’t think readers usually need to know what the spouses of columnists think or what brothers do for a living, or whether a daughter has joined the U.S. Army. But this situation strikes me as a more extreme case. Mr. Brooks’s son is serving as a member of a foreign military force that has been involved in a serious international conflict – one that the columnist sometimes writes about and which has been very much in the news.
Brooks, NYT, "The Devotion Leap," January 22, 2015.
"The online dating site OkCupid asks its clients to rate each other’s attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 5. When men rated the women, the median score was about 3 and the ratings followed a bell curve — a few really attractive women and an equal number of women rated as unattractive.
But when women rated men, the results were quite different. The median score was between 1 and 2. Only 1 in 6 of the guys was rated as having above average looks. Either the guys who go to places like OkCupid, Tinder and other sites are disproportionately homely, or women have unforgiving eyes.
...
...I learned some details from “Dataclysm,” the book by Christian Rudder, who is the co-founder and president of OkCupid.
...
It’s better to have a polarizing profile than a bland one.
...
People who date online are not shallower or vainer than those who don’t. Research suggests they are broadly representative. It’s just that they’re in a specific mental state. They’re shopping for human beings, commodifying people...They pay ridiculous amounts of attention to things like looks, which have little bearing on whether a relationship will work.
...
...Online dating is fascinating because it is more or less the opposite of its object: love.
...
"...and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I'm thinking, a) he's going to be president and b) he'll be a very good president."
Brooks, "Social Animal," in "Annals of Psychology," The New Yorker, January 17, 2011.
"You can see a paragon of the Composure Class having an al-fresco lunch at some bistro in Aspen or Jackson Hole. He’s just back from China and stopping by for a corporate board meeting on his way to a five-hundred-mile bike-a-thon to support the fight against lactose intolerance. He is asexually handsome, with a little less body fat than Michelangelo’s David. As he crosses his legs, you observe that they are immeasurably long and slender. He doesn’t really have thighs. Each leg is just one elegant calf on top of another. His voice is so calm and measured that he makes Barack Obama sound like Sam Kinison. He met his wife at the Clinton Global Initiative, where they happened to be wearing the same Doctors Without Borders support bracelets. They are a wonderfully matched pair; the only tension between them involves their workout routines. For some reason, today’s high-status men do a lot of running and biking and so only really work on the muscles in the lower half of their bodies."
New York, September 23, 2014.
The status of David Brooks's marriagemay have long been a subject of media speculation, but one aspect about his home life has remained relatively unknown: The New York Times columnist has a son who's currently serving in the IDF. Although the fact mostly went under the radar during this summer's conflict in Gaza, Brooks discussed his son's service in a recent Hebrew-language interview with Ha'aretz, raising the inevitable questions about bias and disclosure.
...
It's by no means uncommon for American Jews to have close family ties to Israel, but it is surprising that Brooks, who writes about the country with some frequency, never mentioned that his son volunteered to serve.
New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, October 8, 2014.
I don’t think readers usually need to know what the spouses of columnists think or what brothers do for a living, or whether a daughter has joined the U.S. Army. But this situation strikes me as a more extreme case. Mr. Brooks’s son is serving as a member of a foreign military force that has been involved in a serious international conflict – one that the columnist sometimes writes about and which has been very much in the news.
Brooks, NYT, "The Devotion Leap," January 22, 2015.
"The online dating site OkCupid asks its clients to rate each other’s attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 5. When men rated the women, the median score was about 3 and the ratings followed a bell curve — a few really attractive women and an equal number of women rated as unattractive.
But when women rated men, the results were quite different. The median score was between 1 and 2. Only 1 in 6 of the guys was rated as having above average looks. Either the guys who go to places like OkCupid, Tinder and other sites are disproportionately homely, or women have unforgiving eyes.
...
...I learned some details from “Dataclysm,” the book by Christian Rudder, who is the co-founder and president of OkCupid.
...
It’s better to have a polarizing profile than a bland one.
...
People who date online are not shallower or vainer than those who don’t. Research suggests they are broadly representative. It’s just that they’re in a specific mental state. They’re shopping for human beings, commodifying people...They pay ridiculous amounts of attention to things like looks, which have little bearing on whether a relationship will work.
...
...Online dating is fascinating because it is more or less the opposite of its object: love.
...
In love, of course, the shift starts with vulnerability...
Deadspin, May 17, 2015.
David Brooks is telling us something dark and sad—about loneliness and the search for connection; about social desolation and sexual frustration and sadness. Something deeply personal...
...
(Deadspin projecting how Brooks feels): "I feel unmoored and unmotivated. I am in personal crisis. Please help me.”
Gawker, June 12, 2015.
Deadspin, May 17, 2015.
David Brooks is telling us something dark and sad—about loneliness and the search for connection; about social desolation and sexual frustration and sadness. Something deeply personal...
...
(Deadspin projecting how Brooks feels): "I feel unmoored and unmotivated. I am in personal crisis. Please help me.”
Gawker, June 12, 2015.
"sad."
Gives "advice gleaned from inspirational office posters."
"David Brooks columns in one sentence or less."
Salon, "The Facts vs David Brooks: Startling innacuracies raise questions about his latest book," June 15, 2015.http://www.salon.com/2015/06/15/the_facts_vs_david_brooks_startling_inaccuracies_raise_questions_about_his_latest_book/
Draw a line underneath all that._______________________________________________________
David has been inward-looking in writing in the last year, not outward-looking as he advised Dartmouth grads to be in his inward-looking commencement address, he has been self-centered, he has been secretive and has been public with his secretiveness. It is, in all, a very troubling thing to see and per above, others have seen it, and before the undersigned, and used identical or synonymous language.
Harsh thing to call somebody a fake especially someone who one respected, liked; liked from what one believed one knew from the cyber world.
Is David still humble? That was his patented issue. Was he ever humble? Or was humility the false storefront that lured us in? He was humble in "The Humble Hawk." He confessed his doubts. To admit having been wrong is the essential humility. To confess publicly is essential courage.
Secrecy is fatal to humility. Obviously, lying; I don't see that he has lied. Misdirection, indirection--It seems to me, as it did to Gawker that he was writing about himself in "The Devotion Leap," that he has used OkCupid, wince, that he has written about himself in other columns that I did not cite to. Really: He should have told readers that his son was in IDF. Of course that is relevant or whatever the word Margaret Sullivan used, for readers to know as they read his columns on the Middle East. It was among the first things I thought of when I read "3 Defeats." To be humble is to reveal. It starts with being open. The seed of humility cannot flower in the soil of secrecy. PAUSE: That was a bullshit sentence but you get the point. UNPAUSE. David has not been open, he has been secretive, therefore he has not been humble recently. To be humble, to be open, is to be sincere, genuine, real. David has been the quintessential fake.
There truly is, to me, tragedy here, if David was once humble but lost his humility in the maelstrom of his personal life. And that is at best, ouch, for if he was never humble, then he has always been a fraud and has duped readers. I don't think David has been a fraud. I think his personal life has "unmoored" him; his pain is too obvious, it is genuine. That itself is tragic. Too, to be a fraud is to know who one really is and to consciously adopt a different persona with intent to deceive and I don't think David Brooks knows who he really is. But to be honest, to be open, humble, I don't really know.
"David Brooks columns in one sentence or less."
Salon, "The Facts vs David Brooks: Startling innacuracies raise questions about his latest book," June 15, 2015.http://www.salon.com/2015/06/15/the_facts_vs_david_brooks_startling_inaccuracies_raise_questions_about_his_latest_book/
Draw a line underneath all that._______________________________________________________
David has been inward-looking in writing in the last year, not outward-looking as he advised Dartmouth grads to be in his inward-looking commencement address, he has been self-centered, he has been secretive and has been public with his secretiveness. It is, in all, a very troubling thing to see and per above, others have seen it, and before the undersigned, and used identical or synonymous language.
Harsh thing to call somebody a fake especially someone who one respected, liked; liked from what one believed one knew from the cyber world.
Is David still humble? That was his patented issue. Was he ever humble? Or was humility the false storefront that lured us in? He was humble in "The Humble Hawk." He confessed his doubts. To admit having been wrong is the essential humility. To confess publicly is essential courage.
Secrecy is fatal to humility. Obviously, lying; I don't see that he has lied. Misdirection, indirection--It seems to me, as it did to Gawker that he was writing about himself in "The Devotion Leap," that he has used OkCupid, wince, that he has written about himself in other columns that I did not cite to. Really: He should have told readers that his son was in IDF. Of course that is relevant or whatever the word Margaret Sullivan used, for readers to know as they read his columns on the Middle East. It was among the first things I thought of when I read "3 Defeats." To be humble is to reveal. It starts with being open. The seed of humility cannot flower in the soil of secrecy. PAUSE: That was a bullshit sentence but you get the point. UNPAUSE. David has not been open, he has been secretive, therefore he has not been humble recently. To be humble, to be open, is to be sincere, genuine, real. David has been the quintessential fake.
There truly is, to me, tragedy here, if David was once humble but lost his humility in the maelstrom of his personal life. And that is at best, ouch, for if he was never humble, then he has always been a fraud and has duped readers. I don't think David has been a fraud. I think his personal life has "unmoored" him; his pain is too obvious, it is genuine. That itself is tragic. Too, to be a fraud is to know who one really is and to consciously adopt a different persona with intent to deceive and I don't think David Brooks knows who he really is. But to be honest, to be open, humble, I don't really know.
