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:: Babbling Brooks ::
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
 I abhor David Brooks.
I first encountered his smug soapbox stylings a few years back when my brother received a copy of Bobos in Paradise. I "borrowed" it (yyyyyoink!) for a couple days and read through it. It was a fast read, sped along by copious and complex faux-anecdotes intended to drive home just how plausible his observations on this new elite class were. Though I couldn't pinpoint then what it was that irked me other than his compulsive penchant for fleshing out points with absurdly detailed hypothetical examples, and equally abrasive overuse of the word meritocracy (I later discovered the guy wrote an article entitled "The Merits of Meritocracy" for Jove's sake), I knew something was off. It slowly came to me.
BIP isn't written as a detached cataloging of some new demographic but as an apology; a defense; some sort of preemptive, narcissistic exculpation. Sure, he lobs a few criticisms their way, but they fizzle from contrivance and ineffectuality. The worst failing Brooks allots his beloved Bobos is that they spend too much money on their kitchens - the kind of spurious self-effacement akin to "Gosh, my worst fault? Well, to be frank sir, sometimes I just work too damn hard!". It's framed as a failing in his writing, but cleverly enough that no one would really take issue, especially after he diffuses what little shame there might have been with his complacent mea culpa.
The overall tone is one of how these wretches take themselves a little too seriously (his caricatures often take friendly potshots at some of the more ridiculous, outlandish, or ostentatious traits - of which there is no shortage in the invented farce of a world he uses to prove his points), but probably have a right to do so; after all, they deserve to be there, you can be sure of that. Brooks drills the concept of lifestyle-commensurate-with-merit into the reader's skull on every page. In his unbiased libertarian wet-dream of a universe, the sum of one's efforts, skills, and intellectual acumen directly equates to compensation and prestige. Work hard, get good scores on those standardized tests, write a killer dissertation and/or legal brief and/or business plan and/or literary critique, and you'll find yourself freed from the rat-race, watching it from above in the luxury boxes (probably paid for by your firm/company/university/think-tank), sipping meritocracy martinis with a twist of egalitarianism to quell any guilt.
Look, I'm no class-warrior, and I think those who have legitimately earned their station in life have every reason to be proud. I have nothing a priori against wealth, success, or prestige. But Brooks' describes, and I would posit he adores it as well, a sickening kind of Reagan-era avarice combined with Roosevelt-era elitism, all predicated on having the phrase "mitigating circumstances" stricken from society's vernacular.
And now he's written a deplorable foray into the constant hum of chatter surrounding the anything-goes world of internet dating. Let's review some choice quotes.
Online dating puts structure back into courtship. For generations Americans had certain courtship rituals. The boy would call the girl and ask her to the movies. He might come in and meet the father. After a few dates he might ask her to go steady. Sex would progress gradually from kissing to petting and beyond.
But over the past few decades that structure dissolved. And human beings, who are really good at adapting, found that the Internet, of all places, imposes the restraints they need to let relationships develop gradually. So now 40 million Americans look at online dating sites each month, and we are seeing a revolution in the way people meet and court one another. I see. While that certainly is the case oftentimes, the internet has also enabled a fantastically shallow quick-sex revolution, whereby lonely hearts looking for a little loin-slammin' sans attachments can find someone who will reciprocate their lascivious wants anytime of the day and night, with little effort. While this may be no quicker than picking up someone at a bar, it's certainly more efficient. Far from extending it, the internet has in many instances totally annihilated what little courtship was left.
Most of the sites have programs that link you up with people like yourself. One of the side effects of online dating is that it is bound to accelerate social stratification, as highly educated people become more efficient at finding and marrying one another. I suppose that's true, because the highly-educated always go for mates with equal academic backgrounds, and refuse to compromise for looks, wealth, or... wait. No, hold on, that's totally wrong. It does, however, have a clear subtext: "and ye shall know my name is Snob".
Now that I'm dragging up Brooks quotes, I figure I'll jump around, ADD-style, to some of my favorites from his vaunted career. Here's one from an article in The Atlantic Monthly in which he compares the coastal regions of the U.S. with the interior:
On my journeys to Franklin County, I set a goal: I was going to spend $20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu—steak au jus, "slippery beef pot pie," or whatever—I always failed. I began asking people to direct me to the most-expensive places in town. They would send me to Red Lobster or Applebee's. I'd go into a restaurant that looked from the outside as if it had some pretensions—maybe a "Les Desserts" glass cooler for the key-lime pie and the tapioca pudding. I'd scan the menu and realize that I'd been beaten once again. I went through great vats of chipped beef and "seafood delight" trying to drop twenty dollars. I waded through enough surf-and-turfs and enough creamed corn to last a lifetime. I could not do it. He's trying to paint this as a good thing, but that tapioca pudding he mentions seems to be smothered in a nice, thick layer of condescension syrup.
What about Brooks' thoughts on an important contemporary political issue?
The fact is that unlike the Congressional pork barrel machine, the federal procurement system is a highly structured process, which is largely insulated from crass political pressures. The idea that a Bush political appointee can parachute down and persuade a large group of civil servants to risk their careers by steering business to a big donor is the stuff of fantasy novels, not reality. Hmm... just about every administration I've ever read about has exerted a handy bit of influence on these civil servants.
Anyway, I'm too worn out and ineloquent to formulate a good finish here, so I'll just quote the Buffalo Beast, who named Brooks (#45) one of the 50 most loathsome people of 2003:
Misdeeds: The author of a lengthy self-love letter entitled Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, Brooks has arrived as the official autobiographer of the new elite. His vision of the new upper class—"Bobos" stands for "Bourgeois Bohemians"—is that of the end result of a grand historical effort at meritocracy, i.e., everyone who is rich deserves to be rich, not because of any Social-Darwinist superiority, but mainly because they have... good taste. In an amusing twist on Fukuyama's End of History, he claimed that the Bobos' taste in furniture represented the apex of the human effort at interior design, one that would never need to be improved upon.
Aggravating Factor: On Bobo mating: "[On] the Times weddings page, you can almost feel the force of the mingling SAT scores. It's Dartmouth marries Berkeley, MBA weds PhD... and summa cum laude embraces summa cum laude (you rarely see a summa settling for a magna—the tension in such a marriage would be too great)."
Aesthetic: Turbocharged IKEA customer. And yes, I know that line about summas marrying magnas is a joke, but honestly, it's more revealing than funny.
Posted by morland @ 09:08 PM
:: Comments ::
mike, this made me think of you:
http://www.theonion.com/3944/news3.html
Posted by: rob on November 12, 2003 04:00 PM
For shame, Mirk. I recall you recommending this load of bourgeois bombast before the bubble burst.
Posted by: i don't like your cat, man on November 12, 2003 05:17 PM
When I recommended it to you, I was only part-way through it, Mr. uses-gerunds-improperly.
Posted by: morland on November 12, 2003 05:31 PM
mike, this made me think of you:
http://paris.footballsuicide.com
Posted by: Anna on November 12, 2003 05:32 PM
Watching rich kids fornicate makes you think of me? Um... thanks.
Posted by: morland on November 12, 2003 08:01 PM
No, it's the comedian talking in the background (when Paris is giving Rick head) that reminds me of you.
I just held a bloody vagina open for 5 hours. All of my lesbian tendencies are officially extinct.
Posted by: Anna on November 14, 2003 06:06 PM
I just looked at the buffalo beast, and i have to say that he is truly the most loathsome person to have been so stupidly long winded. and he's not on the list at number 1! what a dork.
Posted by: The guy who lives in vail on November 14, 2003 11:54 PM
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