Watergate Hackery .:. grubbykid.com

Watergate Hackery

You know, of all of the lessons you could draw from Watergate - from the burglary itself, to the Nixon coverup, the search for Deep Throat, and the recent hagiography of Nixon, the last, and I mean very last lesson you could draw out of this sordid period of American history, is that Woodward and Bernstein were shameless networkers. But Mr. Brooks has decided that this is the real story of Watergate:

Entering the world of the Higher Shamelessness, they begin networking like mad, cultivating the fine art of false modesty and calculated friendships. The most nakedly ambitious - the blogging Junior Lippmanns - rarely win in the long run, but that doesn't mean you can't mass e-mail your essays for obscure online sites with little "Thought you might be interested" notes.

The very last paragraph is targeted criticism to the news media, but to spend 500 words admonishing young people for networking is just baffling.

This is exactly why David Brooks baffles me. He writes 700 word essays on how horrible it is that those in New York and D.C. go out meet new people and "network." As if the Elks, V.F.W., churches, and any other organization in America weren't held for the very same reason. This is what offends me most about Brooks' writing: his constant generalizations about North Eastern seaboard city life reductio ad absurdum while pretending not to notice that the exact same thing happens everywhere else.

Funny how someone who writes editorials supposedly lambasting the "educated elite" is both of the very same elite and lives in New York City - the "belly of the Beast." I find his writing to be highly condescending to people who actually live outside the Northeast Corridor, because Brooks' generally doesn't understand - nor really tries to understand - life outside his comfy bubble. I would respect his writing more if he would drop the faux-populist charade and just come out with whatever he doesn't like.

OK, so you don't like kiss-ups - fine, but don't pretend that this doesn't happen outside the 212 & 202 area code. So, you don't like Social Security? Fine, just come out and say it instead of lying about it. It's just like Fox News - everyone knows that they are tied to the Republican party. Fine. Just come out and admit it, instead of using the foolish "Fair and Balanced" phrase. If you come clean, you at least will be slightly more intellectually honest.

...Later - Yglesias is right on here - Brooks' et al are being replaced as opinion writers by bloggers, and this article is merely a temper tantrum. It's just not fair...

Watergate Hackery

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