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David Brooks (commentator)

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 108.34.58.180 (talk) at 22:05, 29 January 2016 (→Background: there's a link to ardrey, so i don't see the point if devoting a few sentences to him in an article about brooks. people who are curious about ardrey can hit the link. after all, the sentences that i've excised give no insight into broo). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

David Brooks
File:DavidBrooks.jpg
Born (1961-08-11) August 11, 1961 (age 63)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Chicago (A.B. 1983)
Occupation(s)Columnist, pundit
Spouse(s)Sarah (née Jane Hughes)
(1986-2014; divorced); 3 children

David Brooks (born August 11, 1961)[1] is an American conservative[2][3] political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times.[4] He has worked as an editorial writer and film reviewer for the Washington Times;[1] a reporter and later op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal;[5] a senior editor at The Weekly Standard from its inception; a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly; and as a commentator on National Public Radio. He is currently a columnist for The New York Times and commentator on the PBS NewsHour.[1]

Background

Brooks was born in Toronto, Ontario—his father was an American citizen living in Canada at the time—and spent his early years in the middle-income Stuyvesant Town housing development in downtown New York City. His father taught English literature at New York University, while his mother studied nineteenth-century British history at Columbia. Although his family was Jewish,[6][7] Brooks himself is not especially observant.[8][6][7][9] As a young child, Brooks attended the Grace Church School, an independent Episcopal primary school in Greenwich Village. When he was 12, his family moved to the Philadelphia Main Line, the affluent suburbs of Philadelphia. He graduated from Radnor High School in 1979. In 1983, Brooks graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in history.[1] His senior thesis was on popular science writer Robert Ardrey.[10]

As an undergraduate, Brooks frequently contributed reviews and satirical pieces to campus publications. In his senior year, he wrote a spoof of the life-style of wealthy conservative William F. Buckley Jr., who was scheduled to speak at the university: "In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping."[11] To his piece, Brooks appended the note: “Some would say I’m envious of Mr. Buckley. But if truth be known, I just want a job and have a peculiar way of asking. So how about it, Billy? Can you spare a dime?” When Buckley arrived to give his talk, he asked whether Brooks was in the lecture audience and offered to give him a job.[12]

Upon graduation, Brooks became a police reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago, a wire service owned jointly by the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times.[13] He says that his experience on Chicago's crime beat had a conservatizing influence on him[14] In 1984, mindful of the offer he had previously received from William F. Buckley, Brooks applied and was accepted as an intern on Buckley's National Review. According to Christopher Beam, the internship included an all-access pass to the affluent life style that Brooks had previously mocked, including yachting expeditions; Bach concerts; dinners at Buckley’s Park Avenue apartment and villa in Stamford, Connecticut; and a constant stream of writers, politicians, and celebrities.

Brooks was an outsider in more ways than his relative inexperience. National Review was a Catholic magazine, and Brooks is not Catholic. Sam Tanenhaus later reported in The New Republic that Buckley might have eventually named Brooks his successor if it hadn’t been for his being Jewish. “If true, it would be upsetting,” Brooks says.[15]

After his internship with Buckley ended, Brooks spent some time at the conservative Hoover Institute at Stanford University and then got a job writing movie reviews for the Washington Times. In 1986, Brooks was hired by the Wall Street Journal, where he worked first as an editor of the book review section, enlisting William Kristol to review Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, which catapulted that book to national prominence. He also filled in for five months as a movie critic. From 1990–94, The Wall Street Journal posted Brooks as an op-ed columnist to Brussels, from whence he covered Russia (making numerous trips to Moscow); the Middle East; South Africa; and European affairs. On his return, Brooks joined the neo-conservative Weekly Standard when it was launched in 1994–95. In 1996, he edited an anthology, Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing.[5][16]

In 2000, Brooks published a book of cultural commentary entitled Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There to considerable acclaim. The book, a paean to consumerism, argued that the new managerial or "new upper class" represents a marriage between the liberal idealism of the 1960s and the self-interest of the 1980s.

According to a 2010 article in New York Magazine written by Christopher Beam, New York Times editorial-page editor Gail Collins called Brooks in 2003 and invited him to lunch.

Collins was looking for a conservative to replace outgoing columnist William Safire, but one who understood how liberals think. “I was looking for the kind of conservative writer that wouldn’t make our readers shriek and throw the paper out the window,” says Collins. “He was perfect.” Brooks started writing in September 2003. “The first six months were miserable,” Brooks says. “I’d never been hated on a mass scale before.”[15]

In 2004, Brooks' book On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense was published as a sequel to his 2000 best seller, Bobos in Paradise, but it was not as well received as its predecessor. Brooks is also the volume editor of The Best American Essays (publication date Oct. 2, 2012), and he authored The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement.[17] The book was excerpted in The New Yorker magazine in January 2011[18] and received mixed reviews upon its full publication, by Random House, in March of that year.[19][20][21][22][23][24][25] The book has been a commercial success, reaching the #3 spot on the Publishers Weekly best-sellers list for non-fiction in April 2011.[26]

Brooks was a visiting professor of public policy at Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, and taught an undergraduate seminar there in the fall of 2006.[27] In 2013, he taught a course at Yale University on philosophical humility.[28]

Personal life

Brooks met his ex-wife, the former Jane Hughes, while both were students at the University of Chicago. She converted to Judaism [29] and changed her given name to Sarah.[30] In 2012, Brooks and his wife moved from their home in Bethesda, Maryland, to the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Northwest Washington, D.C., where they purchased a home.[31] Brooks said during a February 2015 interview with Brian Lamb that he and his wife are divorced.[32]

According to The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, in a September 2014 interview with the Hebrew-language newspaper Haaretz, Brooks revealed that his oldest son serves in the Israel Defense Forces.[33]

Political views

Brooks and PBS staff at rehearsal for PBS Newshour in 2012.

Ottawa Citizen conservative commentator David Warren has identified Brooks as a "sophisticated pundit" one of "those Republicans who want to 'engage with' the liberal agenda."[34] When asked what he thinks of charges that he's "not a real conservative" or "squishy," Brooks has said that, "if you define conservative by support for the Republican candidate or the belief that tax cuts are the correct answer to all problems, I guess I don’t fit that agenda. But I do think that I’m part of a longstanding conservative tradition that has to do with Edmund Burke ... and Alexander Hamilton." In the same interview with Howard Kurtz in September, 2012, Brooks talked about being criticized from the conservative side, saying, "If it’s from a loon, I don’t mind it. I get a kick out of it. If it’s Michelle Malkin attacking, I don’t mind it." With respect to whether he was "the liberals' favorite conservative" Brooks said he "didn't care," stating that "I don’t mind liberals praising me, but when it’s the really partisan liberals, you get an avalanche of love, it’s like uhhh, I gotta rethink this."[35]

Brooks describes himself as having originally been a liberal before, as he put it, "coming to my senses." He recounts that a turning point in his thinking came while he was still an undergraduate, during a televised debate with free-market economist Milton Friedman. As Brooks describes it, "[It] was essentially me making a point, and he making a two-sentence rebuttal which totally devastated my point. That didn’t immediately turn me into a conservative, but ....”[36]

Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Brooks argued forcefully for American military intervention, echoing the belief of commentators and political figures that American and British forces would be welcomed as liberators.[37] [38] In the spring of 2004, some of his opinion pieces suggested that he had tempered his earlier optimism about the war.[citation needed]

His dismissal of the conviction of Scooter Libby as being "a farce" and having "no significance"[39] was derided by political blogger Andrew Sullivan.[40]

On August 10, 2006, Brooks wrote a column for The New York Times entitled "Party No. 3". The column proposed the idea of the McCain-Lieberman Party, or the fictional representation of the fictional moderate majority in America.[41]

Brooks has long been a supporter of John McCain; however, he disliked McCain's 2008 running mate, Sarah Palin, calling her a "cancer" on the Republican Party.[42] He has referred to her as a "joke," unlikely ever to win the Republican nomination.[43] But he later admitted during a C-SPAN interview that he had gone too far in his previous "cancer" comments about Palin, which he regretted, and simply stated he was not a fan of her values.[44]

In a March, 2007, article published in The New York Times titled "No U-Turns",[45] Brooks explained that the Republican Party must distance itself from the minimal-government conservative principles that had arisen during the Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan eras. He claims that these core concepts had served their purposes and should no longer be embraced by Republicans in order to win elections, which he considers the most important purpose of a political party designed to serve the political class.[vague] Alex Pareene commented that Brooks "has been trying for so long to imagine a sensible Republican Party into existence that he can’t still think it’s going to happen soon."[46]

Brooks has frequently expressed admiration for President Barack Obama. In an August, 2009, profile of Brooks, The New Republic describes his first encounter with Obama, in the spring of 2005: "Usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he knew both better than me. [...] I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, 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.”[47] Two days after Obama’s second autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, hit bookstores, Brooks published a column in The New York Times, titled "Run, Barack, Run", urging the Chicago politician to run for president.[48] However, in December, 2011, during a CSPAN interview, Brooks' expressed a more tempered opinion of Obama's presidency, giving Obama only a "B-" rating, and saying that Obama's chances of re-election would be less than 50-50 if elections were held at that time.[44]

In writing for The New York Times in January, 2010, Brooks described Israel as "an astonishing success story".[49] He wrote that "Jews are a famously accomplished group," who, because they were "forced to give up farming in the Middle Ages... have been living off their wits ever since".[49] In Brooks' view, "Israel’s technological success is the fruition of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world."[49][50]

Social views

Brooks opposes what he sees as self-destructive behavior, such as the prevalence of teenage sex and divorce. His view is that "sex is more explicit everywhere barring real life. As the entertainment media have become more sex-saturated, American teenagers have become more sexually abstemious" by "waiting longer to have sex...[and] having fewer partners." He sees the culture war as nearly over, because "today's young people...seem happy with the frankness of the left and the wholesomeness of the right." As a result, he is optimistic about the United States' social stability, which he considers to be "in the middle of an amazing moment of improvement and repair."[51]

As early as 2003, Brooks wrote favorably of same-sex marriage, pointing out that marriage is a traditional conservative value. Rather than opposing it, he wrote: "We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.... It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage."[52]

Brooks also takes a moderate position on abortion, which he thinks should be legal, but with parental consent for minors, during the first four or five months, and illegal afterward, except in extremely rare circumstances. (New York Times, April 22, 2002)[53]

On the legalization of drugs, he has expressed opposition to the liberalization of marijuana, advocating that it encourages morally reprovable behaviour. Brooks stated he smoked it in his youth, but quit after feeling highly embarrassed during a class presentation under the influence.[54]

Criticisms

Brooks' writing on sociology has been criticised for being based on stereotypes and presenting false claims as factual.[55][56] In 2004, Sasha Issenberg, writing for Philadelphia magazine, fact-checked Bobos in Paradise, concluding that many of its comments about middle America were misleading or the exact reverse of the truth.[57] He reported Brooks as insisting that the book was not intended to be factual but to report his impressions of what he believed an area to be like: "He laughed...'[The book was] partially tongue-in-cheek'...I went through some of the other instances where he made declarations that appeared insupportable. He accused me of being 'too pedantic,' of “taking all of this too literally,' of 'taking a joke and distorting it.' 'That's totally unethical', he said." Brooks later said the article made him feel that "I suck...I can’t remember what I said but my mother told me I was extremely stupid.”[58] In 2015, Salon found that Brooks had got 'nearly every detail' wrong about a poll of high-school students.[59]

Michael Kinsley argued that Brooks was guilty of "fearless generalizing... Brooks does not let the sociology get in the way of the shtick, and he wields a mean shoehorn when he needs the theory to fit the joke."[60] Writing for Gawker, which has consistently criticised Brooks' work, opinion writer Tom Scocca argued that Brooks' career since 2004 had been marked by supporting political stands based on moral judgements and disdaining those citing evidence or statistical research, noting that "possibly that is because he perceives facts and statistics as an opportunity...to work mischief."[61]

In 2016, James Taranto criticized[62] Brooks' analysis[63] of a U.S. Supreme Court case,[64] writing that "Brooks’s treatment of this case is either deliberately deceptive or recklessly ignorant."[62] Law professor Ann Althouse concurred that Brooks "distorts rather grotesquely" the case in question.[65] Brooks was previously criticized for having "scrambled the actual significance of what the Supreme Court has done", as Lyle Denniston put it.[66]

Sidney Awards

This article is about the Sidney Awards given each December by David Brooks. For the award presented by the Hillman Foundation, see The Sidney Award.

In 2004 Brooks created an award to honor the best political and cultural journalism of the year. Named for philosopher Sidney Hook and originally called "The Hookies," the honor was renamed "The Sidney Awards" in 2005. The awards are presented each December.[67]

Partial bibliography

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d David Brooks Analyst Bio Online NewsHour
  2. ^ "David Brooks." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Biography In Context. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.
  3. ^ "David Brooks." Gale Biography in Context. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Biography In Context. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.
  4. ^ Eberstadt, Mary (ed.), "Why I turned right: leading baby boom conservatives chronicle their political journeys," Simon and Schuster (2007).
  5. ^ a b Columnist Biography: David Brooks, New York Times
  6. ^ a b It's Back, The Weekly Standard, Feb 20, 2003
  7. ^ a b A Loud and Promised Land, New York Times, April 16, 2009. "As an American Jew, I was taught to go all gooey-eyed at the thought of Israel..."
  8. ^ Christopher Beam, "A Reasonable Man", New York Magazine (July 12, 2010)|"His wife is devoutly Jewish;— she converted after they married and recently changed her name from Jane Hughes to the more biblical-sounding Sarah Brooks— but he rarely attends synagogue"
  9. ^ Christopher Beam, "A Reasonable Man", New York Magazine (July 12, 2010). Regarding his views on liberals, he has said. “I think it’s more a matter of respect than agreement. I don’t have a sense that they’re idiots.”
  10. ^ "A Reasonable Man" New York Magazine
  11. ^ University of Chicago Maroon, April 5, 1983.
  12. ^ "Everybody's a Critic", Mary Ruth Yoe, University of Chicago Magazine(February, 2004).
  13. ^ Biography page for David Brooks on PBS.
  14. ^ Beam, "A Reasonable Man" (New York Magazine, 2010).
  15. ^ a b Beam, "A Reasonable Man", New York Magazine" (2010).
  16. ^ PBS biography of Brooks.
  17. ^ Random House website The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement.
  18. ^ Brooks, David (January 17, 2011). "Social Animal How the new sciences of human nature can help make sense of a life". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 13, 2011.
  19. ^ "The Social Animal by David Brooks - Book - eBook - Audiobook". Random House. Retrieved 2012-01-22.
  20. ^ Bell, Douglas (March 11, 2011). "The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, by David Brooks". The Globe and Mail. Toronto.
  21. ^ "The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement | Books Inc. - The West's Oldest Independent Bookseller". Books Inc. Retrieved 2012-01-22.
  22. ^ Nagel, Thomas (March 11, 2011). "David Brooks's Theory of Human Nature". The New York Times. Retrieved March 13, 2011.
  23. ^ Myers, PZ (March 11, 2011). "David Brooks' dream world for the trust-fund set". Salon.com. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  24. ^ Wilkinson, Will (March 10, 2011). "The Social Animal by David Brooks: A Scornful Review". Forbes.com. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  25. ^ Brooks, David. "The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (9781400067602): David Brooks: Books". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2012-01-22.
  26. ^ "Publishers Weekly Best-sellers". The Maui News. April 3, 2011. Retrieved April 4, 2011. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  27. ^ Brooks, David (February 4, 2007). "Children of Polarization". The New York Times.
  28. ^ Harrington, Rebecca (2012-12-19). "David Brooks To Teach 'Humility' At Yale". The Huffington Post.
  29. ^ http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new_york/times_new_york_conservative
  30. ^ Brooks, Sarah (June 19, 2008). "What's in a name? In part, my religion". Washington Jewish Week.
  31. ^ Post on Brooks's 2012 purchase of a new home in The Washington Post
  32. ^ "Q&A with David Brooks". C-SPAN, February 8, 2015, 40:45. (2 40:45) Lamb: Let me ask you, as I was doing research I kept running into the story, Is David Brooks divorced or not? Brooks: I am divorced. I do not want legally talk about it but I am divorced.
  33. ^ "David Brooks' Son Is In the Israeli Army: Does It Matter?". Jewish Journal. 2014-09-23. Retrieved 2014-09-25.
  34. ^ David Warren, A War Between Two World Views 2009-07-17
  35. ^ Howard Kurtz, "David Brooks, Riling Up the Right" The Daily Beast September 30, 2012
  36. ^ Yoe, Mary Ruth (February 2004). "Everybody's a critic". University of Chicago Magazine. 96 (3). Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  37. ^ Brooks, David (March 9, 2003). "The Certainty Crisis". The Weekly Standard. Retrieved February 17, 2015.
  38. ^ Brooks, David (April 28, 2003). "The Collapse of the Dream Palaces". The Weekly Standard. Retrieved February 17, 2015.
  39. ^ Brooks, David (July 3, 2007). "Ending the Farce". New York Times. Retrieved March 11, 2011.
  40. ^ Sullivan, Andrew (July 3, 2007). "What Rule of Law?". Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved March 11, 2011.
  41. ^ Brooks, David (August 10, 2006). "Party No. 3". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
  42. ^ Shea, Danny (October 8, 2008). "David Brooks: Sarah Palin "Represents A Fatal Cancer To The Republican Party"". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
  43. ^ David Brooks: Sarah Palin Is A 'Joke', TPMTv on YouTube, November 15, 2009
  44. ^ a b "In Depth with David Brooks". C-SPAN. 4 December 2011. Retrieved 25 April 2015. (Palin comments) Host: DOES DAVID REGRET HIS COMMENT ABOUT SARAH PALIN AND HER CANCER ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY? Guest: YEAH, I DO. I THINK IT WAS SOME LUNCH AFFAIR FOR SOME MAGAZINE, AND I WAS JUST MOUTHING OFF, AND SO I -- I'M NOT A FAN OF HERS, BUT THAT'S A LITTLE STRONG. (Opinion on Obama) I THINK HE'S CONDUCTED HIMSELF IN PRETTY MUCH AN HONEST WAY. HE'S HAD VERY LITTLE CORRUPTION. I STILL HAVE GREAT PERM ADMIRATION FOR HIM. I'M MORE TO HIS RIGHT, BUT I GIVE HIM NO WORSE THAN A B-. I THINK HE'S MADE SOME MISTAKES, BUT I WOULDN'T SAY HE'S BEEN A BAD PRESIDENT.
  45. ^ Brooks, David (March 3, 2007). "No U-Turns". The New York Times. Retrieved September 13, 2008.
  46. ^ Pareene, Alex. "Blow up the Times Op-Ed page, and start again!". Salon. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
  47. ^ Sherman, Gabriel (August 31, 2009). "The Courtship: The story behind the Obama-Brooks bromance". The New Republic. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  48. ^ Brooks, David (October 19, 2006). "Run, Barack, Run". The New York Times. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  49. ^ a b c Brooks, David (January 12, 2010). "The Tel Aviv Cluster". The New York Times.
  50. ^ Maltz Bovy, Phoebe. "David Brooks Was Right: Anti-Semitism Is a Different Evil". The New Republic. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
  51. ^ New York Times, April 17, 2005, 4-14
  52. ^ New York Times, November 22, 2003, A-15
  53. ^ Brooks, David (April 22, 2007). "Postures in Public, Facts in the Womb". The New York Times. Retrieved December 31, 2009.
  54. ^ Brooks, David (January 2, 2014). "Weed: Been There. Done That". The New York Times.
  55. ^ Scocca, Tom. "David Brooks Has Some Notions About the Programs on Your Television Machine". Slate. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
  56. ^ Scocca, Tom. "David Brooks Is Nostalgic for a World Without Himself in It". Slate. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
  57. ^ Issenberg, Sasha. "Boo-Boos in Paradise". Philadelphia magazine. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
  58. ^ Beam, Christopher. "A Reasonable Man". New York magazine. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
  59. ^ Zweig, David. "The facts vs. David Brooks: Startling inaccuracies raise questions about his latest book". Salon. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
  60. ^ Kinsley, Michael. "Suburban Thrall". New York Times. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
  61. ^ Scocca, Tom. "David Brooks Has Noticed Hillary Is a Soviet Dictator". Gawker. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
  62. ^ a b Taranto, James. "Brooks Borks Cruz", Wall Street Journal (January 12, 2016).
  63. ^ Brooks, David. "The Brutalism of Ted Cruz", New York Times (January 12, 2016).
  64. ^ Dretke v. Haley, 541 U.S. 386 (2004).
  65. ^ Althouse, Ann. "Althouse" (January 13, 2016).
  66. ^ Denniston, Lyle. "Constitution Check: Did the Supreme Court give us Super PACs?", Constitution Daily (May 7, 2012).
  67. ^ Brooks, David (December 29, 2005). "The Sidney Awards, 2005". The New York Times. Retrieved December 30, 2014.

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