Friday, July 25, 2003

Obviously this is far from the biggest story of the day, but I just learned from Andrew Sullivan's blog (scroll down) that David Brooks is being added to the op-ed page of The New York Times.

Now, this would be a reasonable move if it were likely to be matched by the addition of liberals to the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and Washington Times, as well as to solo hosting duties on the prime-time lineup of Fox News -- but obviously none of that is going to happen.

Brooks is coming to The New York Times, apparently, to tell its East Coast liberal scum readers that they're far less worthwhile as human beings than just about everyone else in America. Brooks has advanced this argument in just about everything he's written for the Times recently, even when he's had to contradict himself to do so. And now Naomi Wolf's husband, David Shipley, is giving him a regular platform to show us more of his contempt. Thanks for nothing, David.

(UPDATE: Here's the Times's announcement of the Brooks appointment. The bloggers at The American Prospect may think Brooks is "sympathetic to the upper-middle-class, Boomer culture," but that was the Brooks who wrote Bobos in Paradise when Bill Clinton was president and Al Gore looked like a good bet to succeed him; Brooks may not be Ann Coulter, but he knows which party has been on the ascent for the past few years, and he knows that contempt for the "Eastern liberal establishment" does a lot better in today's marketplace than acknowledging that even some Republicans buy organic vegetables. I don't think his column is going to be particularly nice or gentle.)

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