David Brooks at the Budget Motel

    David Brooks' mind stopped working when Ronald Reagan was elected President and since that time he has been sitting behind his desk viewing the outside world from the large end of the binoculars. What he sees is a world which, though quizzically blurred, must somehow be getting better because Daddy took charge, removed those dastardly 55 mph speed limits, and blew down the Berlin Wall with the simple force of his own baritone breath. 

    In his latest article in the NYT, The Structure of Gratitude,  Brooks has somehow managed to recall feelings he might have had forty years ago at a budget motel, purposefully ignorant of the reality that since Reagan's time a budget motel is a battle ground of have-nots stringing their lives out for one more day, hoping that luck, not gratitude, will come their way. Thanks to his beloved conservative politicians who have sucked the life out of our middle class culture, there is not much expectation of any relief in life, especially not gratitude---because to expect anything nice is to drop your guard---a foolhardy and dangerous act at a budget motel in the real world.

    David, in a budget motel anywhere outside Westchester or Fairfield counties, one will, like an infantryman in a foxhole on the front lines of war, stay awake all night. About midnight the couple in the next room, heard through a wall of cheap construction with no insulation, will have stopped banging and just as you are about to doze off you feel a bite on your leg, strip off the sheets and realize that the mattress is full of bed bugs. So pack up the car and try finding another motel?

    The problem is that some white dudes on the other side have come back and are drinking beers outside your door. They have their shirts off, are drunk, and are stacking empty long necks on the hood of your car.

    Going outside even to throw your bags into the car and haul off?  No way.

     How about you call the "manager"?

    ---she's a single mom behind a bullet proof plastic window and her phone is off the hook because she has to get a few hours of sleep before her next part time job.  Maintenance guy or security person, even a high school kid running a vacuum or polisher on the dirty floors in the lobby?. You're joking, right?

    It's barely a week before the demagogues in Brooks' party will be on stage demeaning the 47% in our society who are the takers. They will want to pare the safety net. They will bomb Iran the first day in office. The answer to rowdy dirty budget motels and movie theaters will be "not enough guns yet". The single mom must not get birth control or an abortion. The confederate flag must fly. The private equity guys must still get favorable tax treatment so they can finance more shoddy motels. Dig those tar sands. It still snows so how could there be global warming? It's no wonder Brooks tries to reconstruct the past and turn in his later years to digging out some psychology paper he wrote a hundred years ago at Yale.

    David, this society is in so much trouble that the mere topic of "gratitude" is an insult to the intelligence.

    Would I like some gratuitous gratitude? Of Course.

    Would I like a return to civility, the society of your imagination before the disastrous wars, the pandering to religious extremists, the shift of wealth to the top, and the devastation of the middle class---which were brought forth in large part by your conservative friends? Yes I would.

    But what I would like most if for one of the sixteen conservative aspirants in your party to address one single problem facing those lost souls in the budget-motel-world of today.

    David, when I am on the road with the workers in my small company we stay in budget motels. We tough it out. I stay where they stay. I know budget motels. My guess is that you don't have a clue about budget motels, nor for that matter, "gratitude"---otherwise you wouldn't be writing such ridiculous gibberish.

      

     

    Comments

    Michael, I hope you don't mind a bit of double teaming.


    Brooks is clueless on how the rest of us live and work.  He was born in privilege.  His family knew the right people and that is how he got his job at the Times.  I also think he is as dumb as a box of rocks. 

    I can't imagine him walking a mile in my shoes. I never read him and I stopped watching the news hour when he comes on.  I can't take the derp serious let alone his lecturing the lower classes.  


    We love to mash him.


    Do you need a manager?


    Yeah, why should I have to stay in those lousy motels?

    (and thanks for the link).


    Oooo, Oooo!!   I wanna be your tag-team manager!  I'll hide the roll of quarters and the brass knuckles so the ref doesn't find them on you after you beat the bejeezus out of "El Brook-so" ... I'll trip Brooks when the ref is distracted, and I'll hold up the Championship belt with pride while you guys pose for the fans after you destroy Brooks and Ignatius at Wrestlemania 70 (or whatever number they're up to now.)


    No, I'M the manager. There can only be one. You can be the valet.


    I'm the Valet!  Wooo-Hooo!!  Wait. My job is to titillate the crowd?  Oy. 
    Well, I'm a little out of practice, but ...  Let me see if that old leather outfit still fits.
     


    From one of the top reader comments at NYT.

    You can't possible realize how insulting & contemptuous your insistent talk (every other column, it seems) about a capitalist "meritocracy" is to people who work a lot harder than you ever will and still live on food stamps & debt. Capitalism doesn"t "encourage" us to try to control our fate. Being human does. It's a miracle that capitalism--or whatever this corrupt system we live under really is--doesn't destroy that impulse completely.

    From the Brooks, he is always talking....about....me.....myself....David...Brooks...:

    ... if you go through life believing that our reason is not that great, our individual skills are not that impressive, and our goodness is severely mottled (supported GWB x 8 years, and the Iraq War, thought it was over on April 28, 2003), then you’re sort of amazed life has managed to be as sweet as it is. You’re grateful for all the institutions...(like PBS and the NYT who give you 6 figure checks for 800 word essays twice a week, and TV punditry jobs)


    Thanks, NCD. Some real wisdom in that reader's comment.


    I STAY WHERE THEY STAY!

    Damn.

    Oxy I have written on the subject of Brooks several times, I think.

    Look, in the perfect society, according to this prick, all our slaves would work happily. ahahahah

    Would you like a beverage to go with the fries and burger?

    Okay, I hereby render unto Oxy, the Dayly Line of the Day Award for this here Dagblog Site, given to all of Oxy from all of me.

    hahahaha

    Yeah I get it.

    I hope.


    Oxy : what I would like most if for one of the sixteen conservative aspirants in your party to address one single problem facing those lost souls in the budget-motel-world of today.


    This is not what Oxy was writing about.

    but yeah.

    But everytime we shop at Walmart, we are adding to sweat shops and slavery around the world.

    Perspective?

    I think this note is kind of mean.

    I did touch on this subject once:

    http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/wedding-17405

    And I stayed at that motel and I guess contributed to the capitalistic mess?

    Otherwise I missed your message, and if I did, I apologize.

     

     


    Great takedown, Oxy.  Brooks's column reads like a privileged employer standing in the air conditioning marveling at the cook or gardener toiling in the heat without complaint for his benefit.  Good boy!  Good girl!  Keep up the good work!  Know, dear ones, that you're appreciated!  As undeserving as I may be, I will now accept your gratitude.

    Only someone as clueless as Brooks would start his piece off comparing his own feelings while in a luxury hotel vs. a budget motel.  I wonder who he thinks his audience is?


    Thanks, Ramona. The sad thing is that was a brief time in our society when it might have been called a capitalist meritocracy, at least for the white middle class. But not now. Outcomes are determined mostly by birth, access to health, food, and education. But no worry, let them eat gratitude.


    I'd like to thank those brave souls who read David Brooks so that don't have to.


    I don't know where else to put this thought.

    The only pundit more passive/aggressive than David Brooks is sour Krauthammer!


    Thanks. If Brooks had smoked more dope and gone to nude gestalt therapy groups he might have become more broad minded, not a stove-up prune who imagines life in a pastoral budget motel.

    On the other hand what is so unbelievable about a NYT columnist who irons his shirt and underwear in a Motel Six.

    Come to think about it, I think I saw him there in New Haven.

     


    I dunno, you have me laughing so hard...

    I hereby render unto Oxy the Dayly Comment?(can one comment on one's own blog?) of the Day Award for this here Dagblog Site, given to all of Oxy from all of me.

    hhahahahaah

    You know, with a guy like Brooks, who knows?

    I mean a guy like this might like hookers and sex toys?


    Hookers and sex toys?

    Well someone else might say that but I of course can't comment.


    Well, we all need our distractions, from time to time.

    hahahahahah

    I just do not trust people like Brooks or Sourkraut.

    This passive aggressive crap...there are other variables hidden.


    Then you won't risk an aneurysm.


    Maybe Brooks fall into this category?  He thinks the population is richer then it is. 

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/28/rich-people-surrounded-by-other-rich-people-think-america-is-richer-than-it-really-is/?postshare=5651438088221178 

    This implies that attitudes about programs like welfare aren't based solely on political ideology or self-interest (if I have a lot of money, I don't want to be taxed more). They're also influenced by cues we get from the environment around us. That means that the wealthy don't just lack information aboutwhat it's like to be poor; they also lack basic information about how pervasive poverty is:

    These results suggest that the rich and poor do not simply have different views about how wealth should be distributed across society; rather, they subjectively experience living in societies that have subtle—but important—differences. Thus, in the relatively affluent America inhabited by wealthier Americans, there is less need to distribute wealth more equally.

    This finding is particularly worrisome given that economic segregation isworsening in America. We are less and less likely to live near, and interact with, people whose incomes don't look like our own. And the economic gap between rich and poor communities — often within the same metropolitan area — is widening. If the wealthy, occupying their own separate world, interacted with few poor families in the past, they're even less likely to meet them now.


    I've written this before and not to repeat it would be cowardice: I think Brooks is a good human being. But dim.

    To repeat : if all the seats in if the plane were full except for the one next to me ,into which the cabin staff was going to  seat someone. , Brooks is the only right wing commentator whose presence in that space would not cause me to demand a parachute  and the opening of an emergency door,   


    I agree Flavius. He really does try to understand the democratic and liberal point of view. He misses the mark often but he does try. Most other conservative commentators purposely distort the views of the left to smear us and spin for their team. One could have an honest debate with Brooks.


    Good human being but dim is what they said about Dubya. The body count would tend to indicate otherwise.

    Brooks is anything but dim. He has been wrong on virtually every topic for 15 years and has never missed a paycheck or admitted error.

    David Brooks, Feb, 2003 : Paul Wolfowitz is an 'effective policy practitioner', and those who criticize his Iraq war plans do so because he is 'now the focus of world anti-Semitism'.

    David Brooks, March 10, 2003 : GW Bush decisive, coherent and 'leading to protect'. (just weeks before the invasion)

    David Brooks April 28 2003 : Proclaims the Iraq War over, and for 'Bush haters' 'hatred is tribal not ideological', and it is 'all that is left of their leftism'

    David Brooks July 3 2004 : Iraq now has a popular government with a tough, capable minister. Democratic institutions are emerging, including a culture of compromise. . . . Thanks, in part, to [U.S. administrator Paul] Bremer’s decisiveness

    David Brooks March 26, 2005 : Agonizes over the 'slow dehydration' of brain dead Terri Schiavo.

    David Brooks Dec. 15 2006 - (as the war drags on - focuses on Rumsfeld) - people within the Pentagon talking about the need for anthropologists to understand the culture of Iraq. And that's something the Pentagon in general, and I think Rumsfeld in particular, had some trouble with. (Brooks had no trouble with it?)

    You might imagine it, but I don't believe you can have an 'honest debate' with a shameless and sleazy right wing sycophant like Brooks.


    He does appear to be rather dumb. 


    Well, this is more of the "thousand points of light" stuff handed out in other pamphlets.To wit: The brutality of our system is balanced out by another element.


    I have seen and have benefited from what he is talking about. There is another kind of connection happening.

    To suggest it is a dynamic counter balance to the problems we face is ludicrous. It is like glorifying the life raft while watching the ship sink.


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