Tuesday, March 30, 2010

How To Write A David Brooks Column

It's really pretty simple--after all, any bias can easily be wrapped in some veneer of superficial pretense of logic.
So just start off with some kind of crap that sounds slightly plausible, say, "Norwegians are more individualistic and therefore better skiers than the Congolese who just like to cut off each others' limbs."  Then find some worthless anecdote--people love anecdotes--about how, say, a Norwegian got caught in a bear trap, gnawed off his foot and then hopped 50 miles to the nearest hospital.  And then remain completely oblivious to all of the obvious contradictions.  "No snow in Congo," you say? Damn, how do you know? You ever been there? You think Wikipedia is 100% accurate? You ever meet anyone from the Congo? Hell no! (Well I haven't, and that's good enough for me.)  Then toss off a few quotes from some obscure theologian that 99.9% of Americans could care less less about than a rat's farthing for an extra polish of respectability, and cash your paycheck from the New York Times.  And next week: Write the same easily falseafiable crap again. And cash your check. And moreover, since you write for the NY Times, you automatically have creds, so you will be invited on to all of the Liberal Commie Far Left Media--NPR, PBS, etc.--as some sort of expert on something, wherein you can spew the same utter crap and the commentators can't even be bothered to grill you on your opinions, as though you were offering facts rather than half-baked opinions, such as 'Americans love independence too much to want health care.' (Although that's probably most of cable news today.)   Wait--it get's better! And then at the last minute, you can change your argument, from 'wow the american people are too american for this un-american bill dammit,' to 'Golly Jeepers this bill won't control health care costs and that's why the Republicans had to vote against it even though they had an entire year to do something and wouldn't except to give Obama a big middle finger but hey they're just being REAL AMERICANS. Not like the fakey elitists who drink wine and look down on REAL AMERICANS while giving them the HIGH HAT.'








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