David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, gave a terrific speech at MSU-Billings Thursday night. I'll write about in next week's Outpost but will post a few observations here:
1. Petro Theater was just about full, but very few people there seemed of student age. Most seemed my age or older. I'm not sure the Times means much to students.
2. Brooks pulled up an old quote from Tom Wolfe: "Every teenager knows who his natural enemy is." He used the quote to make the point that people choose their party not on ideology but on "tribalism" and group identification. The quote hit home with me. I've always thought of George Bush as a spoiled frat kid, and I've never liked spoiled frat kids. I never bought the faux-rancher act because I've known too many ranchers. I never bought the born-again Christian business because no authentic Texas Christian would call a man an asshole, and then refuse to apologize for it. So maybe all my dislike for him is really just working off teenage angst toward upperclass rich kids. Except for the Iraq part.
3. He said that the consensus among Republicans is that they will lose at least the House this fall. "I think they know they've strayed, and they're going to pay for it," he said. But the consensus among Democrats is that they can't believe they will win.
4. In 2004, Bush won 23 of the 24 states with the highest fertility rates. Kerry won all 17 states with the lowest fertility rates. Republicans are reproducing, he noted.
5. While American poltical positions have not become more polarized, their voting has. The number of counties with landslide majorities for one party or the other has doubled since the '60s. The number of split ticket voters has dropped dramatically. The number of people who never go to church has doubled in the last 10 years.
6. Reporters, once part of the working class, have become much more elite. He noted that when he had a drink recently with a group of reporters, he was the only one who ordered alcohol. The rest all got bottled water.
This is deeply troubling. Sobriety in American journalism is indeed reaching alarming levels. Lewis Grizzard once pointed out that all of the creativity went out of American newsrooms when the glue pots were taken away. A dwindling few of us carry on.
Anyway, none of this really even much touches on the important things he had to say. For that, you'll have to read the Outpost.
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2 comments:
Brooks was great. Some of the people who went up allegedly to ask questions, and instead delivered soliloques, were not.
Brooks fancies himself a sociologist/psychologist and his pop schlock is all angst and anxiety.Because like every conservative he cant imagine structural contradictions or systemic, institutional influences in historical development.He will believe such a thing as "democratic capitalism" can exist(if only people were better adjusted) until he is standing at the end of a bread line.How about you?
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