David Brooks Frames Muslims and Left Bloggers
Wow. David Brooks is going extremist on left bloggers. I'll bet many bloggers will take serious offense to what this well-paid Republican mouthpiece is going on mainstream talk shows and saying about them - most of them ordinary and free-thinking citizens who get paid nothing/zipppo/nada for voicing their personal opinion and conviction.
He is calling left bloggers "semi-nuts" and saying that left bloggers "..insist on a Stalinist line of discipline."
I think David Brooks needs a vacation. Obsessing about a Hitler cartoon, as he did in a recent NY times column, while dancing the soft-shoe around some of his Islamophobic thoughts (using the lame disclaimer "I don't mean you Muslims) is definitely not a good sign of quiet reason.
His words - speaking of Islam's male scholars:
"...you have a different way. When I say you, I don't mean you Muslims. I don't mean you genuine Islamic scholars and learners. I mean you Islamists....You frame the contrast between your world and our world more bluntly than we outsiders would ever dare to."Brooks' words to describe left blogdom come back to me: "semi-nuts" ... "..insisting on a Stalinist line of discipline.."
Brooks, who accuses "the Other" of framing to keep the dividing lines bold is no more than a pot calling the kettle black - framing the contrast between the mainstream media's world and the American left blogger's world "more bluntly than we would ever dare to."
I guess, when you're drawing battle lines, you need to make "the other" stand out in frighteningly bold contrast.
Brooks is framing Muslims, and he's framing left bloggers.
Is it our turn to frame David Brooks? Personally, I wouldn't waste my time. Yet, he seems terribly interested in framing bloggers as insane. It's interesting that he chose to say it on the Chris Matthews show. Two poor bruised ego cases who party with the elite while being paid handsomely acting as amanuenses for the Oval Office. We watch them become the new shadows of the once-great journalists like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.
From his Hitler-colored NYT column:
"In my world, people search for truth in their own diverse ways..."Like Muslims, left bloggers are, for David Brooks, part of some "other" world where no one dares to write a thought that's out of line - Stalinist-like. Stalinist? Is he joking? No - I don't think that he's joking. Brooks is humorless.
If you're not a part of David's view of the world, you are probably "opting out of civilization." On the News Hour (PBS) last week, Brooks denied the fact that the recent cartoons have been directly responsible for provoking a clash of cultures. He removes all accountability from the knowing provocateurs of violence the West. In his Times column, the propagandizing Brooks scapegoated Islamists for not "cooperating" with or looking forward to the "coming of democracy", which to the young men on the Muslim street is code for 'bombs will soon be falling and we will soon be occupying your neighborhoods.' (a la Iraq).
On PBS, February 10, Brooks said:
I do think it's not a clash of civilizations or the West versus Islam, but these people who were the fundamentalists have opted totally out of our civilization and, you know, we've been sort of measured in how we respond to them which I think is silly. I mean, they are fundamentally opposed to the way we live; whether we're measured or not is not going to make any difference in their minds.And listen to this schlock:
We're involved in this democratic moment where they feel threatened, at the same time they feel strong; they're winning elections. But the elections are a threat to their mentality...What a couple of nonsensical and incongruent sentences.
We can all find common ground in deciding how we can keep the people of the world from blowing each other up. We can champion freedom and justice for the oppressed victims of poverty and violated huamn rights. We won't reach any consensus with ego-trippers like David Brooks framing certain people who earnestly take part in what Brooks calls our diverse search for truth as "semi-nuts."
I have an idea.Let's ask the New York Times to replace David Brooks with Albert Brooks for a while. David needs a breather.