Brooks on Emanuel

David Brooks’s op-ed today about Rahm Emanuel, whom he knows well, is interesting reading. The most interesting part was that every time Brooks has written a critical column about Obama, he has immediately heard from Emanuel about it. I didn’t realize that Brooks had that much clout. It’s a glimpse into the existence of the high level Washington journalist—the White House carefully follows what you write, and openly and undisguisedly tries to influence you to write things more to their favor.

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Alexis Zarkov writes:

Can we trust Brooks to give us a straight story? Frankly I doubt it. Based on his past columns, I don’t expect him to either be truthful or perceptive. The man strikes me as a compete idiot.

James P. writes:

“It’s a glimpse into the existence of the high level Washington journalist—the White House carefully follows what you write, and openly and undisguisedly tries to influence you to write things more to their favor.”

Of course they want to talk to Brooks! He is a politician’s dream — a morally and intellectually flabby creature who uncritically repeats in the New York Times the ideas that powerful people pour into his empty head.

October 6

Sage McLaughlin writes:

If that Brooks column reveals anything about the Beltway pundit, it is his solipsism. His ode to the even-temperedness of Rahm Emanuel is just a series of anecdotes, and it doesn’t seem to occur to him that perhaps Emanuel behaves in a particular way towards him precisely because he knows that whatever he says or does to a professional columnist could, you know, wind up in print at some point.

Rahm Emanuel’s nasty reputation was earned over decades of experience as a political knife-fighter, and yet Brooks dismisses the first-hand reports of a dozen other individuals with a wave of the hand. After all, all those other reports “don’t square” with the several personal encounters he happens to have had. He’s saying, in essence, “That’s not the Rahm I know.”

Now it comes to it, I wonder where we have heard that line before … ?

Jim C. writes:

Brooks is the Jewish Spike Lee: no talent, big mouth.

LA replies:

That is one of the oddest comparisons I have seen.

Jim C. replies:

Brooks can’t write, and his opinions are as predictable as Charles Blow’s. I simply can’t stand him.

LA continues (a few hours later):

But it’s less odd than I originally thought. The reason it struck me as being wrong and weird, is that Lee is very egotistical and brash, while Brooks is the opposite of that, he’s a gentle-mannered bureaucrat type.

But then it occurred to me, in his gentle, bureacratic manner, Brooks is always coming out with these ridiculously over-ambitious 800 word essays, as though an op ed column can be the place where a whole new political philosphy can be articulated. And he does this all the time. And these essays of his are worthless.

So when I looked at your e-mail again, and saw,

“Brooks is the Jewish Spike Lee: no talent, big mouth,”

it suddenly made sense from a certain angle.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 05, 2010 09:19 PM | Send