Comment: Another Brooks Sermon
07 01, 15 10:17 Filed in: Comment
In his last NYT column, David Brooks once again used his pulpit to deliver a sermon -- this time on the problematic nature of the vacuous “meaningfulness” movement. Unlike other members of my household, I am no fan of Brooks, and I think much of my dislike comes from his continuous effort to break out of the “columnist” mode and establish himself as an intellectual essayist. His Op-Ed hero is William F. Buckley Jr., but his lifetime objective is probably to become the next Walter Lippmann. Unfortunately for him, he lacks the capacity to be either. As a columnist, he is more George Will than Buckley; as an essayist he is closer to Malcolm Gladwell than Lippmann.
What Brooks seems to lack is the right venue for achieving his life goals. Buckley and Lippmann were both well known columnists, but those were secondary to their roles as founders and intellectual guides for magazines that featured more political commentary than weekly news. Both were pivotal players within the intellectual communities of their day, Lippmann engaging with the likes of John Dewey and John Maynard Keynes and Buckley with Noam Chomsky and John Kenneth Galbraith. For actual and “public” intellectuals, Buckley’s public television show Firing Line was as significant in its day as a guest slot on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report is today, and while Lippmann had no mass media presence outside his widely read columns, some of his radio appearances and exchanges remain historically noteworthy.
When Brooks attempts to extend himself through venues other than the NYT columns and weekly pundit appearances on NPR and PBS, the efforts increasingly fall flat and certainly leave little in the way of an insightful or enduring contributions. Scratch the surface of some seemingly major contribution, and it is typically based on someone else’s work (e.g., Sunstein on “partyism”). Yes, he has written best selling works like Bobos in Paradise, but in style and content they are more like The Tipping Point than any one of Lippmann’s several -- and still notable --“classics” (e.g., Public Opinion, The Phantom Public, The Public Philosophy).
In short, Brooks is no Buckley or Lippmann, nor does he come close to being even a mediocre public intellectual despite the effort to move in that direction with his column length sermons. What he ought to do is look across the NYT Op-Ed page at the tone and content of his more contentious colleague, Paul Krugman. While Krugman is no Buckley or Lippmann, he doesn’t aspire to be such -- his scholarly credentials were (and remain) well established, and he understands the nature of the columnist’s venue and its role in generating and extending public debates. It seems that what Brooks really needs at this juncture is a year-long sabbatical from the column -- not to write another book, but to reinvent himself by finding another venue where he can see if he really has the wherewithal to achieve what his mentor, Buckley, achieved. The Firing Line model probably won’t work, and we do not need another Charlie Rose. Something in between -- a Bill Moyers format, for instance -- might work. Certainly PBS would be pleased to have him, and one suspects there are enough potential funding sources to pull that off. Whatever he does, here’s hoping he will at least put an end to the sermonizing.
When Brooks attempts to extend himself through venues other than the NYT columns and weekly pundit appearances on NPR and PBS, the efforts increasingly fall flat and certainly leave little in the way of an insightful or enduring contributions. Scratch the surface of some seemingly major contribution, and it is typically based on someone else’s work (e.g., Sunstein on “partyism”). Yes, he has written best selling works like Bobos in Paradise, but in style and content they are more like The Tipping Point than any one of Lippmann’s several -- and still notable --“classics” (e.g., Public Opinion, The Phantom Public, The Public Philosophy).
In short, Brooks is no Buckley or Lippmann, nor does he come close to being even a mediocre public intellectual despite the effort to move in that direction with his column length sermons. What he ought to do is look across the NYT Op-Ed page at the tone and content of his more contentious colleague, Paul Krugman. While Krugman is no Buckley or Lippmann, he doesn’t aspire to be such -- his scholarly credentials were (and remain) well established, and he understands the nature of the columnist’s venue and its role in generating and extending public debates. It seems that what Brooks really needs at this juncture is a year-long sabbatical from the column -- not to write another book, but to reinvent himself by finding another venue where he can see if he really has the wherewithal to achieve what his mentor, Buckley, achieved. The Firing Line model probably won’t work, and we do not need another Charlie Rose. Something in between -- a Bill Moyers format, for instance -- might work. Certainly PBS would be pleased to have him, and one suspects there are enough potential funding sources to pull that off. Whatever he does, here’s hoping he will at least put an end to the sermonizing.
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