Comments on: Mirror Mirror

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:53:56 +0000

In which, for anyone who hasn't seen it, David Brooks is carefully filleted over steak and lobster in rural Pennsylvania. Leitmotif: "There's just one problem: Many of his generalizations are false."

By: north

north — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:51:50 +0000

I think he??s inconsistent on purpose, instrumentally, as a manipulator.

Correct.

By: Bill McNeill

Bill McNeill — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:18:32 +0000

I see something less pernicious and more trite in this particular article: paint by the numbers contrarianism. The common wisdom is that Obama is the second coming of
Adlai Stevenson, so Brooks starts his column by asserting the opposite and then riffs until his word count is filled.

By: Alan Jacobs

Alan Jacobs — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:49:26 +0000

Thanks, Tim. I agree that the distinction between kinds of inconsistency is valid and important; I’m just not confident that I can tell the difference.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:03:44 +0000

Because some people are inconsistent in ways that strike me as sincere or unknowing–either because they’re really trying hard to live up to contradictory principles that demand opposing commitments, or because they’re trying to think their way through problems that pull them in opposite directions–and I don’t think Brooks is inconsistent for those reasons. I think he’s inconsistent on purpose, instrumentally, as a manipulator. Which strikes me as dishonest, and calculatingly so.

By: Alan Jacobs

Alan Jacobs — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:36:00 +0000

Tim, what do you mean by “calculatedly dishonest”? If you had said “inconsistent” or “incoherent” I think I’d know what you mean, but why “dishonest”?