‘There You Go Again,’ Uncle Dave; Skip the Column, See the Readers’ Comments
NYTimes opinion writer David Brooks keeps me reading his column because I appreciate his thoughtfulness if not his core analysis. Today’s column deals with inequalities among American children as described in recent scholarly research. After painting a picture that should worry everyone, he winds up with a cliche ending that blames President Obama for wasting time calling “class warfare” on Romney—that’s basically what he says, nevermind who declared war. I wasn’t going to re-post this but the Comments are really what is worth reading. The push back, for the most part, on Brooks’ impulse to even out the blame among whatever you want to call the two sides: Dems and GOP, liberals and conservatives, Left and Right, progressives and reactionaries, reasonables and extremists, faith-in-governmenters and government haters. These are NYTimes readers, of course, so the views skew against the defenders of the “1 percent.” Here’s the link, scroll down to the bottom for Comments and enjoy the ride.
I was impressed with the quality of the comments on the Brooks piece. So often you get just a bunch of childish name-calling in the comment section.