Yes, absolutely. There's another incisive and satisfying takedown of Brooks, Gladwell, et al in Rich People Things... which, now that I think about it, I read at your recommendation.

But at least David Broder is gone, dimming the beacon of conventional wisdom just so much.

David Fucking Brooks has proved repeatedly and conclusively that he is an ignorant jackass who has no idea what he is talking about. He does this every single week; it's not a secret. And yet thousands of otherwise knowledgeable and intelligent people still seem to treat him as if he were a serious person. It boggles the mind - I can only assume that he must give fantastically good head to hold the position he does.

Brook's TED talk is just as bad. He spends minutes describing a very narrow stereotype about "uber-moms" and looks around smugly and smiles a smile that asks, "Isn't that clever?"

He never delves beyond the surface in his plea to have a deeper conversation. His philosophy is a hodgepodge of enlightenment cliff notes and Baby Boomer Americana.

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_brooks_th…

Oh, look -- there's my future Bride, thegirlamydreams the uncontactableunreachableunknowable SugarCereal -- again.

Thanks, The Stranger, and you too, LOLoveLab, for tormenting me so... ...damned deliciously.

Brooks may be a bit bloviated, but he sure does suck a mean cock.

Some good criticism, but there is something to be said for those moments when authors like Brooks or Gladwell (I did kind of like Tipping Point) leave you "slack-jawed at their contrarian wisdom." Maybe I'd rather they push things further (though I'm not sure they aren't doing exactly what they've advertised they meant to do), but even just those moments of seeing things in a fresh way are valuable.

That first paragraph succinctly summarizes my distaste for all that armchair, behavioral economics.

I had an arugment the other day about one of the conclusions in Freakonomics. This rather intelligent doctor tried telling me the book "proves" that Roe vs Wade decreased the crime rate.

I'm glad to see that straight, white, upper middle class privilege is not just the norm, but the median.
I'm in awe of Brooks's ability to find that even the poorest, most beaten down minority share the same ideals and outlooks as a millionare white dude.

I was sort of interested to hear Brooks this morning on KUOW, but after a few minutes was getting the impression that a lot of his book was apt to be pretty shallow (don't really pay much attention, positive or negative, to him otherwise). So it's nice to see my impressions backed up by this review.

Also, on the bad-writer thing, I got kind of annoyed when he said (on-air this morning) "literally the merging of two minds." Huh? That's a new one for the "literally" error pile.

It reminds me of a privileged white man's attempt at modernizing Plato's Republic.

"I know some well off people that are happy. Ergo, all is right with the world."

Never read Brooks, and likely never will. He's strikes me as a caricature of east coast smugness.

Gladwell is hit or miss.

@8

Freakonomics doesn't prove anything, nor do I think it claims to. I haven't seen much in the way of scholarly refutation of the Roe v. Wade conclusion, however. There was some issue with their stats about Romania, but Levitt came to a reasonable defense of it.

If I'm wrong, and that's certainly possible, could you direct me to such a scholarly refutation?

You know most educated self aware people get pretty sick of being wrong ALL THE GOD DAMNED TIME.

I wonder what neural mechanism is active in Brooks brain that allows for such epic levels of cognitive dissonance. Is it some some sort of tumor?

I ran my own little experiment in 2002 and 2003 I called the Constanza Effect. In that every single prognostication made by guys like Brooks and all the other chicken-hawk neo-cons I would bet on the exact opposite where ever possible. Literally. They predicted the Euro would bomb becuase the invasion of Iraq would shore up the petro-dollar? So I transferred every stock I had to Euros. They said this or that part of the economy would turn around? I immediately divested.

2003-2004 were VERY good years for me.

Dear News Hour, CNN, NBC, NPR and all other news outlets. I propose you hire me for one fifth of Brooks' rate. I guarantee I will not only be more informed (Wikipedia is more informed) but infinitely more entertaining. I will also challenge any other panel member to a video taped cage match that bullies or lies... for a nominal extra fee and video co-rights.

Nice, Paul! You are truly the Lindy West of literary review, and that is intended to be a huge compliment.

You had me at, "those Freaknomics douches" -- jesus, I hate that over-branded bullcrap. Like first-year Econ, but it's riding a fixie...

Paul, do you hate Sarah Vowell, too? She certainly falls in the category of the breezy intellectual pundit who takes esoteric subject matter and writes about it in a fun, not fully researched and annotated way. I mean, do all historical texts have to be primary sources or encyclopedias? Do all economics books have to be accurate (in which case I would submit that ALL of them are worthless)?

I'm just pleased to see so many people taking the piss out of these smug assholes. It amazes me that people like Brooks & Gladwell can be so self-satisfied about being so full of shit. Practically everything in their entire corpus of books and public statements is either untrue or completely meaningless. I guess it is no surprise that our media love them so much. Brooks' predictions in the books that made him famous all turned out to be basically the exact inverse of what actually happened, & it could be argued that the glib worldview that he champions has significantly contributed to the crash and burn that left us in the sorry state we're in.

whatever, I loved Freakonomics. I think they're pretty straightforward in stating that one should not take the far-fetched theories in the book too seriously, that they're just trying to explore some fun logic experiments. And from what I've heard of Gladwell on radio spots, he seems like a nice enough, kinda wierd dude who's just having a little fun thinkin about shit, too. Neither of them seemed to be giant pseudo-science douches to me, just reasonably humble Science Lite goofballs if anything.
Still, I gotta say they are totally worthy of a bit of mockery, if only for soakin up the wowed daytime hosts annoying "amazement" at their "findings" in order to move product, and I thoroughly enjoyed readin this; it's fun when Constant gets all snippy.