Why the Hell Does David Brooks Still Have a Job?
By DREW MAGARY
As a professional Haver Of Takes, I have a certain morbid admiration for New York Times columnist and human mayonnaise spill David Brooks. I don’t quite know what the secret is to attaining such lofty standing in the Bogus Influencer Economy that you get to spend the bulk of your time appearing on the Sunday morning shows, collecting hefty advances for pamphlet-quality books, racking up monstrous fees on the lecture circuit, and drawing a hefty salary from the Times for columns that don’t even get formally edited. All I know is that I want in. I want the keys to the Fartsniffer Club, where con artists like Brooks and Tom Friedman and George Will and Arianna Huffington and the like can all gather together to address The State Of Things and feast on live human infants.
But until that lovely day when I am granted access to Fraud Shangri-La, I am left perpetually and utterly baffled as to how Brooks is allowed to pump out columns as execrable as the one he posted on Russiagate (or as I prefer to call the scandal: Urineburg) today. Please note that Brooks was already on a remarkable take bender this week when he posted this missive about deadbeat dads (some of them care, you guys!). But that wasn’t nearly enough. Now, he had to double down and offer additional proof that his superiors (maybe he doesn’t have any?) definitely don’t read any of the horrible he shit he puts in print. How else to explain this pile of shit?
I was the op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal at the peak of the Whitewater scandal. We ran a series of investigative pieces “raising serious questions” (as we say in the scandal business) about the nefarious things the Clintons were thought to have done back in Arkansas.
Now I confess I couldn’t follow all the actual allegations made in those essays. They were six jungles deep in the weeds. But I do remember the intense atmosphere that the scandal created. A series of bombshell revelations came out in the media, which seemed monumental at the time. A special prosecutor was appointed and indictments were expected. Speculation became the national sport.
In retrospect Whitewater seems overblown. And yet it has to be confessed that, at least so far, the Whitewater scandal was far more substantive than the Russia-collusion scandal now gripping Washington.
I am a truly lazy man. I’m known to openly groan if I sit down only to realize the remote control is out of reach. But even I can’t match the sheer, unbridled, galling laziness of Brooks here, who was apparently too busy to learn the intricacies of a bone-dry real estate investigation his own paper conducted, but has no problem at all declaring that scandal more damning than the current Russia clusterfuck.
Keep in mind that Donald Trump already has proven financial ties to Russia, and openly ASKED Russia to hack the DNC, and let Russian state photographers into the Oval Office, and fired the man investigating him, and openly mused about firing the other guy investigating him, and eased sanctions on Russia almost immediately after taking office. He didn’t even to try hide any of this shit. Oh, and his son-in-law asked to set up a formal backchannel with the Russians to circumvent diplomatic protocol. And yet here’s Brooks being like, “Nah, that Whitewater thing I never bothered to learn about was worse.” I’m in awe of this man’s hustle.
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http://www.gq.com/story/david-brooks-trump-whitewater
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