I’m pretty sure David Brooks spends the majority of his time unplugged and lifeless in a mop closet at the NYT. A couple times a week a custodian shoves some D cells up his ass, which boots Brooks into a quasi life-like artificial intelligence to mechanically crank out a column as the totally fucking inept protocol droid for the Washington elite he is. I mean, there are mindless blatherers, and there are mindless blatherers. David Brooks is the latter. I once read a Brooks column to a potted plant, and it jumped out the window. Reading his “thoughts” is like being flashed by a middle-aged man who looks a lot like David Brooks.
Writing from the context of complete closeted oblivion, Brooks examines the ontological question of why harmful robots like him exist in a meritocracy, and his lack of self-awareness explodes in a bifurcation of chaos. This bionic op-ed appliance has so many design flaws you can hear the components popping and snapping and sizzling before he attempts to rub the first two wires together.
One of the great achievements of modern times is that we have made society more fair.
Snap, pop, sizzle. The dude shorts out. Reflections on being, BZZZT. I believe the rest of the column resulted from his wrecked parts thrashing and slumping on to the keyboard.
At least his editor ran it through the spell-check before publishing it.