Why you don’t need me anymore

Cuz you got Charles Pierce blogging at Esquire.

Sinecured New York Times columnist David Brooks, loafing his way through another space-filler for the op-ed page, sees the silver-lining in the bankrupting of the American middle class---we’re relearning the virtues of thrift, prudence, and temperance, “trying to restore the moral norms that undergird our economic system”---and Pierce pounces:

What American capitalism knows about "moral norms" is that they are for other people. The people who did all the real damage are not in any way interested in "repairing the economic moral fabric" that "is the essential national task right now." They are interested in keeping the money they stole and in stealing as much more of it as they can. But David Brooks is far more concerned with some guy, sitting around his kitchen table, bills up to his elbows, who decides that, in the interest of the "economic moral fabric" of the country, he won't take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese tonight on the family MasterCard. Congratulations, good and faithful servant, says David Brooks, and orders another brandy.

Read all of Pierce’s post, David Brooks Does Not Get the Moral Norm of Being Broke.

Comments

[El Jefe]

Chuck has been sonning David "Attention, People of the Cafeteria! I Mean You No Harm!" Brooks for years, but the quality of that beat-down has taken on a gemlike clarity recently.

[El Jefe]

But Lance, without you we wouldn't get posts like Michael Moore & the nuns, and that's a lesser world. Pierce would say so too (and I feel pretty sure, given his own background, he tuned in for that particular essay.)

[Ralph Hitchens]

Lance, for sure we need all of you guys right now. Charles Pierce certainly is a hoot, though.

[Victoria]

What a ridiculous title for that post, Lance. But thank you so much for the link to fabulous stuff. I have said for years that the only good thing about reading Brooks is reading the many much smarter letters to the editor that inevitably follow.

By the way, Franklin County - David B's red county - that's where I grew up.

[Linkmeister]

(Puts on Oliver Twist's hat)

"Why can't I have both, sir?"

(Removes hat)

[actor212]

Sadly, Lance, my firewall designates Equire as a Lingerie & Swimwear site.

So you're stuck with me.