David Brooks’ recent article, The Tea Party Teens, drew a lot of attention today. Before I even had a chance to read the article, my Twitter feed was blowing up with negative feedback on the article. Many on Twitter summed up the gist of his article as ‘tea partiers are stupid, but they may have an impact.’ Michelle Malkin tweeted that ‘David Brooks is miffed that the tea party is trumping the “educated class.” Someone else quoted Glenn Beck on Brooks, stating “David Brooks is the guy who claims to be conservative, then disagrees with everything conservative.”
Later in the afternoon, still not having read the article, I tuned in to Michael Medved to hear him praising David Brooks and agreeing wholeheartedly with his sentiments about the tea partiers — specifically citing Brooks’ comments on the tea partiers being opposed to everything the so-called educated class stands for.
Having finally read the article, I’m left astounded at Brooks’ disconnected, absurd article. The article itself just doesn’t make sense. It starts out tearing apart the tea partiers and ends with a sort of nod of respect to them that is entirely out of place given the tone of the article.
After opening with how disenchanted the public is with their government, he posits that the country is moving to the right and most importantly, that that change involves a moving away from ideas associated with the “educated class.”
He then counts off a number of issues and cites the liberal positions as those of the “educated” elite. Brooks is somehow under the impression that the 50% of the country, or at the very least the 40% that considered themselves conservative in 2009, are unschooled. Not only are they lowbrow cretins, they are defined by this opposition to their educated superiors.
“The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.”
Perhaps Brooks thinks he can get away with libel if he mixes it with a bit of truth. True, tea partiers are generally against big government, high deficits, taxes and regulation. But, tea partiers are against government intrusion in the private sector, not against business, the private sector or those who reap its benefits as he suggests. As for the media, he seems confused as to conservatives’ grievances against major news outlets which they see as biased, not because their offices are filled with the enlightened, well-educated class as he suggests.
After all this, he ends the article with a nod to the tea party, acknowledging its success and potential future influence. In what is perhaps the most bizarre of the piece, he suggests the movement could become a major force in politics; after all, it “represents arguments that are deeply rooted in American history.” I have to wonder what sort of spin Brooks himself would put on this if confronted with these statements — that the tea partiers are ignorant, yet their ideas are deeply rooted in U.S. history?
Brooks then ends the piece by pointing to “the angry direction” tea partiers could pull voters toward and states, “I’m no fan of this movement.”
I came away from the article understanding that David Brooks abhors the tea parties and nothing more. Other than that, the only thing I can surmise is that Brooks senses that the tides are changing, and he fears that this group of everyday Americans turned activists, with their ideas “rooted in American history” are on to something, and New York Times elites like Brooks may no longer be as influential as they once were.
