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For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.
Competing for our third weekly Media Putz of the week honors, David Brooks
took home the trophy with his column on the "commutation" of Scooter
Libby: "Ending
the Farce."
As the expression goes, Brooks had our BuzzFlash readers impressed with his "putziness" from
hello.
Shortly after Brooks compares the outing of a CIA operative and the destruction
of her network and usefulness as a "farce in five acts" ending, according
to Brooks, with justice being done in keeping Libby out of prison, the smarmy "in
the tradition of William Buckley" New York Times columnist lets loose
with this wing ding of a winger sentence: "The drama opened, as these
dark comedies are wont to do, with a strutting little peacock who went by the
unimaginative name of Joe Wilson."
What is Brooks' theme song: "It's all Happening at the Zoo"?
David Corn of the Nation, who first exposed the Plame outing in "The
Nation" (quickly followed by a series of editorials in BuzzFlash about
the significance of the infamous Bob Novak column), wrote an excellent
dissection of the inaccuracies and sappy language in Brooks' July 3 commentary.
Like Corn, we wavered between being appalled and laughing uproariously, after
reading Brooks opining, "In short order, Wilson established himself as
the charming P.T. Barnum of the National Security set, an inveterate huckster
who could be counted on to wrap every actual fact in six layers of embellishment."
A columnist on the move, Brooks, in just a couple of paragraphs, overstretched
his analogies as they traveled from the zoo to the circus, which may more aptly
be applied to Brooks' strained attempt to appear professorial.
As one of the BuzzFlash nominators, Rich Miles of Kentucky, noted of the latest
Brooks exercise in snooty Bushevik prose:
Mr. Brooks has been for some time now one of the most reliable conduits
for almost any sort of lie the Bush administration wants to spread to us. However,
in a recent column on the commutation of I. Lewis Libby's sentence, Brooks
crossed over the line from snarky partisanship into full-blown third graders'
name-calling.
For a supposed nationally respected columnist, employed by one of the nation's
most widely distributed and allegedly respected papers, to refer to a former
U.S. ambassador as a "strutting little peacock of a man who goes by the
unimaginative name of Joe Wilson" is to lower the level of our national
discourse even further than its already abysmally low levels. Not to mention
that the characterization provides no essential information about Amb.
Wilson - it only allows Mr. Brooks the opportunity to be a snotty little
jerk. Even
more than usual.
The same column, in which the above prose assaults the reader, is a textbook
case of making every element of the matter under discussion twist and turn
to fit the writer's thesis, regardless of truth or even plausibility. Mr.
Brooks has often demonstrated his ability to spin any event, any fact to
the supposed
benefit of his idols in the White House. In this most recent column, he
shows his willingness to stoop to infantile name-calling as well. In truth,
I'd be
willing to nominate Mr. Brooks for some sort of "Lifetime Achievement" MediaPutz
award. But for the time being, I'll settle for just the weekly prize.
David Brooks, you are a model of that most elite of species, the highbrow
Media Putz -- a lot of nonsensical blather wrapped in $50 words. Of all the
unintended errors and guffaws offered up in "Ending the Farce," we
spit up our beer on this one: "President Bush entered the stage like a
character from another world, a world in which things make sense."
With columns like your piece on the Libby "commutation," you remind
us how easy it is to separate journalism from the truth.
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