Only David Brooks Could Do This

Praise Wolfowitz and start out with his premise by saying one of the strongest reasons to appreciate this neocon numbnut is because Michael Moore doesn't like him. I know I frame my entire existence and social relationships on whether or not Lynne Cheney or Michael Moore do or don't like someone (should I have a cheeseburger for lunch like Mike might do or should I go out and torture some young calf before i shoot it ineffectively myself and then carve it up for veal saltambocca as Lynnie would do?.

Indeed, the world pivots on this axis each and every moment.

Hell, a cartoon about amoeba would be more relevant for an op/ed page than any column Brooks has ever written there. Hell, so would bird doo-doo.

It's like The Times decided to specifically find the most mediocre of the rightie writers (not as silly or as vicious as Ann "I was Jerome before the surgery" Coulter and not as delusional as Safire sitting there having imaginary conversations in which he channeled the dead Nixon). Interestingly enough, for a writer, Brooks is a better speaker or at least he was in the past (less true now) on the Friday night wrapup opposite Mark Shields on PBS' News Hour. It was only later that I realized his more moderate, less inflamed speech on PBS was not the usual Brooks. And his writing, mediocre before The Times and completely lame and la-la since he got to one of the most vaulted op-ed pages in the world, reveals far less of the intelligent moderate nature of the PBS appearances.

The only "encouragement" here is that the fellow they hired to replace Safire may actually be worse than both Safire and Brooks together. Where has the moderate Republican voice gone? The screamers and the nutjobs on the right are the ones who get all the praise (while moderates on the Dem side are villified). But most Republicans I know don't have the meanness or the "talking point" loyalty the media protrays. If anything, centrist Republicans - perhaps the majority in most of red America - have been marginalized and villified as much as anyone on the left by the rabid righties.