My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.
My family's Slave
this is how my darling Uncle Donald Trump keeps himself free of Guilt to make America great again:"Scolding Constantly" silencing the rif raf as i saw on the splengler forum until everyone begins to Scold constantly so the one pulling the strings is thrown soft balls with the delusion he is always hitting home runs just like his darling dad lyndon larouche hehehehehe
What the heck is "the staid and stifling morality of patriarchal bourgeois neoliberal society"? Reads like "... the worst English that I have ever encountered... It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abyss of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
H.L. Mencken writing about Republican President Warren Harding AKA David Brooks writing about political "morality".
7
Thank you, Mr Brooks.
2
Someone needs to write a book about this.
America is lost if the American people don't stand up for our democracy.
Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.
10
We'll send our grandchildren to college, and they'll ski Aspen, and be introduced to Burberry, and talk of fur coats, and when they arrive home to the modest surroundings they were raised, all grandma can say is, "Welcome back buddy, to the poor side of town."
4
Could we make an educated guess as to which political party and which presidential candidate would be favored by Tommie and Brian Woodward? It's almost too easy.
4
Suggesting one read newspapers is only half the part - the children and adults only listen to, and obey those with money. It's so bad.
Maybe the octopus's dermis is a mirror or works like one? He's a reflection of his world? They all sound interesting - I will hope for more snow to "stop sled and traveler, delaying the courier, shutting out the friends", and then I'll enjoy a much needed "privacy of storm" to finally have the chance to read them! - Emerson, The Snow-Storm!
2
I hope the Atlantic article" How America Lost Its Mind " is on the second Sidney list. A must read for understanding the decline of America.
8
Bravo, David. You keep trying to stay sane in the midst of crazy Republicans all over the place. Can't wait for the second installment.
5
Who knew part of the solution to our polarized political climate was more alligators?
13
"The best way for a society to avoid the dangers of addictive and dangerous drugs is to severely restrict access to them." Nonsense. The best way to avoid dangers is education, regulate a pure supply of the drug for those who chose to use and most importantly provide a society where other choices seem far more appealing than drug use. In 1900 Coca-Cola had cocaine and you could go to any drug store and get laudanum OTC. It wasn't a huge problem. Criminalization surrenders all public health protections to the black market. Drugs have to be concentrated and synthesized to decrease mass and increase value per volume when smuggled and sold illegally. What's killing people? Some amateur who doesn't know what he's doing mixing fentanyl with heroin. In a sane world, just like we have bars, we would have opium dens (smoking clubs, whatever you want to call them), where inspectors would ensure a pure supply of opium (a natural substance consumed for millennia). Smoked opium overdoses are extremely rare. It's not a perfect solution but neither is having bars and liquor stores every block. But at least you know exactly what you are getting in your alcohol. This article "American Carnage" is just more victim blaming. Like blaming someone for being bipolar and making that behavior illegal.
8
David I want to thank you for this article as it directed me to stories I never would have read. The gator story both touched me and made me angry. Angry at what 'social' media has wrought. So much cruelty with people feeling they can weigh in on just about anything without consideration or compassion. Just look at 'our' president and his angry, insulting tweets. How they demean him and us who read them. Sad as he might say. You just don't call people losers day in and day out and insult them it other ways. Donald it is not clever or intelligent. When it comes to social media I refuse to participate just as Tommie's brother does not. By doing so it saved him from a much greater grief.
1
Read the essay. It is an interesting essay about Tommie Woodward. The essay deserves an award not only because it is interesting but because it is fair and does not condemn or judge a life.
4
Hey commenters, relax! Just be glad there are still people who want to encourage good journalism and the practice of reading about the world around us.
7
I too am on the opposite end of David Brook’s political preference, but I love his writing. The Sidney Awards are my favorite.
2
The only essay on that list that will survive the ages will be that of Farrow.
Ironic, isn't it, that it was Farrow's father that set the scene for his well-researched, detailed expose of predatory behavior hiding in somewhat plain sight.
Congratulation to Ronan Farrow for doing something that few have tried an none have accomplished in looking at the sordid world of power and sexual exploitation.
At least there is some acknowledgement of the disgrace and moral degradation present in our society. Unfortunately, it is only at an intellectual level, at a Sidney Awards level. They say, a pen is mightier than the sword. Tell that to an inner city 'child' who cannot get to a school because of gangs on side and the Police on the other. And even if he survives against all odds, to make it school, the school offers him nothing. The pen is mightier than the sword? Only in Mayan times!
Given your predilections for writing the easy essays with straw men you knock down to prove a point I'm not sure I care about your opinions on what's worth reading. Perhaps if you had written more thoughtful, less cliched essays that showed evidence of real thought behind them I would take your recommendations seriously. I have one for you however: reread Jane Mayer's book "Dark Money". It might give you a better insight into how your favorite party and friends have worked to bring America to where it is now: a country on the way to the status of banana republic courtesy of people like you who should have known better.
21
Yo! Way to talk, hen3ry - and he can borrow my copy!
2
Regarding the bizarre death of Tommy Woodward I think he should be given the Darwin Award, posthumously, of course, as by definition all of these honors are.
26
A suggestion Mr. Brooks is to award a Sydney to the commenters of the NYT.
Therein lies a stream of intelligence and wisdom that raises one's hope that all is not lost in todays slowly creeping pall cultural and political suicide.
Not positive if you have any interest in reading the comments to your punditry, but if you did you'd find much to digest.
36
I so agree. Reading NYT comments is a daily guilty pleasure. Pithy, witty writing - sometimes I laugh out loud. I see angles I hadn't thought of, making me grateful for the chance to learn by seeing through another's eyes. Some provide links to worthy reads. It gives me hope that there are so many people who still think deeply about important issues. Bless you all!
9
It seems that the gentleman portrayed in "Eff that Gator" is deserving of a Darwin Award, the one in which people's actions have done the most to improve the gene pool, usually by the self-destruction of some idiot.
24
Don't bring me no bad news when there is one piece of very good American news.
All of the white people in America who voted for Donald John Trump aka 58% of American white voters are part of an aging and shrinking majority with a below replacement level birthrate and a shortened life expectancy due to alcoholism, drug addiction, depression and suicide that explains all of these white while European in America stories. And the Trump base of 63 million Americans who voted for Trump will suffer the most from his greedy prideful treasonous quest for money aided and abetted by his puppet ventriloquist master Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Is any of this good news for the heirs of enslaved African property in America and the heirs of separate and unequal while African in America?
"I am an invisible man." from the unnamed protagonist in "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
5
I will go ahead and make a bold prediction that you will not leave out Ta-Nahesi Coates’ brilliant “first white president” in the second round.
"Soul of An Octopus" by Sy Montgomery is a great read!
5
While I am on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Mr. Brooks, I can read and enjoy his articles. What I most admire is that he ventures into the intellectual writers' arena which provides me a constant admiration and education of the areas he pokes into.
What I would like to know is: "how in the world do you find the time to read all these books?"
3
The New Criterion has paywalled the the essay you recommend and the outlet’s purchase page provides self-contradicting account-creation instructions that render the piece inaccessible to your readers - or at least to this one. Please advise. Thanks.
1
Um ... buy a copy of the print version?
1
Your picks for Part 1 of the Sidney Awards seem to have a common theme, the genuine lack of "exceptionalism" in American life, a contrived narrative generously served up to the public as nationalistic pablum by our shallow, opportunistic politicians. MAGA, indeed.
5
It is my New Year's Wish that every American pay great heed and try to emulate the Octopus that "persistently shot jets of water at the nearby aquarium light bulbs, repeatedly short-circuiting the electricity supply until it was finally released into the wild."
I think this is a perfect metaphor for these times.
Resist Much.
Down With Authority!
Power To The People.
Resist. Insist. Persist.
50 years ago I had a boyfriend and I yelled at him: 'What are you going to do when they unplug your electric guitar?!?"
And he said (without missing a beat), "Play acoustic."
Yes. I like that Octopus.
Someone should teach him how to pull plugs on computers.
11
"Degoutant, tout a fait degoutant!" To celebrate an essay the subject of which is someone who kills cats and eats them is disgusting, completely disgusting. It also incentivizes the sickos to go out and do the same thing, and there are plenty of those around.Does the author have a cat?I can see the author's twisted reasoning here: Brooks wants to show he's down with the folk, that despite his position as an instructor--adjunct or "titulaire?"he remains an iconoclast. Not the first time Brooks has been caught being superficial. He wrote an inane essay once comparing Abbie Hoffman to Donald Trump. Mr. Brooks was not even a teenager when Hoffman was first active in left wing politics! He can neither understand the man nor the times in which he lived. Brooks also wrote a glowing review of Sen, Flake's ghosted autobiography, "Conscience of a Conservative,"but overlooked the fact that as a parent Flake was a failure, since his daughter allowed 21 dogs to die in a Phoenix kennel, and was indicted on 21 felony counts, one for each of the poor creatures who suffocated to death because of Flake's daughter's criminal negligence!How can anyone trust your judgement Mr. Brooks?
5
Is Tommie Woodward up for a Darwin Award? He has taken himself out of the "gene pool"!
9
Gotta wonder how many cat ladies are going to comment on this.
13
Cool!!!!
Who was Sidney?
5
with all due respect, I th I k we need to grow up about expletives.
11
nice job brooksie!!
5
Don't you mean the Darwin Awards?
5
You are my favorite semiweekly guilty read, Mr. Brooks. I do enjoy the invariably well-crafted prose and wonder how you unceasingly arrive at the wrong conclusions. Looking forward to another year filled with sparkling opinion pieces that just make me shake my head. Thank you, sir.
121
Did you shake your head when he lambasted gutless Republicans for allowing white grievance identitarian politics to take over his former party? Did you shake your head when he regularly deplores Trump and says the GOP has lost its way comprehensively? Let's be frank. He's not from the Hard left so he's always or almost always wrong with the commentariat here, no matter what he stands for.
10
Cassandra,
Hilarious.
Two sentences that capture the essence of the weekly 'Brooks Experience'.
Well done.
7
I shake my head when he would have us believe he is one of the reasons we have Trump and the heinous congress.
2
I have watched you through your writings try to enlighten humanity and yourself. I thank you, and I think your a wonderful writer, please continue to enlightened me. Thank you, I have nose wipes America........
One is usually humiliated, before you becoming humble.
6
America's gift is in producing the Tommies and Brians of the world. Only Russia could produce a tortured soul like Solzhenitsyn's. Nevertheless, I believe stories like these are meant to help us be more sensitive to a larger variety of people and their lives and conditions without reflexive judgment.
6
Wow, that's shallow. America also produced the Sidney for whom the awards are named. Tommies and Brians are just a toxic by-product.
1
In this new era where journalism has been exposed by President Trump as mostly an untrustworthy, vile corrupt enterprise, isn’t it rich that the so called profession has found another meaningless award to pat itself on its back? For example, The bias of this paper is palpable both in its opinion pages, it’s “ news” content and even in its pictures. How many times did The NY Times ever publish a picture of the back of Obama’s head? Not once. The back of President Trumps Head is now regular fare for this paper . Shame on it and the once great 4th estate.
2
Then stop reading it, Steve.
16
A person emerging from a 14 month coma to re-initiate reading with Brooks' first batch of Sidney Awards would heave a great sigh of relief at the apparently benign outcome of the 2017 election after so troubling a campaign. Apparently, Hillary Clinton won and did so on enough of a Democratic Wave for 2016 fears of an intensely invective GOP and Trumpista response to any Clinton victory that the political waters of 2017 had been calm. Supposedly Clinton's SCOTUS appointments had not proved too controversial, OBAMACARE premium spikes had proven ephemeral (although no dramatic second phase of MEDICAID expansions has hit the from pages), the sage and steady hand of the measured Neoconservatism of HRC had sufficed to avert the upsurge of nuclear war fears haunting East Asian scholars. How happy to learn one lives in uninteresting times!
Or,perhaps, I had been in a nightmarish coma lo the fourteen or so months preceding this morning's subtly conveyed but substantively bountiful good news from Mr. Brooks.
9
Mr. Brooks has made his views about the state of our politics abundantly clear over 2017, including declaring himself a man without a party. His utter horror and rejection of Trump and the camp followers of identitarian politics has been the subject of several pieces. Should we stop reading and enjoying the bounty of thoughtful writers and subjects simply because a certain person is now in power? Besides did someone force you to read Mr. Brooks? The comprehensiveness of the NYT gives you plenty of writers and subjects concerning U.S. politics and policies to consider.
10
I seem to recall the definition of the Sidney Awards addresses your concerns. It should have appeared in the first paragraph.
Thanks , but , no thanks !
2
The first essays about U.S. life were depressing. None of them explains how the nation, once the world's most admired, descended to these opioid-plagued, misogynistic and socially unjust depths.
The U.S. is no longer an example to be followed but to be avoided. It has been left behind, a once imposing bald eagle without feathers, occasionally squeaking fearsomely to summon past glories. And during the process of imploding it is destroying the entire planet, destroying the climate through ignorance, breeding terrorism in search of short-term commercial gain, encouraging the law of the jungle through the unilateral application of its own laws across the globe, bursting debts and national budgets to mask decades of fiscal profligacy, threatening with protectionist tariffs the very same nations to whom it owes almost $ 20 trillion, printing increasingly worthless money and partying like it's 1999.
No, there is no Schadenfreude on my part, just sadness and a huge sense of impotence as the waters rise around us.
158
Very cogent and insightful criticism and well taken. I wonder, sir, if you often point your helpful insights to your own government's misdirections. Or do you stop and think about the death fatwa that would be sure to follow?
8
That's a strange comment coming from Iran. But if criticizing your own country is too dangerous then choosing the US is a safe choice.
4
Perhaps the standards of Iran and other Arab nations where women are considered half the worth of men, denied dozens of university degrees,have no civil rights for divorce, custody, travel, minors can be executed as well as homosexuals. Then there’s punishments such as flogging, stoning, amputation and egregious laws about apostasy and blasphemy that have no place anywhere in the 21st century.
2
In this hyper-charged political climate, I cannot prevent myself from seeing Trump depicted in every story you note. Is the Gator Trump draining the swamp by consuming Tommie, or is it Tommie Trump who is consumed by the Gator, aka we the people, who finally get fed up dealing with ignoramuses like the Tommie Trumps of the world?
It goes without saying "American Carnage" will stand as a testament to a time when the worse president in history had the gall to insert said term into his Inaugural speech. Ask not what American Carnage can do for you, ask what you can do for American Carnage. That would be to inhabit the White House, and turning it in to your very own Plantation, with you and family as Slave Masters, rewarding the Rich who need no rewarding. Whenever the Rich do wrong, it is the people, working for Slave Wages, who are punished.
The Harvey Weinstein story parallels to Trump need no embellishment. Neither does the of Weinstein/Trump/Octopus analogy, an ornery short-term memory animal that cannot be trained to perform a simple task without breaking the contraption.
And then we have Solzhenitsyn, the antithesis of Trump, someone who learns nothing because he reads nothing, and thus has nothing to contribute to society except ignorance, much like brothers Tommie and Brian Woodward. Now, Mr. Brooks, have I managed to convey to you how this past year I've become obsessed with Trump, an omnipresent black cloud which hangs over this nation?
DD
Manhattan
39
I hope the gator wasn't injured.
25
The gator died of an opiate overdose.
1
Would like to see someone write an "essay" on a meeting between Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn & Henri Charriere. What amazing revelations of the human spirit could come from that?
1
Journalism is the key to civilization. Carefully written, factually accurate, attentively edited journalism gives us the information we need to stay free, form opinions, make decisions, understand what is going on around us.
I was impressed that the writing being celebrated came not only from sources we expect, such as the Atlantic and the New Yorker, but also from Buzzfeed, which i had written off as a valueless repackager of news, and First Things, a conservative journal devoted to religion and religious social philosophy, Neither is the first place I'd go looking for top notch writing. I am comforted that it exists there.
Ideas that are honest - which are based on fact and empirical truth - can survive the bias of politics or religion or any other filter, Editors and honest writers know that. It is dishonest information - based on half truth, innuendo, logical fallacy, skewed and intentionally misinterpreted statistics, emotional manipulation - that should never get past an editor to publication. I am grateful to see examples of the first, in a year sunk by "news" in the latter category.
69
When one believes that only journals that match your politics can have first class writing then one is limited in the viewpoints you see exposed.
I invite you to sample a few contributions to the Federalist. Good writing is alive and well there whether you like the subjects or not. I read it and the NYT every morning to try to determine where the middle ground might be.
2
But there is one problem --- how to get it into the hands of those who need it? Many can't afford bathroom tissue and if they had a newspaper, they'd burn it to stay warm. (Fish wrap is out of the question, they can't afford the fish!) They need to get kids in the schools reading newspapers. My parents encouraged the practice - my father every night sat down with my mentally handicapped sister and read through the headlines, and the weather. She never could read, but she learned to "sight" "cloudy", "sunny" and such. Both parents encouraged cartoons and "Dear Abby" for the younger --- and eventually, one can't live without them. (Lord, only knows how, I have tried!)
Thank you David.
Just read Alex Tizon’s piece. Very powerful. Looking forward to reading the others as well.
1
As a society coarsens, perhaps too busy with basic survival and too despairing to expect a better life, it is encouraging to know that the value placed on good writing and profound thought is still strong.
3
An end of year ritual, i read each of the recommended articles highlighted in these 2 pieces...and, forward to my boys. Well done—-worth my subscription in and of itself!
3
A good essay to read for the new year 2018? One comparing America to an octopus, or a squid, or a Portuguese man 'o war of the seas.
America with its advanced technology--internet of course--coupled with its morally and intellectually questionable population, not to mention byzantine, secret, corporate and government bureaucracy, is of such alien and ambiguous form that not only does it resemble the certain sea creatures mentioned it places the average citizen in a strange, ambiguous state of mind, not being certain whether events are natural, human, earth developments or if an extraterrestrial species is insidiously invading, waging the most subtle warfare of all on planet earth.
Americans are almost in a dementia inducing environment, flashing light after light, bombardment by this noise or that, always on their feet working, struggling to survive. We live in a vast tentacled system where nothing seems as connected and coordinated to anything else as it should, we receive the most ridiculous and often conflicting information from high and low, and over everything there is secrecy, manipulation, managed view of reality.
Every sector of society operates along Hollywood lines, producing film of its interests, whether business advertising or political message, people not actual but acting, and it's increasingly difficult to tell whether a person is actual these days.
A vast, overpopulated, tentacled, environmentally destructive, hideous spread of alien or human.
4
The octopus remains nature's most unexplored mind. Were we to actually travel outside our little corner of this spiral arm, I have to wonder if some planets' most dominant species in the waters will be the octopus.
Some people remind me of this fascinating creature. Progressives get in their little tribe and just FEEL more than any other activity - feeling for the identity group of the day, feeling rage and hatred toward the United States and the half that chose President Trump, and even people who can't handle college without hiding parts of each day in a little bubble of political correctness as a collective.
The Gator book is a real prize if the writer does avoid the soul-killing superiority endemic to the oh-so-educated class. There was a similar prize recently, ''Hillbilly Elegy.''
3
I haven't read the article on one brother who moronically let himself get eaten by an alligator and the other brother who cruelly ate a cat. I am, however, looking forward to reading about the octopus who is more advanced on the evolutionary scale than both brothers combined.
16
Eating the cat wasn't cruel. Killing it was possibly.
3
Why the verbal contortions over a word? If something contains an obscenity in a title, give it the honor of quoting it precisely. Pretending to protect readers' eyes and ears with "not suitable for a family newspaper" doesn't make something any less profane or shocking...it just brings more attention. We're all adults here, even the children who read the Times. We can handle "bad words" without resorting to the fainting coach.
10
Yes we can tolerate bad words. Isn't the internet the apotheosis of shallow minds having need to use vulgarity in place of words they never learned in the first place? Some of us are glad the NYT and Mr. Brooks still has standards. It is called civilization.
3
It's not civilization to pretend these words don't exist or to blank out the official title of the work that Brooks finds otherwise worthy. I'm not talking about gratuitous obscenity or vulgarity for vulgarity's sake. The author of the essay chose that word for a reason. No one's making it up. Let's honor the author and his work but quoting him directly.
Any man who eats cats can’t be all bad. Cats are the great destroyers of bird species. I prefer the birds.
3
Humans are the great destroyers of animal species. I prefer the animals.
Motivation counts. Cats kill birds for a different reason than ignoramuses kill cats.
2
Alligator hunting, professional wrestling, stock car racing, golf, hunting deer from trees and attending Trump political rallies. Think of them as important signs of America's future as the country continues its disastrous slide to the bottom of world culture. Trump wins again. Everyone with common sense loses.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/22/nyregion/for-hunters-in-the-woods-a-q...
14
Tell us about your days drinking gourmet coffee, attending the ballet, and pasting Bernie stickers on your car. I'll deter mine who has more fun.
Nice avatar anyway.
3
David,
I am all in on the octopus piece. I have been looking for a new source of “intelligent” life. Changing colors is just icing on the cake.
3
Octopuses taste good too. Glad to know I'm eating a highly intelligent scientific oddity. The essay was fascinating. Thanks for sharing. I generally prefer my octopus in ceviche but there are many possibilities out there. I highly recommend the dish. Any local fish monger should be able to set you up. Finding the truly fresh stuff is a little more difficult. I wouldn't recommend catching your own.
A rainbow of Solzhenitsyn quotes deserves full display; perhaps some soul will rub off on Lord Brooks, who always seems helplessly conflicted between his ivory tower crush on 'conservatism' and the grifting ignorance, greed and amorality that light up his wretched Republican Party in cheap Trumpian neon casino lights
“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward
“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”
― Solzhenitsyn
“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century.”
― Solzhenitsyn
“One drop of truth can outweigh an ocean of lies”
― Solzhenitsyn
“It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, But its only good within very narrow limits. If private enterprise isn't held in an iron grip it gives birth to people who are no better than beasts, those stock-exchange people with greedy appetites beyond restraint.”
― Solzhenitsyn
Wake up, Brooks.
204
Here, you missed one.
“If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
33
wow, that's oily man, oily.
6
"If you ain't got nothin, you got nothing to lose". A favorite from an old hippie.
But, I'll take that mercedes baenz if you don't mind. I have always admired Solzhenitsyn. Consumerism was one of his biggest complaints about the western culture. A very basic life is an old idea, agrarian focused but appealing if the reality show culture disturbs you.
I am hoping, as we go forward, that we can refocus on the basics of human survival so that we can go on, especially since I have grandchildren that I worry about now. Being one of Trump's serf's does not appeal to me, or for the future of the US.
1
Well, Mr. Brooks, thanks for the Gator article, and your accompanying commentary about how patronizing certain people are of people who jump into unknown waters where there is rumored to be a large gator, and then gets eaten by said gator.
As far as the brother is concerned, the one who eats cats, why do you think they know how to take care of things on their own?
We have eccentric people in LA as well, but doing something stupid when warned you should be cautious, and eating cats, is just stupid and disturbing.
I'm tired of trying to analyze stupid people like these people, or holding them up as some sort of virtuous, exceptional people.
I would like to return to a time in America where intelligence, critical thinking, education and facts were held up as virtues once again.
People work hard all over this country. People raise families all over this country. Some states have better economies, healthcare, divorce rates than others. They tend to be blue states.
Why don't you stop writing patronizingly about the people in those blue states, Mr. Brooks?
231
'I would like to return to a time in America where intelligence, critical thinking, education and facts were held up as virtues once again.' It seems reasonable to assume that at one time or another those were so held. However, they do not make the list of the seven on the Catholic Church's list, those are: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. They are thought to mitigate tendencies such as lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. You have made a good point about unattractive patronizing. Mr. Brooks has perhaps only advanced a half step past pretending they are not part of us.
24
there is such a thing as gallows humor.
3
Thanks for all the interesting recommendations! They all sound fascinating (I’ve only heard of a couple, but haven’t read any), you’ve given me the nudge to go seek them out.
6
"[Expletive] That Gator" has strange relevance to our current situation. It sounds like a metaphor for what a large minority of the electorate said as they pulled the lever for the current president. Who cares if he's a clueless narcissist? So what if he ain't smart? Why wouldn't a filthy-rich lying mogul support the little guy? Let's just jump into that swamp and see what happens.
As if providence had a hand in picking Mr. Brook's selections, "The Sucker, the Sucker!" describes at least two of those same voters. I'd bet it describes several million more.
The Harvey Weinstein essay is also relevant, since the president had numerous women claim that he did a lot more than, say, Al Franken did, and Franken was ejected without due process. Are we not taking the president's accusers seriously? Where's Kirsten Gillibrand when she might actually do some good?
By the way, cat's not bad. It tastes a bit like owl. But at this point, I'll bet a lot of voters are eating crow.
257
harry kane scored another goal!!
1
I so enjoy your end-of-year links to some great reading and insight into what is happening/has happened in America. Thank you.
21
That gator ate the wrong brother: any person who would kill and eat a cat poses a threat to other human beings. I am now curious to read the article. I want see whether it attempts to pass off such despicable behavior as an anthropological curiosity, or a “lifestyle decision” the rest of us should try to understand. I don’t think so.
92
The political Right sees the wholesale abortion industry in the exact same way, except the people on the Left screeching so hard for it are risking destroying the best of their own species. But, those are individuals, a bad word to our collectivists.
2
Got judgement?
3
Ever been hungry? Really hungry? Only the ridiculously rich can afford pets, and vegetarianism.
1
Mr. Brooks, just as I was about to call it a night, having trimmed 'Dear Octopus' by Dottie Smith from my wish list, checked the cat in for the night, eaten some spinach leaves, with a renewal of hope to waste no food when America is unwittingly losing $140 Billion a year in tossing spoiled edibles, I decided to read your 2017 Sidney Awards, Part I.
Earlier having read some fine articles about (the confusion of) Christianity in The NYT, felt redressed after listening to the Queen's Christmas Speech, l was wondering if you would address us in The New Year on the subject of Friendship. And, you have, by referring us to 'Solzhenitsyn's Cathedrals'.
By the bye, I found this sentence in your first paragraph quite a mouthful 'the staid and stifling morality of patriarchal bourgeois neoliberal society'. To the honest, I do not understand what this means, but it is probably not important.
Later, 'Gator!
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Ok, so I was wrong....Tommie and Brian are from Texas.
It is still Flori-duh!
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David. Thank you. We eagerly look forward to your citations and reviews, all year long. It's here, the Sidney awards, we're delighted, thank you. Thinking back about some of the others we've loved, there's so many; they last in discussion for months, here too, years later. Happy Hanukkah to you and yours. Ps., our favorite Hanukkah song this year was: How do you spell Hanukkah by the Levies; ask Alexa to play it.
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So. You choose not to go with the essay that changes my life and, more importantly, the world my granddaughter will live it. Because, you know, the real story is always about a man. Pity.
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Gator story is terrific, great slice of life.
Some of the links have a paywall
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David Brooks! Time to give yourself a Sidney -- to celebrate 12 months of "who me?" commentary on the crumbling Republican establishment that produced Trump/McConnell.
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And you don’t think the late Tommie, the gator breakfast, and twin Brian who barbecues kitties, deserve to be patronized?
They don’t call it Flori-duh by accident!
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Nobody deserves to be patronized.
Then let's just dislike their pride in their repulsive actions openly and honestly.
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We live in an age of "Grab 'em by the [censored]", so the gator article fits neatly.
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Well, as regards the Tommie Woodward tragedy, there’s something to be said about the notion that nature provides its own ways of improving the gene-pool. Golianopoulos’s essay SHOULD be read patronizingly as an anthropological treatise. And I’m not sure Tommie’s end should be argued as illumination of a slice of the country where people “know how to take care of things on their own”. Reads more like a slice of America where gators know how to manage things on their own.
If the allure of opioids is so great and so unanswerable by traditional means, then we might need to carve out a chunk of Utah, perhaps a part of the former national monument acreage recently released to more productive use, where we can tank them all to dry out. Those who live through the process are given second chances, those who don’t … don’t. The real question isn’t whether “American Carnage” deserves a Sidney because it describes the challenge, but whether it offers any solutions.
As for “My Family Slave”, toss the father in with those drying out in Utah, and seriously consider tossing Lola in with him. If this essay depicts true events, then it certainly deserves a Sidney.
The New Yorker piece on Harvey Weinstein simply adds to the compulsion for a criminal trial. Have we ever sentenced a miscreant to 1,000 years on a chain-gang? I didn’t read that New Yorker piece, because 1) I didn’t need to, and 2) it was likely to be just too depressing as we were heading into the holidays.
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I have nothing to offer about the suitability for a Sidney of anything having to do with the personalities of octopuses.
I’d give a Sidney to anything serious on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. His mind, to me, was always a LOT more intimidating than that of Karl Marx.
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I would vote that we turn Montana into our own equivalent of 19th century Australia. Maybe we get lucky like the British and, in 100 years, these people can actually develop a functioning culture that survives on their own.
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I prefer a remote island with a pleasant climate. Fewer problems with security and energy costs. Don't some of the US ocean territories include remote uninhabited islands?
I've learned to look forward to this every year. For good reason.
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