The New York Times‘ David Brooks says these athletes shouldn’t be kneeling—they should be singing in unison. (photo: Yong Kim / Philadelphia Inquirer/AP)
David Brooks is a Very Concerned Man. The majority of his New York Times columns are him feigning agreement with the aims of the subject in question, but he just has Some Concerns he’d like to go over. These Concerns are almost always aimed at silencing the left and/or people of color who are too “radical” for his taste. His latest attempt to do so is one of the more vulgar examples of this habit, and one of the more incompetently executed.
In “The Uses of Patriotism” (New York Times, 9/16/16), Brooks begins, appropriately, with rank condescension:
This column is directed at all the high school football players around the country who are pulling a Kaepernick — kneeling during their pregame national anthems to protest systemic racism. I’m going to try to persuade you that what you’re doing is extremely counterproductive.
Listen up, black kids, David Brooks is here to tell you why your choice of political activism is “counterproductive.” What’s strange is that Brooks never really bothers to explain why, exactly. What follows instead is a discursive white supremacist McHistory lesson about an America defined by harsh self-criticism and noble ideals:
By 1776, this fusion of radical hope and radical self-criticism had become the country’s civic religion. This civic religion was based on a moral premise — that all men are created equal — and pointed toward a vision of a promised land — a place where your family or country of origin would have no bearing on your opportunities.
Lofty rhetoric aside, one’s “country of origin and family” had tremendous bearing on one’s opportunities—or even one’s right to be recognized as a human being—a legacy which still affects us today. Which is, as Brooks may know, the entire point of the protests. The American experience means different things to different populations, and this was and remains the essence of the protest—to draw attention to these diverging narratives and the inequalities they reflect. But this is never really addressed; instead, he dismisses this line of criticism, and moves on to this patently absurd claim:
Recently, the civic religion has been under assault. Many schools no longer teach American history….
Brooks offers no link or citation for this claim, and seems to be conflating the recent right-wing outrage at colleges not requiring US History with the high school students the piece is nominally aimed at. No matter, Brooks must lament the fraying of the American fabric and will fudge the facts to fit his tale of moral panic.
Brooks’ main gripe is that we’ve become too unpatriotic, noting that the percentage of Americans who feel “extremely proud” of their country has fallen since 2003—around the time the US was invading Iraq. He pins this (as he always does) on some ineffable cultural failure rather than material reality.
The revelation that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were a lie, two never-ending wars, an economy that crashed and bailed out the richest while leaving the poor to fend for themselves, Katrina, the rise of the incarceration state, police shootings: These aren’t what caused a dip in national pride. No, it must be a moral failing on the part of ungrateful Americans, namely, in this case, uppity blacks who have decided of late to not sit idly by while they’re gunned down with impunity.
Brooks, with a straight face, puts more blame on Ta-Nehisi Coates for a lack of black patriotism than the reality of rising inequality and pervasive racism. One could easily call it a cynical attempt at gaslighting, if one thought for a second the actual audience were the young African-Americans the piece is ostensibly for, and not the centrist elites whose white guilt Brooks ameliorates for a living.
The rest of the piece is difficult to critique, because nothing of substance is really offered. It’s a word salad of patriotic, centrist bromides in search of a point it can’t seem to find:
I hear you when you say you are unhappy with the way things are going in America. But the answer to what’s wrong in America is America — the aspirations passed down generation after generation and sung in unison week by week.
We have a crisis of solidarity. That makes it hard to solve every other problem we have. When you stand and sing the national anthem, you are building a little solidarity, and you’re singing a radical song about a radical place.
There’s no recognition of the fact that that “radical song” celebrates the killing of freed slaves who fought against a US government that had kept them in bondage. Or, indeed, that for professional football players, the ritual of standing for the national anthem has not been “passed down generation after generation,” but was instituted in 2009 around the same time that the NFL was getting a large increase in Defense Department sponsorship.
Ultimately, what Brooks is saying, or attempting to say, is that protesters need to affirmatively demonstrate their loyalty: “If these common rituals are insulted, other people won’t be motivated to right your injustices because they’ll be less likely to feel that you are part of their story.” The implication being that if you don’t adhere to “common rituals,” your continued oppression is justified.
Brooks engages in that favorite white concern troll pastime: evoking Martin Luther King, who led the singing of the national anthem at the March on Washington in 1963.
The fact that MLK was negotiating an entirely different political dynamic, and was being harassed and monitored by the same US government Brooks venerates, is never really addressed: Like all “but MLK did this” criticism, it’s not offered in good faith, but to muddy the waters and reduce the history of black struggle to a sanitized version of one man. Different causes and different times call for different tactics, but in the history of black activism, one can safely say that they never once called for David Brooks’ opinion.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com, or write to public editor Liz Spayd at public@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTimes or @SpaydL). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
You extreme Leftists have taken up someone’s call of a few years ago to pile one and then pile on again and again on David Brooks. Of all the Rightwing entities to attack or worry about Brooks is possibly the most reasonable and moderate. I watch him and Mark Shields regularly on PBS’s NewsHour and no, he is not what I would call LIberal, but he is the kind of Conservative the world can live with …
and you monkeys, or should I say lemmings constantly waste your time attack him when just about anything else to bring attention to the problem of military Conservatives might actually be useful.
I have to expess that I completely detest and disavow everyone from the Left that wastes their time to attack and worry about David Brooks … it is absurd.
It is more than absurd, and I think it is part of the nouveau Right-Wing control over the media where they are able to control both sides of the political discussion so their stategy with the Left and FAIR is to make them look detestanle and unacceptable associating them with rudenss, lewdness ( such as the Bernie Sanders fart-in) and other negative associations to push the general pubic towards the right.
In that vein I am calling out to FAIR, and other supposed Leftist media outlets to prove they are actually Left of center and start vetting and editing their content so that the Left is not a laughinstock.
Pointing out overt racism is “extreme leftist”. Your misplaced outrage is showing your true colors.
You think you can know what you call my true colors, but your true BS is that you use anyone who disagrees with you and question their motives … just like the House on UnAmerican Activities Investigation. The truth is your kind of rhetoric is fascist, and it is you who are in question because you do not stick to the point and you go off to attack me personally on stuff you know nothing about.
Sorry … I missed your trollish name … should not have bothered to respond to you.
Wow, BruceK disavows the left for critiquing David Brooks. How will we ever survive?
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, Bruce. Back to the right with the conservatives you obviously “can live with.”
In closing, are there any other sacred cows we aren’t allowed to attack, Brucey?
Other than self-aggrandizement, what truly was your fucking point? The left isn’t a joke…you are.
thank you for once again displaying what the right wing is about, and it ain’t pretty.
I, for one, think there should be more fart-ins. As we know from Rabelais, flatulence has traditionally been an important tool for justice.
All I can gather from your rant, BruceK, is that you most emphatically do not approve of criticism of David Brooks. So for clarity’s sake please answer a few questions.
Who’s call was it (name him or her) that this website took up a few years ago to “pile on to” David Brooks?
You say “…he [Brooks] is the kind of Conservative the world can live with…”. So tell us then who is NOT the kind of Conservative the world can live with? Who are these “military Conservatives” that FAIR should bring to our attention?
You repeat, ‘Why are they wasting their time criticizing Brooks?’ So I ask you again – Who do you think they should be critiquing? Tell us please, don’t pass up the opportunity. And please dispense with the name calling, i.e., monkeys, lemmings.
You are clearly antagonized by what’s written in this article but you have not supplied the names of the guilty parties that should be critically written about.
Last questions:
Do you think this “noveau right wing control of the media” as you called it, is out to stifle David Brooks? Why?
Do you really think not criticizing Brooks would prove FAIR is more left of center? How?
I agree with you Bruce. Adam Johnsons’ attack on David Brooks is absurd. David Brooks is not the bad guy and has in fact become quite a compassionate and positive commentator over the last 10 of his 30+ years in political journalism. He’s not just a Conservative we can live with, he’s actively seeking common ground among disparate parties to help us better understand each other! His statement “If these common rituals are insulted, other people won’t be motivated to right your injustices because they’ll be less likely to feel that you are part of their story” is some darn good advice. A good journalist will examine the truth in his advice rather than declare him to be ‘justifying continued oppression’.
Seriously?
Brooks is the most dangerous kind of conservative because he comes off as “reasonable and moderate” so unthinking people will take him seriously… just like PBS; a so-called “public” media outlet that is run and funded by anyone *but* the public.
Queasy condescension in the key of B
FAIR disagrees with David Brooks. So do I.
But FAIR claims to stand for “Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.” David Brooks is not, and isn’t presented as, a reporter: he is a columnist, whose charge is to state and argue for his own opinions.
Again, FAIR is rather strongly critical of the New York Times in general. It certainly has the right to be so. I myself am far from satisfied with the New York Times, but am not as negative about it as FAIR; however, FAIR is perfectly well entitled to take a dimmer view of the Times than I do. What does seem to me clearly out of line is to criticize the Times for the views–political, social, ethical, or whatever–of one of its columnists.
(Incidentally, the “fact” that “The Star-Spangled Banner” “celebrates the killing of freed slaves” is hardly a fact: the phrase–in its third stanza–“the hireling and slave” refers to mercenary fighters and those coerced by the Britishl regime to fight for that regime.)
>> however, FAIR is perfectly well entitled to take a dimmer view of the Times than I do.
The problem is that FAIR is working towards something, supposedly, as you said, fairness
and accuracy in reporting, and by attacking the speck in Brooks vision they fail to see and
acknowledge the plank in their eye … to quote a certain philosopher.
When I see something emanating from something that claims to be Leftist that does not
make any sense in terms of priorities, facts, or desired outcome, over and over from the
same organization – any sane person has to question that organization true purpose.
FAIR is an organization, and as such should represent the Left, which it purports to,
but as in the 60’s when the Left was purported represented by the Yippies, and Hippies
and Black Panthers, and we look back to see that much of this was extreme Right
Wing infiltration and propaganda … a sane person much at least consider that is what
is going on here.
Bruce, this isn’t about ideology (left vs right, lib vs con); it’s about fact vs fiction. If FAIR cared about bias they’d be called FBIR. The A stands for Accuracy, as in facts. Rise above the ideological muck you’re stuck in.
Try again:
‘According to the historian Robin Blackburn, the words “the hireling and slave” allude to the fact that the British attackers had many ex-slaves in their ranks, who had been promised liberty and demanded to be placed in the battle line “where they might expect to meet their former masters.”‘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner
It’s also ironic that the un-singable tune was ripped off from an homage to excess and debauchery drunkingly sung by the Anacreontic Society… Apparently at some “sports events” it’s sung by drunken football fans as well…
The more I learn of American colonial tradiion and mythology the more I think it is time to find a new group of Founding Fathers who can restore the ideas of the original country better than they did the first time and jettison the dusty old nonsense from the past and start creating some new and future ideals instead of always looking to the past, despite the past having a lot of guidance to give us. It is time for a new vision that can be measured and actually means something other than just a hopeful fairy tale.
A privileged White man advising black men how behave.
i get way too much David Brooks….lazy and comfortable, hegemonic NYTimes, lets not let any other opinions out ? Like some one that is not a professional talking head., I little bit of differing knowledge…or ?
His mess is so predictable…white bread. score keeping as in pro sports might be good for pundits and the public….3 strikes and your out……David Brooks has been wrong so many time he should quit public life. Along with how many others…make room for some new blood.
I have been reading the comments on this page, and I have to say: Anyone with two brain cells knows the United States government and also many of its citizens are racist. Further, the police, courts, prosecutors, juries all cater to ignoring those of color, and or different than what they view as normal, or correct, are disposable! We have a prison system full of those people!
BREAKING NEWS – FAIR WARNS THAT RECENT TERRORISM MAY SPARK BACKLASH AGAINST BURKINI – STAY TUNED FOR MORE FAIR ALERTS!!
I’ve read all the comments here so far and find many of them to be rambling off-subject diatribes sprinkled with junior high-school dirty words.
David Brooks is a conservative columnist for the New York Times. Since Donald Trump became the Republican candidate for President, Brooks has had little to say about him or about the Republican Party officials and office holders who support him. Instead, Brooks constantly cites trivial sociological theories that, he claims, support current conservative ideology.
Among outrages that include easily repudiated lies, Trump has called for the assassination of his opponent. Clearly, he is not and acceptable candidate for President of the United States, and the positions of Republican office-holders who support him should be discussed by the nation’s conservative pundits.
Many of David Brooks’s recent columns have been absurd, and he should not be writing for the New York Times.
Fuck David Brooks, I can’t even bothered to write to the New York Times over them allowing this waste of ink to drip more toxic against an athlete who is bravely protesting and is inspiring others to protest. But the times allowed hit pieces on Muhammed Ali and John Carlos before. Sorry Brooks not all of us have the social disease of white skin privilege. Great piece by the way Mr.Johnson, love your mythbusting work on both FAIR and AlterNet two great websites.
Brooks is such a tool… of the Establishment. Solidarity in this country seems to be at its lowest point right now since the Civil War. So, clearly, singing the national anthem at every sporting event all year every year has not done a thing for solidarity. It could even be argued it’s had the *opposite* effect (if non sequiturs are your thing).
I’ve never liked Brooks. He writes like he thinks (or hopes) we’re all idiots.