That's one of Matt Taiibi's nicer descriptions of Brooks, quoted in an otherwise fawning NY Magazine profile of the so-called "reasonable" conservative.
Today's NY Times Brooks column shows exactly why he's not reasonable at all -- in fact almost as nasty and vicious as the rest of his right-wing cohort.
Steve Benen does his usual excellent job of showing how Brooks is completely wrong and disingenuous -- how Brooks' column today is filled with snide anti-intellectualism, ignorance and twisting of data, and of course, the wrong conclusions.
Brooks' column purports to address the issue of stimulus v. deficit and arrogantly intones: "The Demand Siders don't have a good explanation for the past two years."
Benen has a great response:
Sure they do. A housing crash led to a financial crisis, exacerbated by an unregulated Wall Street. Global stimulus efforts helped create a global recovery, which is now threatened by European debt crises and austerity measures that focus on debt reduction instead of growth. The Demand Siders have a perfectly good explanation for the past two years.
Taiibi's full quote sums up Brooks:
Matt Taibbi on True/Slant called Brooks, among other things, a "spineless Beltway geek" on a "pencil-pusher’s eternal quest for macho cred" who "looks like a professional groveler/ass-kisser" and is "the kind of person who even in his spare time would pay a Leona Helmsley look-alike a thousand dollars to take a shit on his back."
I commented on Brooks' viciousness and anti-intellectualism in a diary about Brooks' "review" of Al Gore's Assault on Reason in 2007:
After a Gore quote from the book, the ultra-pompous Mr. Brooks writes one of the most dismissive, snide and false statements to appear recently on any op-ed page:
But, hey, nobody ever died from contact with pomposity, and Al Gore’s "The Assault on Reason" is well worth reading. It reminds us that whatever the effects of our homogenizing mass culture, it is still possible for exceedingly strange individuals to rise to the top.
By paragraph 3, Gore is already not only "pompous" but "exceedingly strange." Brooks goes on to attack, primarily through mischaracterization, what he falsely deems the book's theme. According to this "reasonable conservative," Gore has a "chilly" and "sterile" worldview, which exalts arid "reason" and neglects "social development."
Brooks is the phony wizard in Oz, screaming Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain while he's in plain sight.
Sorry, David. We see you. You're not "reasonable."