David Brooks is still really bad at his job (May 9 edition)

[xchrom]

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/09/david_brooks_is_still_really_bad_at_his_job_may_9_edition/



It has been a decade since I’ve been in Africa, almost a quarter of a century since I lived there. But I did spend two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer working in agriculture in northern Togo and two as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. I learned a great deal during those four years–and even a little about Africa. What I did learn is now out of date, of course. I know that.

One of the most important lessons, and one that I carry over into my journalism classes, is that you learn before you write. I like to quote Bob Dylan to my students: “I’ll know my song well before I start singin.’” When I talk about Africa today, I am careful as to what I say.

Which brings me to David Brooks. Again. This time, he is writing about contemporary Africa–something he clearly knows even less about than I do.

His piece is titled “The Real Africa.” As if.

One of the things that drove me crazy in West Africa was the journalist in an air-conditioned, chauffeured car with a hamper of food, bottled water, and a reservation at the one western-style hotel in the next big city. There was no way that person was going to learn anything at all about the “real” Africa.

[snot]

1. Sorry, xchrom; this is a waste of your time, let alone talents.

[xchrom]

3. !

many would take issue that i have ANY talents.

[Skidmore]

2. I would point out that this particular "elite media" tool

views his fellow citizens from the same bubble and doesn't understand the home territory. Most of us are an alien species to Mr. Brooks.

[BlueCaliDem]

4. In the U.S. of Propaganda, all you need is influential backers willing to pay

your bosses or you (in whatever way, i.e., kickbacks, promises of kickbacks, funding for your business, bonuses, yachts, etc) just as long as you continue to spread said propaganda that, unsurprisingly, always seems to benefit the top 2%.

Brooks is a tool for the mega-millionaires and billionaires, just like Krauthammer, Glennie Beck, and Rush Limpballs.

Why? Well, apparently propaganda still works on the American people. Were that not the case, there wouldn't be a single Republican left in Congress.

The American people are under a constant barrage of well-crafted, well-funded, and well-market-tested propaganda (posing as journalism), day in, day out. It serves the corporate fascists' agenda, that agenda being, to usurp American democracy and the Constitution and replace it with corporate rule and to turn these United States into one gigantic plantation with American workers the new slaves all to benefit the fuckers who have more money than any human could ever spend in ten lifetimes.

[dem in texas]

5. He in incoherent last night

On the NPR Nightly News - Shields and Brooks, he was out of it, didn't make any sense, talking about the Republican run-off elections. I have long though he was a babbling fool.