Jeff Koopersmith

Cross at Brooks
Meet David Brooks, the Neoconservatives' latest high-profile whore
By Jeff Koopersmith

Jan. 27, 2004 -- NEW YORK (apj.us) -- Is anyone getting sick of New York Times editorial wretch David Brooks as yet?

I certainly am.

It's not enough that Jim Lehrer had the impudence to put this treacherous man on the News Hour a few months ago, replacing the last puppet of the Republican National Committee, but through his "Op-Ed" pieces in the New York Times, Brooks now takes the cake in his button-down world of "Gee ain't I fair" posturing as he two-facedly stabs some of the nation's finest politicians -- all Democrats, mind you -- in the back with deficiently reasoned opinion based on flights of the imagination and talking points supplied by the Bush White House's Karl Rove.

I'm not sure what has gotten in the mind of Little Sulzberger and the "editorial" team at the Times, but I'm damned angry that this wannabe intellectual is writing in a newspaper that I used to be proud to pay $400 a year to get delivered on my doorstep.

That will stop.

Brooks is hazardous because he is an imitation of the fair-minded commentator, complete with the nausea-inducing "Brooks" Brothers pinstripes and repp ties. He is about as evenhanded as his lunatic Times colleague and Nixon sycophant William Safire, and his prose and his comments belie his lack of any sense of justice and prove over and over that he nothing more than an over-the-hill cocktail waitress in the seediest of GOP bars.

In one particularly egregious recent hit piece, "My Crossover Vote" (New York Times, January 17, 2004), Brooks told us that the nation needs a

"... serious and responsible Democratic Party to counter the Republicans when they need countering, and beat them when they need beating."

This implies that Brooks think the Republicans do need beating. He is even trying to figure out who to "root for."

Of course, Mr. Brooks does not tell us that the Grand Ol' Party needs beating or countering, does he? Presto! Brooks -- like any good little whore pandering to wrong-wing idiot-Americans everywhere -- first launches into an attack on none other than William Jefferson Clinton, writing:

"By this stage in the 1992 race, Bill Clinton's character flaws were already evident."

He argues that none of year's Democrat fodder has evidenced these flaws "as yet."

He called Dick Gephardt, days before his embarrassing showing in the Iowa Caucuses, a man of integrity -- probably because Rep. Gephardt backed Mr. Bush's personal and tragic war in Iraq. He calls Gephardt "fair minded" too, although he conspicuously omits the fact that the President is neither a man of integrity nor fair-minded -- far from it, in fact. It is clear that Brooks was rooting for Gephardt because he knows the nation regards the long-term congressman as a loser and that Mr. Bush would have walked all over him in the general election.

Brooks then moved on to Senator Joseph Lieberman, positing that "Nobody has faced more hostile crowds."

Huh?

Is this Brooks-speak for latent-American, or his own anti-Semitism? I have no idea what Brooks speaks of -- but the hooting and hollering over Lieberman's hawklike stance on Iraq couldn't be called "facing the most hostile crowds" -- not by a long shot.

He also claimed that Lieberman does not "look presidential," although no person in modern politics looks more like George Washington in my book. He omits to mention that President Bush appears more like Alfred E. Newman or some inane acne-scarred parent-battered teenager than a President of the United States.

Brooks backhand-insults all Democrats while complimenting Senator John Edwards, calling him an anti-cultural elitist and accusing all national Democrats of being just that.

Mr. Brooks omitted mention of the fact that Mr. Bush has no idea what "culture" is -- and as the pampered progeny of an power family, the Bush Boy was raised and educated in the most exclusive neighborhoods and within the most elite educational institutions in the nation (albeit as a D student), a belligerent drunk, and an unrepentent party boy.

He labeled Senator John Kerry "aloof and fuzzy" while omitting to mention that President Bush is arrogant and just plain dim-witted.

True to his marching orders form Karl Rove, Mr. Brooks took after former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark, reminding us that years ago Clark lauded Bush and his "great team" and now berates that team with "loopy" conspiracy theories.

Ah, yes -- yet Mr. Brooks, call-girl pundit that he is, forgot to mention that the Iraq war, the more than 500 dead American boys and girls, tho nearly 9,000 more who have been crippled for life, and the 10,000 wounded on that God-forsaken desert got there from just that -- the loopy conspiracy of Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Condolleeza Rice, David Kay and Dick Cheney.

With contempt for Clark, Brooks asked snottily, "Who is this guy?" He should have asked himself the same question. He forgot to ask, "Who is George W. Bush" but the drunken son of a lavishly overrated sociopath who makes more money off his connections to terrorists in a single year in Saudi Arabia than Brooks could hope to earn in five lifetimes.

Brooks labeled Howard Dean "vague" and "venomous" and underscores that particular lie with his assertion that "political discourse would sink to new lows." Yet he failed to tell us that in the Bush White House there is no discourse -- only the worst kind of lock-them-out politics proved first through Ari Fleischer and now Scott McClellan.

He worried that Democrat proposals concerning substantial domestic policy positions "have grown more ambitious and expensive as the revenue to pay for them has grown scarce." He skipped over the fact that Bush and his cronies have spent us into the grave making war leaving perhaps a $650 billion deficit in his soiled, lying wake.

He praised Lieberman -- a near Bush clone -- for being one of the "last free-trading Democrats," but forgot to mention that Mr. Bush is more than a free-trader -- he's a thug who trades on the backs of working families now jobless in a uncompassionate Bush-designed America.

He lauded John Kerry for his plans for energy independence and national service, but omitted mention that President Bush plans energy dependence based on colonialism and touts national service on unfunded prevaricative projects while stuffing born-again Christian churches with billions that will be squandered on the next domestic and international Crusades.

He liked Edwards' detailed proposals to put jobless Americans back to work, but forgot to point out that Mr. Bush has pushed three million of us nearly to the welfare lines and 18,000 of us to death this year alone because they had no health insurance.

He called Democrats' ideas "little that is daring or dangerous," wrapping General Clark in this mantle -- while leaving out the fact that Mr. Bush's idea of daring and dangerous is to invade countries that his Daddy didn't finish off when he had the almost-righteous chance.

He accused Howard Dean of at once embracing centrism and rejecting it as if President Bush did not evidence the most distressful hypocrisy since Hitler.

He labeled Gephardt a "protectionist" and wrung his hands about foreign workers while writing off the 35% of black American men who cannot find a job because of President Bush's adolescent understanding of Economics 101.

He dismissed President Bush's lies and conspiracies as "angels dancing on the head of an Iraq resolution" while he at once embraced the virtual murder of 10,000 Iraqi civilians based on these lies.

And he did this as a precursor to complimenting (not) some Democrats, writing that Mr. Gephardt (because he voted for the war) "believes in aggressive action to prevent further attacks."

From whom -- Saddam Hussein?

He told us that Mr. Lieberman has thought -- more than any other Democrat candidate -- about so-called Islamic fascism and how to counter it.

How would he know?

In fact, Mr. Dean's foreign policy advisor, Leon Fuerth has thought longer, better, and harder about this -- and is certainly head-and-heels above the clueless Sen. Lieberman in understanding the maliciousness of George W. Bush's attack on a non-Islamic, secular state: Iraq.

He called Clark "the most wedded to multilateral institutions" -- but failed to remind readers that George W. Bush is the architect of destroying multilaterism, our alliances, and the United Nations -- all within a few months.

He accused Senator Edwards of voting for the war, but against the extra $87 billion because of "political pressure." He failed to explain that Mr. Bush went to war from political pressure from what both Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson used to call, nicely, the military-industrial complex -- the Bush Family's co-conspirators.

He all but applauded the Lincolnesque Kerry for being "slightly hawkish," then smacked Kerry down, questioning "his ability" to make a tough decision and then stick to it.

What was this little twitch talking about? To put it bluntly, Brooks was suggesting that being warlike is making a tough decision and following it through -- despite who the decisionmaker kills or why. He further passeed over the fact that George W. Bush seems largely incapable of making a decision and continues to surround himself with his Daddy's minions, who are running him like the dry drunk sot he is.

Last but not least, Mr. Brooks attacked Howard Dean, this time for being dovish, but claming his instinct are hawkish. He all but called Dean a charlatan for "screaming to a crowd" like Kucinich, and talking to a small group like he's Kerry. He ignored the fact that President Bush yells, while slurring half his words to any crowd, while talking softly and generously to elite and avaricial groups as if he's Hitler.

Brooks ended his piece with this:

"My Democratic friends complain, but this is a pretty strong field of candidates."

I doubt that Mr. Brooks has any true Democrat friends.

At most they may show him deference because of his poison pen and his current ability to use it in the world's "newspaper of record" -- or what once was.

Of course, as usual, Mr. Brooks ended his piece pretending that the "country would be fine" if any of these Democrats were elected. Yet he used the entire space of his column telling us why they are, in his mind, rubbish.

You can e-mail journalist impersonator Brooks at dabrooks@nytimes.com.

JEFF KOOPERSMITH is a political consultant, opinion research authority, policy analyst, and self-described "renegade lobbyist."