Still a True Gentleman: David Brooks--UPDATE--UPDATE II

Brooks has done it again. He's identified a lamentable tendency in American culture--rampant, heedless, disproportionate, egotistical, megalomaniacal, world-historically-excessive boastfulness over accomplishments of trivial stature--but refrained from any ultimate judgment beyond a shrug:

This isn’t the death of civilization. It’s just the culture in which we live.

Kudos, David. I especially enjoy your polite disinclination to investigate the glaring contradictions exposed by your post--that a countercultural trend toward self-actualization created in one moment was visible in another as the practice of the establishment:

Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine.

Rude people might begin to question how it is that these "things" "end up" as something different than they started as, and speculate that the things themselves lack any inherent power to "end up" without human action, intent, and ideas. Truly rude people might speculate that if a distasteful practice like self-promotion is so thoroughly integrated into the core institution of American society, then perhaps there is something amiss with that society.

Follow David Brooks' example and you will be sure to stay on the right side of politeness.

UPDATE: Brooks is a bottomless well of good manners. Today, he makes reference to the producerist ethos of nineteenth century labor populism and declares it the animating force of the Tea Party movement. This, Brooks assures us, proves the absence of racism in the movement (Not to be uncouth about it, but....):

And it has always had the same morality, which the historian Michael Kazin has called producerism. The idea is that free labor is the essence of Americanism. Hard-working ordinary people, who create wealth in material ways, are the moral backbone of the country. In this free, capitalist nation, people should be held responsible for their own output. Money should not be redistributed to those who do not work, and it should not be sucked off by condescending, manipulative elites.

Truly, this is the work of a black belt in politeness. There is no uncouth mention of the fact that the majority of these "producers" appear to be retirees, dragooned children, or those who, to put it politely, are rather far removed from the creation of wealth. There is also no mention of the possibility that as with other manifestations of right-wing populism, the bluster of the people might be harnessed to the interests of a non-producing and parasitic elite. You see, despite his immense wealth, higher education, and constant appearances on television, David Brooks is a regular guy, the most polite and therefore best thing to be in American society. It would be both rude and irregular to wonder for even a second if large masses of similarly regular folks might be completely wrong.

UPDATE II: The Republican Party, which has nothing to do with the Teabaggers, is wholly owned by Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, who are railroading it to ruin with race-baiting. Since Brooks didn't see Limbaugh or Beck personally mingling with the Teabaggers on the Mall during his jog, it's a dead certainty that these salt of the earth populists are still free of the taint of race-baiting. Whew.