Cheap shots: The gray divorcé

Well, that cat is out of that bag, as I learn from our genial comrade Driftglass (h/t Redhand). Our Mr. Brooks's amphibolic divorcery has disambiguated on national TV:

And I don't want to personally, I don't want to legally talk about it, but yes, I am divorced.

I guess that must mean he's been talking about it illegally all along, and that's why we couldn't be sure.

Since Gawker Enterprises (can't be arsed to look up who it was actually and provide a link, but I'm sure I mentioned it a while back, no wait, here it is) was unable to find any evidence, either there must be a divorce equivalent of unlisted phone numbers for elite breakups or else they got a special deal in another country, presumably a special Orthodox get in Israel, which could be the postmodern equivalent of the Reno special of 80 years ago for newspaper columnists of a particularly specious religiosity. I'm guessing further that Mrs. B. and the kids have made aliyah, which is how young Master Brooks joined the IDF and old Mr. Brooks became an "Israeli parent". And the kids never call.

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— Dr. Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 9, 2015

Oh, Dr. Paul, I never donate on the first date.

Steve M, who is getting to be as bad on the subject of Dr. Paul as I am on the subject of Mr. Brooks (eight posts since the candidate announced on Tuesday—"I wish I could quit him!"), was wondering why his title had suddenly become such a big thing, like the head letters—DR—on his fetching myopia-test poster, below. I said in comments:

I think it's especially a sign of continuity with the endless Ron Paul machine, which sometimes referred to its candidate as "Dr." without any name attached. That alongside the fully operational merchandising website suggest the young Dr. is not so much running for president as taking over the family grift business. Of course it's also an elegant way of dismissing his exposed lies about the bachelor's degree he doesn't have.

Young Dr. (as opposed to Old Dr., whose fanbois were my first flamers, three-plus years ago) may in this be emulating Dr. William Kristol, who I noticed branding himself with the Ph.D. in 2013, not long after he followed up on his Sarah Palin discovery with the similarly inspired finding of Paul Ryan, superwonk, as a vice presidential candidate, and started getting blamed for losing the GOP two presidential elections in a row (quite unfairly—but he did make the contests more humiliatingly lopsided than they needed to be) and sought new ways of suggesting that he wasn't stupid.

The Shorter I couldn't come up with yesterday, by the way, should have gone like this:

Shorter David Brooks, "The Revolution lives!", April 9 2015:

Major premise: Ayatollah Khamenei says he might reject the nuclear deal with the P5+1.

Minor premise: Lenin something something something Brezhnev Gorbachev.

Conclusion: We should reject the nuclear deal with Iran.

Out of fear that he might get to do it before we do? This is an example of what Dr. Driftglass has diagnosed as Ganser syndrome.

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— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) April 11, 2015

Gosh, no! I've totally failed to sign up! What could I have been thinking? I wonder what this Huge Announcement could be (what's coming, for goodness' sake?), and how I'll be able to bear the suspense.

One last tidbit from the Brooks confessional:

Brian Lamb

Why do you- what had you written about? You had written that you were against divorce.

David Brooks

No, I don't think I'd written against divorce. I'd certainly written pro marriage, and I do believe in marriage, and mine didn't work out, and I desperately want to get married again to somebody...

Just for the record, in a column of January 31 2012, appropriately entitled, "The Great Divorce", he wrote about the cultural chasm between the wealthy and hardworking on the one hand and the poor and unproductive on the other in terms suggesting he thought divorce was a characteristic of the latter group, along with their unfortunate proclivities to postmodernism:

The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.

Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.

I'm pretty sure that wasn't the only time, either.

As to his desperate desire to get married to somebody, there's a good chance he may not have anybody in particular in mind; he may be like his idol St. Augustine of Hippo:

I was not in love as yet, but I was in love with love; and, from a hidden hunger, I hated myself for not feeling more intensely a sense of hunger. I was looking for something to love, for I was in love with loving, and I hated security and a smooth way, free from snares.

So if anybody knows any ladies with bohemian manners and 1950s values and arduous work ethics, you know what to do. Except I believe he's OK with security, as a rule.