Tangled Web

"Marquee columnist"

"Marquee columnist" was a phrase used by Matt Yglesias in reference to the ongoing Brooks brouhaha, which you may not have heard about: Somebody finally figured out the the New York Times "marquee columnist" David Brooks is getting paid for the Aspen gig, chairing "Weave: The Social Fabric Project", probably in six figures, and BuzzFeed has been exploring the thought that he might have a bit of a conflict of interest there, since he's composed a substantial number of columns praising himself for his involvement in the thing without warning us that he has a financial interest in it.

Which I thought initially looked like a bit of a stretch, because what kind of idiot imagined he wasn't getting paid? But wait, there's more!

Weaver Fever

The other Weavers.

Last March, the public intellectual David F. Brooks was appointed one of the 35 Executive Directors working under the leadership of the president and CEO and five executive vice presidents of the Aspen Institute, a title that is alleged at www.payscale.com to go with an average salary of $158,579 (at least according to Dr. Google's report),

to spearhead a bold new project aimed at bridging the differences that divide Americans and seeking out a compelling common ground. The project will include a series of workshops in diverse communities across the nation in order to identify unifying themes and promising partners. The initiative’s longer-term goal is to draw attention to organizations that are effectively healing social divisions, to see how their efforts can be applied to the national level, and to create a network and set of permanent structures to allow for planning, dialogue, and action.

The project now has a name, "Weave: The Social Fabric Project", an associate director, a program coordinator, and a program manager, and some territory on the Aspen Institute website, including

Brooksy Gets Tingly

Pola Negri in Ernst Lubitsch's The Wildcat (1921).

David Brooks, "Students Learn From People They Love":

A few years ago, when I was teaching at Yale, I made an announcement to my class. I said that I was going to have to cancel office hours that day because I was dealing with some personal issues and a friend was coming up to help me sort through them.

I was no more specific than that, but that evening 10 or 15 students emailed me to say they were thinking of me or praying for me. For the rest of the term the tenor of that seminar was different. We were closer. That one tiny whiff of vulnerability meant that I wasn’t aloof Professor Brooks, I was just another schmo trying to get through life.

That unplanned moment illustrated for me the connection between emotional relationships and learning. We used to have this top-down notion that reason was on a teeter-totter with emotion. If you wanted to be rational and think well, you had to suppress those primitive gremlins, the emotions. Teaching consisted of dispassionately downloading knowledge into students’ brains.

This is apparently from when he was teaching Humility at Yale and his wife threw him out and his girlfriend fled to Houston and it's very sweet, except as you see there's no attempt whatever to demonstrate his point. He doesn't say how this glimpse of the Brooksian humanity helped his students learn more or better of what he was teaching them, or even betray any knowledge of whether they were learning anything at all or display any interest in it. He's only interested in what he himself learned about how likable he is.

My Unpopular Opinion: In favor of Paygo from the left

It looks as if the new House of Representatives is going to adopt what is known as a "Paygo" rule for legislation, short for "pay as you go", which reminds us all of deficit-busting hysteria from 1990 through 1997 and the worse that came after, and is going to cause a lot of howling out here in the peanut gallery, and I've been reading around a little bit about it, and I'm afraid I'm going to ask folks to calm down a little bit—not that congresscritters who have promised constituents to vote against it should go back on their word (if only because I'm sure Speaker-to-be Pelosi knows who she can spare in the vote), though Progressive Caucus chairs Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal will in fact be voting in favor

In good sign for Pelosi/Dem leadership, Congressional Progressive Chairs Reps. Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal will vote for the rules package despite including PAYGO

Makes path to 18 much more difficult for Khanna and AOC

Read @mikedebonis https://t.co/BG8l7d3dkl https://t.co/JZUPgWP3Sd

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) January 2, 2019

—but that persons of progressive views in general need to understand that there are a lot of serious misconceptions going around about what Paygo is and what it isn't: and that it is not a neoliberal conspiracy to privatize Social Security, as I've been learning from a piece from early December by Robert Greenstein for Dean Baker's Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggesting that "Paygo" is a tool that can further progressive goals, especially if you're among those of us who believe the reduction of economic inequality entails taking away wealth from those who have too much, in the very stern terms laid down by Anand Ghiridaradas:

Rough! Rough!

Mini–chicken parms from the GourmandMom.

Shorter David Brooks, "Two Cheers for Capitalism", July 30 2015:

Turns out capitalism isn't working right! But bad as it may be, people getting involved would probably make it worse yet, so I say don't mess with it.

OK, so now we know what snooty-ass luxury hotel Brooks was staying at when he wrote Tuesday's column about how much he prefers the budget motel and the self-serve waffle machine, or if not exactly which hotel, what town it was in, namely Aspen, for the Aspen Action Forum, a select event