Ruthless fact-seeking

David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise was published nearly twenty years ago.  It attracted a lot of attention by nominal public intellectuals at the time.  But like much of Brooks' writings, I found it more glib than informative.  Now doubt he is a gifted writer but he projects as a thinker.  A position less tenable based on the evidence.

I did not see this at the time, David Brooks: Boo-Boos in Paradise by Sasha Issenberg.  The subheading is Wayne-bred David Brooks is the public intellectual of the moment. But our writer found out he doesn’t check his facts.

Issenberg goes after the empirical underpinnings of Brooks' arguments, frequently turning them to mush.  It is almost brutal but we have too little of this ruthless fact-seeking these days.