That's the only conclusion I can come up with after reading Brooks's hacktacular review in the NY Times (behind the NYTimes Select firewall) of Al Gore's latest book, An Assault on Reason. Actually, that's not true. I've got another theory: the concept of the democratizing discourse that Al Gore endorses must scare the living daylights out of Brooks, since it threatens his platform as a talking head/pundit. And frankly, Brooks should feel threatened, since his batting average on being right is well below the Mendoza line.
Eli at MultiMedium takes a look too:
Wow. Just wow. So much wankery in there, I hardly know where to begin. I'll just note the "Algore is a cold-fish Vulcan weirdo" cheap shots in passing, and start with the three examples that Brooks uses to demonstrate that Algore is incoherent and out of touch. Notice that that they all have a common theme: The key to democratic government is democratic discourse. Gore states this in the abstract in the first passage, then cites the specific examples of the printing press and the internet in the other two. I can certainly see where Brooks might not see the value of discourse of/by/for the people, as opposed to top-down, one-way communications from the corporate and government spheres, but he's not exactly an impartial observer here. When David Brooks tells me that it's a bad idea for the unwashed rabble to have their own voice, I'm going to be a leetle bit skeptical.
