{"id":26846,"date":"2023-09-22T16:36:17","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T20:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=26846"},"modified":"2023-09-22T17:56:31","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T21:56:31","slug":"david-brooks-airport-hamburger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=26846","title":{"rendered":"David Brooks&#8217; airport hamburger"},"content":{"rendered":"<hr>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1510\" height=\"1462\" src=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/hamburger.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-26847\" srcset=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/hamburger.jpeg 1510w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/hamburger-300x290.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/hamburger-768x744.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><br \/>\n<center><em>Yuck.<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p>The whole world is laughing at David Brooks, the conservative columnist for the New York Times who sees himself as a great moral oracle and moral leader. Brooks posted a picture on X (formerly known as Twitter) of the hamburger he had bought at the Newark Airport. His tweet said: &#8220;This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport. This is why Americans think the economy is terrible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wapo.st\/3EOFHPX\">He was instantly busted by people on Twitter<\/a>, who pointed out that the hamburger and fries had cost $18, and that the remaining $55 was the bar tab &#8212; whisky, apparently.<\/p>\n<p>Brooks, like his conservative colleague Ross Douthat, also a conservative columnist at the New York Times, is actually pretty lucid and reasonable much of the time. But it&#8217;s important to keep in mind that the New York Times has some very hard-ass copy editors, and Brooks&#8217; and Douthat&#8217;s columns have to get through those copy editors before they get into print.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it&#8217;s a cheap shot on my part, but I&#8217;m going to take this opportunity to interpret the hamburger tweet as evidence for my argument that all conservative discourse is derp, because there&#8217;s always something not quite right, both morally and cognitively, inside a conservative mind. I&#8217;ve written on that subject <a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=25397\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=24105\">here<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=26239\">here<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Had Brooks had too many glasses of Scotch? Maybe. But that&#8217;s no excuse. A normal mind, even on the fourth whisky, would look at the $78 tab and think, &#8220;Dang. I just spent $17.78 on a hamburger and $55 on Scotch.&#8221; But not Brooks. He&#8217;s a great moral oracle and moral leader, after all, so he moralizes, spins, <em>and lies, without any real reflection<\/em>, all in one short tweet. He trusts his conservative gut. It&#8217;s a given to him that non-conservatives are always the ones who are mistaken. He can&#8217;t even be fair and rational about evaluating what is literally right under his nose. He baits us &#8212; trolls us, even &#8212; with the deception.<\/p>\n<p>Show me a conservative, any conservative, and I&#8217;ll show you someone with some wires crossed inside their head. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/brooks.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1083\" class=\"size-full wp-image-26848\" srcset=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/brooks.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/brooks-300x271.jpg 300w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/brooks-768x693.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><br \/>\n<center><em>Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yuck. The whole world is laughing at David Brooks, the conservative columnist for the New York Times who sees himself as a great moral oracle and moral leader. Brooks posted a picture on X (formerly known as Twitter) of the hamburger he had bought at the Newark Airport. His tweet said: &#8220;This meal just cost &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=26846\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;David Brooks&#8217; airport hamburger&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26846"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26878,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26846\/revisions\/26878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}