Showing posts with label David Brooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Brooks. Show all posts

Sunday, May 23, 2021

Biden Carries On

Republicans keep trying to restrict the vote, and they paint the Democrats as radicals, but President Biden has made it clear that his agenda is nothing of the sort.  In this interview with David Brooks of the New York Times, he has made it clear that he is not pursuing the progressive agenda that the Squad is pushing for.  Rather, he is pursuing an agenda of mainstream liberal ideas that have been a part of the Democratic Party - especially its blue-collar wing, where Biden cut his teeth in politics - for decades, and he has little patience for urban elitists who overthink everything.

He hasn't changed his priorities over the years - infrastructure spending and women's rights, among other things, are issues he has espoused for years - but he's supersized his plans to ensure their implementation in the face of the threat of a country teetering on the brink of authoritarianism and a decline and fall that could benefit countries like China.  The big takeaway from the Brooks interview is that Biden will be very difficult for the Republicans to portray as a threat to the country.

Especially when everyone knows that they are.  

Saturday, July 24, 2010

A Teachable Moment

I was really ticked off with the PBS NewsHour's regular Friday night political analysis from Mark Shields and David Brooks last night. After spending so much oxygen on Democratic party ennui and other Washington insider stuff, they addressed the Shirley Sherrod controversy - for ten seconds!

This was the biggest story of the week, and quite possibly a turning point for a presidential administration that may have finally learned it has to fight back harder against their conservative enemies in the media. It exposed right-wing newscasting as a fraud. Yet Shields, Brooks and Jim Lehrer reduced it to sound-bite analysis. In those ten seconds, Shields and Brooks agreed that President Obama showed poor loyalty in allowing Sherrod's dismissal, as if he were the only one fooled by the nonstory of her nonracism. Though Fox News was the biggest villain in this defamation of a capable and devoted public servant, the words "fox" and "news" never passed Shields's or Brooks's lips.

The PBS NewsHour brags that it doesn't entertain, it informs. What I found entertaining was how little attention PBS even chose to bother paying to a story that calls an entire cable news channel's being into question. Because PBS isn't driven by ratings as much as Fox News's Roger Ailes is ("Ratings! Ratings!" was an answer he gave to explain his programming on Fox News), I expected more from public television.

But then, maybe I shouldn't have. After all, PBS is beholden to corporate interests who "fund" them and who would just as soon see a thoughtful discussion on race and journalistic integrity not happen.

Coincidentally, journalism icon Daniel Schorr died yesterday at 93.