Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Broder and O'Reilly: comic relief from the right wing

Tom Tomorrow can't resist a Broder rant:

This Modern World » Blog Archive » Mr. McBobo strikes again!

... David Brooks takes wrongness to levels undreamt of by lesser mortals. David Brooks is the Olympic Gold Medal Champion of Being Wrong About Things. David Brooks could write a column about drinking a glass of water, and the end of it, you would sit at your kitchen table puzzled, thinking to yourself, “Has he ever actually had a glass of water?”

(… readers interested in a refresher course in the Unbearable Wrongness of David Brooks are directed to this classic article by Sasha Issenberg.)

Really, who can resist? Broder reminds me of John Dvorak, a computer industry writer who invents stories carefully calibrated to drive page views by easily outraged geeks. Over time we've mostly learned to ignore Dvorak, but Broder is so pompously vacuous we can't leave him entirely alone. (I never actually read his column though -- that would increase his page counts. I get the best stuff in excerpts.)

In the meantime, O'Reilly tells us to fear lesbian street gangs carrying guns, beating up heteros, and pushing Sappho. Of course he's making it all up.

In an era where malevolent incompetents lead the executive branch, Dvorak and O'Reilly are our best sources for accidental humor. Long may they writhe.

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