Pray Tell Me, Sir, Whose Dog Are You?

Alexander Pope had this couplet engraved on the collar of a puppy he presented to Frederick, Prince of Wales in the 1730s:

I am his highness’s dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

The implication is, of course, that everyone has a master for whom he must roll over and do tricks.

One of the questions that I almost never heard addressed in my years studying in English departments was how writers must actually get money The assumption seems to have been that the act of producing metaphors was so inherently valuable that they all essentially lived F Scott Fitzgerald style lives. This was in the 1960s and 70s. There may be other, post-modern interpretations now, but I doubt if the actual business of writing ever gets much attention.

My wife and I were late adopters of cable, and for many years, we had only a simple tube TV with a rabbit ear antenna, which meant that much of watching was limited to PBS and the News Hour. Republican thought was represented by David Gergen and then David Brooks. Gergen seems to have made his living as some sort of professional intimate to presidents, but Brooks has always written a column, supplemented by being a talking head.

Thus Brooks has always needed someone to write for in order to earn a living, or as Samuel Johnson would have characterzed it, a Patron. The need to see something other than the cringing phony Brooks on TV was a major factor that drove my wife and me to cable.

So why is Brooks suddenly off the reservation?

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks said that the “underlying issue” in President Joe Biden’s underwater approval rating is Jimmy Carter-esque “incompetence.”

Brooks said that coronavirus is one issue bringing down Biden’s approval numbers, even though that’s not really President Biden’s fault.

He continued, “I think the border’s a strong one. I think pulling out of Afghanistan the way they did, not the pullout itself, but the way it was done. I think a lot of Americans were embarrassed and felt a little ashamed. But the underlying issue is Jimmy Carter. The underlying issue is incompetence. I thought these guys were the pros. I thought they were the experts. But in case after case, they don’t seem to be as professional as I thought they were.”

Brooks later discussed the nuclear submarine deal with Australia and stated that while it’s a good deal, “why not call France? … We didn’t call our allies before the Afghan pullout.”

Brooks does not write a comma, not a semicolon, that he's not told to write. His whole career has been an exercise in flaunting his single elite undergraduate credential to lend the appearance of thoughtful reflection to whatever bromide his Patron approves.

Looks like even the New York Times is off the reservation.