Here we go again: Not only are blue-staters immoral and selfish and otherwise bad people, they’re not even curious about the world around them.
So, let me make sure I have this straight: Suburbia, or “exurbia” is a vast, vital, endlessly complex place that people flock to because, well, it’s perfect: They leave places with arduous commutes, backbreaking mortgages, broken families and stressed social structures and they head for towns with ample living space, intact families, child-friendly public culture and intensely enforced social equality. That’s bourgeois.
But it’s not like “American Beauty” at all. It’s clean and perfect and complex and interesting. Oh.
The last word on David Brooks.
James said on November 9, 2004 at 7:49 am
I remember arguing with someone at my last place of employment about exurbia; they lived in Kennesaw, made famous for requiring households to own guns.She was telling me how wonderful it was, how they’d go eat at the franchises (mmmm…. Bennigans!), and then the families would socialize in their basement gamerooms (since there wasn’t anything else to do there, I’d guess…).
When I think of that lifestyle I thing of weird family homicides (where the head of the household kills and eats the entire family), and kids dropping cinderblocks through windshields because they’re so damn bored, and stupid kids doing drugs and having unprotected sex because they see it on Jerry Springer, and again, what else is there to do…
Call me an intown elitist, but I like neighborhoods with sidewalks and pedestrians and local stores and bicyclists and joggers and those family values…
Oh… and diversity. Those white flight neighborhoods are scary.
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brian stouder said on November 9, 2004 at 9:06 am
This guy wrote a funny piece which WOULD be how I felt, if I had been a true-blue Kerry camper…(rather than the right-thinking, red-state resident compassionate conservative Bush backer that I am!)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6437005/site/newsweek/
an excerpt
>>Canvassing in a lower-middle-class white neighborhood outside of Cincinnati with its broken pickup trucks and outdoor furnishings that looked like they came from Home Repo, not Home Depot, I thought I was in hostile territory. And sometimes I did feel like an anthropologist cataloguing other species. In a trailer park outside of Reading, I met the species known as Militarus Angerarius, who started screaming at me sometime between the first and second syllable of the Democrat’s surname. In another town, I met Moralius Valuarium, who told me she supported everything Kerry supported, yet worried that he didn’t share her faith in God. I also met Knowatus Nothingum, who said she was pleased that the Iraqis looted that explosives bunker because it proved that Bush hadn’t lied about weapons of mass destruction. And I met Bizarrus Rationalizationus, a cab driver who told me he supported Bush because, “it’s his mess, so he should be forced to clean it up.”
and then his finish:
>>A few more trips to the heartland and maybe I can get to acceptance. Now, to quote Bill O’Reilly (who was talking about the sexual harassment suit brought against him), the election “is now officially over, and I will never speak of it again.”
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Danny said on November 9, 2004 at 9:59 am
You know, other than Brooks and Krugman and Herbert and Kristoff, the Times has an OK editorial team. But something else has been eating at me post-election (although I’ve had this cynical observation for years).
Many of us here are very passionate about the issues of our time whether they be domestic social issues, foreign policy issues, or whatever. But the politicos on both sides have faux passion. They adopt positions almost solely to the end of realizing their party’s political ambitions. It is one big game to them. Otherwise, how could Carville be married to Matilin? How could Morris now be a conservative commentator (although I partially understand is animosity toward Bill). And the list goes on.
Here we are, the unwashed masses, all lathered up about a freaking election and these political luminaries could not care less about what matters to any of us. It’s like going to a church where the pastor preaches a good sermon, but doesn’t really believe in God.
Like I said, this is not a new observation on my part and it is a generally recognized cynicism, but it is worthy of mention from time to time. It should help all of us put this election in perspective, whether you were for Bush or Kerry.
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Bob said on November 9, 2004 at 10:10 am
Well said, Danny. I think that’s evident in the fact that what a candidate says during the campaign often has little resemblance to what happens after the inauguration.
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