The Kitchen Sink

Main editorial in today's Times focusses on the Republican candidates' views on foreign policy--don't read if you want to keep hope alive.  On Rick Perry, for example:

"[I]n August, Mr. Perry called for “taking the fight to the enemy, wherever they are, before they strike at home.” He also rejected “military adventurism.” So when exactly would he use military force? No one knows.

And this brings me to David Brooks, the Times only conservative columnist.  He appears to be as mixed up as Mr. Perry or less politely stated, speaking from both sides of his mouth.  For example, in speaking of the majority of Americans, he says:

"[T]hey are paying less attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement than any other major story — less than Afghanistan, Amanda Knox, the 2012 election, the death of Steve Jobs and far, far less than news about the economy.

"While the cameras surround the flamboyant fringes, the rest of the country is on a different mission. Quietly and untelegenically, Americans are trying to repair their economic values."

 He finishes with the following:

These majorities are focused on the fundamentals. They say that repairing the economic moral fabric is the essential national task right now. They are suspicious of government action in general, saying that government often undermines this fabric. But they support specific federal policies that nurture industriousness, responsibility and delayed gratification, like spending on infrastructure, education and research. They distinguish between the deserving and undeserving rich.

In other words, he suggests at the beginning of his article that the protestors in the Occupy Wall Street movement are a lunatic fringe with no relevance to the economic problems that most Americans are concerned with.    Let me state emphatically that the concerns of the Occupy Wall St. protestors are the same as those Brooks is writing about, "repairing the economic moral fabric."   Perhaps the difference is that the protestors  in Zuccoti Park are actively trying to do something  to repair the moral fabric while those that Brooks writes about, and celebrates, are too busy following the salacious details of the Amanda Knox case to do anything but whine about their fate.   

The Times spends a good bit of its editorial ink pointing to the contradictions in the positions of Republican candidates (great) but it might try reading some of David Brooks columns and commenting on his contradictions.  They happen often enough.  Hey Gail Collins--how about it! 

Thanks again, you guys in Occupy.  I'm getting too old to sleep outside but I'm glad someone is willing to do it.