E beat me to the punch by posting David Brooks' column in Tuesday's New York Times. I'm afraid to say that I had a completely different reaction than E did after reading the column. For me, it was far from great.
In his piece, Brooks harkens back to a day in this country that at once was characterized by gentility, civility and humility. He tells us that there was time when a pervasive sense of selflessnish and modesty defined the American spirit. Moreover, Brooks leads us to believe that the debasement of our American culture began roughly around the same time individual expression started taking precedence, what Brooks called the epoch of "expressive individualism."
There are two things wrong with this characterization. First, the halcyon days that Brooks so urgently reminds us of never happened. Only a shallow reading of American history can be so unapologetically amnesic to the fact that large swaths of Americans in that era lived under very different circumstances. Am I to suppose that modesty should have been a virtue required of those who couldn't even excercise a modicum of civil rights?
Secondly, if Brooks wants to define our culture by its excesses, by those at the extreme, then yes, this country's going to hell in a handbasket. But don't be fooled. Just because we see more instances of buffoonery on our hyped-up 24-hour media cycle doesn't make our era more immodest. It certainly depends on what (and who) you're looking at. Kanye West's episodes aside, if you look hard enough -- and unplug from the cycle -- you may see a different picture.
A pithier response to Brooks' claim can be found at Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog over at the Atlantic. Coates counters this immodesty claim with an adequate sense of historical proportion, something clearly missing in that (not-so) great David Brooks column.
Here's a sample:
In his piece, Brooks harkens back to a day in this country that at once was characterized by gentility, civility and humility. He tells us that there was time when a pervasive sense of selflessnish and modesty defined the American spirit. Moreover, Brooks leads us to believe that the debasement of our American culture began roughly around the same time individual expression started taking precedence, what Brooks called the epoch of "expressive individualism."
There are two things wrong with this characterization. First, the halcyon days that Brooks so urgently reminds us of never happened. Only a shallow reading of American history can be so unapologetically amnesic to the fact that large swaths of Americans in that era lived under very different circumstances. Am I to suppose that modesty should have been a virtue required of those who couldn't even excercise a modicum of civil rights?
Secondly, if Brooks wants to define our culture by its excesses, by those at the extreme, then yes, this country's going to hell in a handbasket. But don't be fooled. Just because we see more instances of buffoonery on our hyped-up 24-hour media cycle doesn't make our era more immodest. It certainly depends on what (and who) you're looking at. Kanye West's episodes aside, if you look hard enough -- and unplug from the cycle -- you may see a different picture.
A pithier response to Brooks' claim can be found at Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog over at the Atlantic. Coates counters this immodesty claim with an adequate sense of historical proportion, something clearly missing in that (not-so) great David Brooks column.
Here's a sample:
I'm thinking of Jack Johnson winning the championship, and modest Americans launching pogroms against their fellow immodest Americans. I'm thinking about Birth of a Nation's defense of treason, and a sitting president offering his immodest endorsement. I'm thinking about a country, circa 1850, whose politicians lorded over one of the last slave societies in the known world, and immodestly argued that it was a gift from God.
Sigh...Is there anything that can be analyzed without the Civil Rights issue being used as an overwhelming counter-weight illustrating that we in fact suck as a nation?
ReplyDeleteDo they teach an inability to use perspective in schools these days? Or is that considered extra-curricular?