Hoover Cleans Up — Brooks And Done
October 31, 2006 at 3:05 am
Oh, the watercress and fresh cranberry bean salad with shaved artichoke, fennel, and perserved lemon in a creamy tarragon vinaigrette. Oh, the pan-seared breast of chicken wrapped with pancetta on a bed of corn spoon bread with roasted roma tomatoes and blue lake beans. Oh, the individual apple quince tart tatin with ginger creme anglasie and candied cranberries.
Oh, the before-dinner remarks by David Brooks: “Human Nature and the Elections.”
Extreme Mortman began his third Hoover Media Fellowship mere miles from Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco war room and ground zero for Condoleezza Rice’s 2008 political base by listening to a rousingly depressing talk by the New York Times’ affirmative action conservative David Brooks, who presented to Hoover’s fall retreat of major donors (one public summary: “300 intelligent, articulate wealthy people”) a lengthy litany of reasons why the GOP is doomed next Tuesday and what’s wrong with conservatives. Brooks predicted a “Republican party that gets spanked.”
We put down our glass of 2001 Fisher Vineyeards Coach Insignia Chardonnay (Extreme Mortman doesn’t normally allow Chardonnay access to his lips, but this one earned his trust) long enough to hear Brooks lament a “decline in conservative books as energy gets diverted to blogs” as one of the reasons why all is lost. Now, we here at Extreme Mortman’s Palo Alto bureau have long respected David Brooks as a funny, witty wise intellectual conservative who also went through Hoover’s Media Fellows program. But conservative blogs are to blame? It was blasphemy enough for us to put down our Chardonnay and reach instead for an old trusted friend, a Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley.
But the Kitchen Cabernet couldn’t save us. A very lovely senior lady next to us — she of a Pebble Beach house in addition to her New York residence but who still was hard-pressed to name Hillary Clinton’s GOP Senate campaign opponent — cursed Eugene Volokh for missing his Hoover speech because of L.A. traffic.
Maybe David Brooks is right — damn those energy-inefficient conservative bloggers!
William E. Griffith said,
October 31, 2006 @ 12:36 pm
LOL!!! It appears that the Republicans have decided to cannibalize each other. The hypocrisy is at its’ zenith.
Eugene Volokh said,
October 31, 2006 @ 12:47 pm
Don’t want to get a reputation as a “misser” — I made it, though late, so they had to swap my time bloc with another speaker’s. There were mechanical problems with the airplane on the flight up, hence the delay.
section9 said,
October 31, 2006 @ 12:49 pm
Instalanche, baby! I’m in after the Bush basher. Anyhoo, Brooks is all wet, as befits the token conservative at on otherwise execrable editorial page. There are plenty of good conservative books being written right now, just none of them by Andrew Sullivan (ouch!).
Pubbies suffer a minor spanking, giving Pelosi nominal majority status but leaving the Senate in the hands of the sane. No Fitzmas for the Impeachment crowd, as the Dark Lord of the Sith (that would be Rove) is hailed as a genius. Condi gets the VP nod for either Mitt or Rudy in ‘08. She’s too big for Stanford, but may drag a bunch of her Palo Alto friends to DC in ‘12 or ‘16 when she gets the Big Girl’s chair.
moptop said,
October 31, 2006 @ 3:17 pm
I think that Condi waits for the reviews to come in on Iraq; the ones where enough time has passed where we really know something.