Huh?
David Brooks’ New York Times op-ed column decrying the widespread criticism of Brian Williams’ serial lying show us that Brooks himself is frighteningly confused regarding such basic ethical values as accountability, trust, trustworthiness and accountability. That’s good to know, don’t you think? Now the question is why anyone in their right mind would care what such an ethically muddled political and cultural analyst thinks about anything.
Yesterday, the Washington Post revealed yet another example of Williams’ fabulism: his bizarre story about roaming gangs at the local Ritz Carlton in the wake of New Orleans’ devastation by Katrina. Never mind, argues Brooks: the problem isn’t with Williams, it’s with his critics.
Brooks’ New Times column begins with a strange, exaggerated and unethically inclusive first paragraph about how fame drives people to wrongdoing. “The desire for even more admiration races ahead. Career success never really satisfies. Public love always leaves you hungry,” he writes. “Always?” Who is he talking about, himself? The famous people being described here are emotionally and spiritually unhealthy famous people–addicts to fame, narcissists, desperate hostages to celebrity. I have no doubt that Williams fits that description, but many prominent, accomplished and celebrated people do not. They are known as “trustworthy.” Having impugned many thousands of well-adjusted pubic figures past and present to lay the groundwork for an “everybody does it” defense of Williams (EDI is running neck and neck with the other favorite rationalization being used by Williams enablers: “It’s not the worst thing.”), Brooks attacks anyone not famous who resents being lied to:
“The barbaric part is the way we respond to scandal these days. When somebody violates a public trust, we try to purge and ostracize him. A sort of coliseum culture takes over, leaving no place for mercy. By now, the script is familiar: Some famous person does something wrong. The Internet, the most impersonal of mediums, erupts with contempt and mockery. The offender issues a paltry half-apology, which only inflames the public more. The pounding cry for resignation builds until capitulation comes. Public passion is spent and the spotlight moves on.”
This paragraph is astounding, and embarrassing too. Someone violates a public trust, and the public has the audacity not to trust him any more! What barbarism! Is Brooks even passing familiar with the concept of accountability? Not on the evidence of this drivel, he isn’t. An honorable man or woman in a position of trust who so publicly disgraced himself as Brooks has should immediately and voluntarily resign. Once, long ago, that was the natural, traditional, expected and required response to such a scandal, but this was in the days when celebrity and power was not so frequently accompanied by greed. Williams is paid about ten millions dollars a year, and that’s apparently too much to give up merely to demonstrate integrity, remorse and acceptance of responsibility for wrongdoing, especially when there are allies like Brooks out there ready to shift the blame.
There would be no need to purge someone who has proven themselves untrustworthy in a high position of trust if the individual would be accountable and courageous and purge himself, as he (or she—I’m looking at you, Kathleen Sibelius) is obligated to do. How can Brooks not understand this? The offender offers a “paltry apology,” and Brooks blames the public for correctly concluding that such an offender doesn’t understand the seriousness of what he did, isn’t really sorry, and will do it again. So the “pounding cry for resignation builds until capitulation comes.” Yes, David, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. This isn’t barbarism. This is civilization. This is enforcing standards. This is ethics, this is accountability.
Brooks doesn’t comprehend any of it, apparently:
“I do think we’d all be better off if we reacted to these sorts of scandals in a different way. The civic fabric would be stronger if, instead of trying to sever relationships with those who have done wrong, we tried to repair them, if we tried forgiveness instead of exiling.”
We’d all be better off if we let people who lie to us stay in the position that will allow them to keep lying to us?
Who’s being exiled? Those who betray the public’s trust don’t have a right to keep their positions and reputations despite it; they forfeited our trust and respect. Eliot Spitzer had to stop being governor after breaking the same prostitution laws he made his reputation prosecuting; Anthony Weiner couldn’t be a lawmaker after repeatedly sending photos of his crotch to young women; Eric Shinseki couldn’t stay on as head of the Veterans Administration after doing nothing as veterans died; raping women he drugged means that Bill Cosby can’t play lovable dads anymore; making up stories means that Steven Glass can’t be a journalist any more (or, thank God, a lawyer), and John Edwards isn’t going to run in the New Hampshire primaries because everyone knows he’s a cheat and a liar. But no one’s advocating sending these fallen celebrities and public servants to Elba, not even Edwards, who belongs there. They can live like the rest of us now; it’s not so bad, David, really it isn’t. We just don’t trust them any more, and want to see someone in their jobs who might prove trustworthy. Forgiving them doesn’t mean they should be trusted.
This is all basic ethics, not to mention common sense. David Brooks, star columnist for the New York Times, frequent TV pundit and alleged wise man, doesn’t understand it.
I think that’s useful information for anyone tempted to trust his opinion from now on.
Ethics Alarms 
So telling lies to advance up to the top news spot at NBC is OK! How many other news anchors in the USA lied their ways to the top? Is it taught in our journalism schools? I am guessing it is under the table!
Sometimes I consider sleeping your way to the top less damaging than lying. Lucky breaks and chance happen, but lack of talent or ethics should cause as rapid a fall.
Jack, I don’t disagree with anything you say – except that it’s largely beside the point. That is, besides Brooks’ point. (And I must say it’s a little odd that I find myself defending David Brooks, I’m usually on the other side).
Let’s stipulate that what Williams did was wrong, and pretty much everything else you say in criticism of his actions is quite correct. He should be (and how has been) punished severely. Right. Stipulated.
But Brooks’ point was not to defend Williams – it was to decry the increasingly hair-trigger emotional response of the crowd to him.
These are not, necessarily, the same thing.
Of course you’re right, if Williams had done the right thing, the crowd wouldn’t have gotten stirred up. But Brooks is asking us to look at the other side – is it really such a good thing that crowds go from zero-to-bloodlust in 10 seconds? Don’t we all have some civic responsibility to act like grownups?
Has that kind of papparazzi-like obsession done well for us in terms of Ferguson? Iraq? Iran? Movies? Presidential elections? Ukraine? That way lies the tyranny of sound bites, the mass manipulation of instant mass emotion. That way lies even more infantilization of national news programs than we already have, which is too much to begin with.
I’m not saying that Brooks is entirely consistent – just that his main point is not about Williams’ sins or lack thereof, it’s about the public’s reaction to public figures’ flaws, and whether it should be more temperate. If you want an analogue, it’s why we have due process rather than lynch mobs.
There is wisdom in crowds – but not in mobs. That I think is Brooks’ point, and personally I find it a good one.
Charles, I would agree with the point if 1) it wasn’t brought up in the context of Williams, and 2) if he didn’t state it by implying that there’s something wrong with summarily rejecting someone who betrays the public trust.
Is there a hair-trigger, unforgiving, mob-like tendency on social media and elsewhere? Absolutely. But Williams deserves everything he’s received, and more. Mel Gibson? Lindsay Lohan? James Frye? Dr. Laura? Lena Dunham? Heck, I’ll even give Jonathan Gruber a break…maybe. But a network anchorman whose honesty is seriously in question is not the battlefield on which to make the stand Brooks is making.
I’ve missed your input, by the way.
But can someone at least shut up that nitwit Sean Hannity on his rant about “Stolen Valor”? He’s just embarrassing himself…
Hannity is an embarrassment 95% of the time. Anyone who listens to him at this point is immune to his idiocy, and those who don’t already know enough to ignore him.
Well, when I’m driving to suppliers, in the afternoon, the radio is still set to the station that has my favorite host – Mark Davis – from the morning.
I usually leave it on as I’m often on the phone during the drives and it’s just background noise. If I happen to listen to it, all I can do is spend most of the time telling Hannity to shut up. If I could find the Fingernail on Chalkboard station, I’d switch to it…
I think I classify as “immune”.
http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/02/brian-williams-drops-claim-beheaded-by-al-qaeda/
What Brooks is expressing is the elitist mindset of the Establishment Press in regard to the “rabble” whom they traditionally hold in disdain. Indeed, who but “barbarians” would question the ethics of their proven betters and dare to hold THEM up to examination and ridicule based on their own parochial standards? As a fixture on the editorial staff of a fallen journalistic icon, he’s likely seen enough of this popular audacity to worry a bit about his own status, as well. If something so “minor” as journalistic embellishment (“lying” to the bucolics) can bring down a major network anchor, what might happen to the Gray Lady (and him) should there be another such scandal there? There’s a new day dawning in journalism, just as there is in politics. “There’s a new sun rising up angry in the sky.” Best get used to it, Brooks.
Exactly. If you are surprised by Brooks’ attitude, what part of the Liberal Elite don’t you understand? Now you also understand why they want to make sure they are the only ones protected by guns (I’m sure former Mayor Bloomberg is well protected by armed guards during his gun elimination engagements). It’s too hard to push the peons around if the peons might push back.
The problem is that Brooks is a far-left pundit. Having said that, the question is, WHY did I say it? Because there is a fundamental difference in the definition of the word “compassion” by the right and the left. On the right, you have a group of people who believe that taking personal responsibility for your behavior is not only the right way to go, but the only ethical way to go. On the left, there is the belief that all behavior is CAUSED, and, hence, if we can address the cause, we can fix the behavior. Thus, nothing that you do is really your fault.
Unfortunately, there are some remarkable side effects to this belief. Possibly the most insidious is that no one is really responsible for his own behavior. From that derives the belief in a pervasive racism that explains the disintegration of the black family, high black crime rates, high black poverty rates, high black unemployment and an inordinate number of black victims of police shootings (which, lest I get jumped on by members of my own belief system, is largely mythic). Sadly, while this provides a satisfying explanation, it does little to solve any of the problems generated BUT calling all police (and the justice system as a whole, and possibly all white people) racist is just smugly self-satisfying.
On the flip side of the coin, if we were to believe that every person is responsible for his own behavior, then we do have avenues to explore for fixing the problem…things like teaching marketable job skills, fixing our lamentable public education system and eradicating what ever vestiges of racism still exist in our society. Because, if you believe that people are responsible for their own behavior, you also believe that they are competent to fix or prevent whatever problems those behaviors produce. In other words, you believe that teaching someone to fish, so that he may become independent and self-supporting, is vastly superior to draining increasingly hard-to-find resources by giving him a fish every day for the rest of his life.