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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Rude Pundit - Dear David Brooks: A Beheading Is a Beheading Is a Beheading
Here's an actual paragraph from an actual writer for the actual New York Times: "But the revulsion aroused by beheading is mostly a moral revulsion. A beheading feels like a defilement. Its not just an injury or a crime. It is an indignity. A beheading is more like rape, castration or cannibalism. It is a defacement of something sacred that should be inviolable."
Yes, that's right. In his latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "Dingleberries of pop psychology plopped in a conservative crapper" , David Brooks spends a good bit of time exploring why the beheading of James Foley and Steven Sotloff by the Islamic State is so shocking. Now, you might say, "Umm, because they cut their fuckin' heads off?" But fuck you, you fucking plebe; you have not read books and David Brooks has. And those books say things have meaning so meaning he shall show you.
"But what is this sacred thing that is being violated?" he ponders ponderously before answering anally (now there's some assonance - boo-yah!), "Well, the human body is sacred. Most of us understand, even if we dont think about it, or have a vocabulary to talk about it these days, that the human body is not just a piece of meat or a bunch of neurons and cells. The human body has a different moral status than a cows body or a piece of broccoli."
You may read that and, like the Rude Pundit, think, "Who are you arguing with, Davy? Where is this person who believes that humans and broccoli compare favorably? We eat broccoli. Does this have something to do with the cannibalism?" And, by the way, "Well, the human body is sacred" has to be the least impressive way of stating something that has seemingly mystical meaning. He may as well have written, "Dude, the body is like...yeah." Actually, that's deeper because it implies that some things cannot be understood.
Not David Brooks though. He understands it all. Let him explain further: "Were repulsed by a beheading because the body has a spiritual essence. The human head and body dont just live and pass along genes. They paint, make ethical judgments, savor the beauty of a sunset and experience the transcendent. The body is material but surpasses the material. Its spiritualized matter." Someone's been into Maureen Dowd's candy bowl (and, no, that's not a sexual reference).
Just to summarize: Beheading is bad because it removes your head from your body and then you can't paint.
The Rude Pundit is all about interpreting the world around him, reading it like it's a middle-period Fellini film, a phantasmagoria of symbols and meaning and half-nude dwarfs. But sometimes the distance between the thing itself and its larger meaning is pretty short. Two innocent men having their heads cut off by a crazy asshole with a knife? You don't need to mourn the non-painting, non-sunset-watching souls to think, "Man, that shit's fucked up. And the people who did it are even more fucked up." And despite Brooks insistence that the deaths are different, if the ISIS fucknut had shot them in the face, it'd still be just as fucked up.
Brooks is after some larger point about spirituality and...you know what? Who the fuck cares. It's utter garbage, on philosophical, theological, and ontological levels. All the column is really about is Brooks is grossed out by beheadings and he desperately needs there to be more to it than that.
As if that isn't enough.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2014/09/dear-david-brooks-beheading-is.html
AuntPatsy
(9,904 posts)Orrex
(63,215 posts)La Lioness Priyanka
(53,866 posts)LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)" if by "column," you mean, "Dingleberries of pop psychology plopped in a conservative crapper" "
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Charlie Pierce
Robert Reich
Three columnists who always bat 1.000
Enrique
(27,461 posts)Bush said, in 2006, "nobody likes beheadings".
The_Commonist
(2,518 posts)I took an oath many years ago to say that any time his name comes up.
Weenie...
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)The human body is not a piece of broccoli.
Seriously?
I always thought it kinda was...
Mr. Brooks, get help, please.
Opinion editor at the NYT: What were you thinking publishing this column today? Brooks must seek counseling. Do what you can...
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)broiles
(1,367 posts)Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)Who then promptly spread the turds to blossom where such things grow best....in the mass media.
It happens when you run out of different ways to same the same things everyone else already knows.
I could name a dozen folks on DU that could write a column that would relegate Brooks to Daily Caller competence.
mountain grammy
(26,624 posts)almost
muriel_volestrangler
(101,321 posts)Look at the beheading (or something close to it) that happened in London yesterday. There's been a lot more coverage about it than if he had just stabbed her to death.
LuvNewcastle
(16,846 posts)other ways of dying. It might be something interesting to explore in a psychology column, but not in a piece from Brooks. I don't think the man is capable of writing on a subject with any depth.
JEB
(4,748 posts)alphafemale
(18,497 posts)It is one of the most brutal, ghastly things ever.
It is meant to shock and horrify.
LuvNewcastle
(16,846 posts)What sort of standards are required to be a NYT columnist? I've seen more poignant columns in high school newspapers. Just because a man can type doesn't mean he's a writer.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)hit that one out of the park.
but, where is Brooks' outrage over the Saudis chopping random peoples heads off?
I guess that's different because...well they have oil that we want....and they by our weapons and shit.
TygrBright
(20,762 posts)First, however, let me make a disclaimer: I am against capital punishment and acknowledge no moral or ethical justification by which a collective entity (such as a state, religious hierarchy, etc.) may deprive a human being of life. I do acknowledge a one clear justification for an individual doing so: self-defense, and I think there's a gray area for "defense of another (particularly a helpless other)" that might under some circumstances justify an individual doing so. However, neither of those apply in the case of a collective entity. (I'm not going to go off track into wars, here-- complicated and occasionally fall into the second category, perhaps, but too complex to derail my point, to which I am finally getting...)
That said, should I ever be in a situation where either an individual OR a collective entity is unalterably determined to take my life, I hope they do so via efficient beheading.
Being a coward, I totally understand Doctor Guillotine's intent when he invented an efficient tool to deliver capital punishment. Inefficient beheading is pretty horrific, but then what form of fatal attack by sharp blade isn't?
But one quick, effective stroke that severs the spinal column and the carotid arteries almost simultaneously? Compared to having one's body riddled with bullets, or having thousands of volts pumped through it, or the appalling death-by-chemicals methods of execution, I'll take the single stroke, thanks.
I am no more "grossed out" by the barbarity of ISIS whacking off western journalists' heads than I am grossed out by what happens in the average lethal injection chamber. In fact, possibly less so.
Why are the barbarities of other cultures somehow more worthy of condemnation than the barbarities of our own?
curiously,
Bright
whathehell
(29,067 posts)"I am no more "grossed out" by the barbarity of ISIS whacking off western journalists' heads than I am grossed out by what happens in the average lethal injection chamber. In fact, possibly less so"
Oh, please...Your high-mindeness and attempt to Conflate For Noble Ends, is duly
noted, but I'm afraid this is a decided "reach".
"Why are the barbarities of other cultures somehow more worthy of condemnation than the barbarities of our own"?
Um, because theirs are more 'barbaric'.
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)Brooks is after some larger point about spirituality and...you know what? Who the fuck cares. It's utter garbage, on philosophical, theological, and ontological levels. All the column is really about is Brooks is grossed out by beheadings and he desperately needs there to be more to it than that.
It is a gruesome but quick and effective form of suicide.
For those who urgently wish to separate their own heads from
their bodies, as opposed to someone else's.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/02/man-decapitates-self-nyc_n_5751570.html
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)whathehell
(29,067 posts)It's the MAIN reason why I, and I suspect many other future ESL teachers,
won't even consider working there, even though they offer BIG salaries, having
been in "critical need" of English teachers for several years now.
LuvNewcastle
(16,846 posts)I've known people who went to work over there in the oil business for a decade or so and came back home to retire. They took their families with them! Of course, the Americans and other foreigners live in their own sectors and have a lot of different rules. Still, would you expose your wife or daughter to such a misogynistic culture as that? I don't think there's enough money in the world to get me to do that. Giving up ten years of your life to live in hell is a deal with the devil that I'm not willing to make.
vanlassie
(5,676 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)Maureen Dowd has some ass kicking candy?
I just love your stuff. Always have. Always will.
Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)Fuckin' poseur...
tularetom
(23,664 posts)It always made me think a head was being put on somebody. If something is "bejeweled" it is covered with jewels, not stripped of them. There are other examples but I'm too sleepy to think of them.
I used to wonder why it wasn't called "unhearing" or "deheading".
Any etymologists out there who can splain this for me?
LuvNewcastle
(16,846 posts)I think of the verb 'bestow,' which means to endow someone with something. 'Behead' just doesn't seem to make sense, does it? When my mom cooks gumbo, she asks me to 'de-head' the shrimp and peel them, not behead them.
Maybe the prefix in 'behead' is the same as 'berate,' which is to give someone a dressing down. But then we have 'beginning' and 'begotten' which implies the addition, not the subtraction of something.
I think the reason it's so hard to find consistency in English is because (there's another one) it has so many sources, from old Norse and German on to Latin and French and borrowed words from various other languages.
People who pick up English as a second language and are fluent in it frankly amaze me. They must be intelligent people, because so many native speakers are ignorant about it.
English is constantly changing and adapting, like a mutating virus. I guess that's why it's become the world's language, because of that ability to adapt. I wonder if English speakers 1000 years in the future will even be able to read what we're writing today. It will probably look like "Beowulf" does to us.