What's in a Name? 7.31.22
The Power of Brand, Authority, Who Tells the Story
Sunday newShrink greetings!
The New York Times’ recent “I was wrong about…” package from opinion writers offers well-timed material for planned newShrink emphasis on the journalistic “who.” That’s the people behind, influencing as well as in the news.
This NYT package, its published follow-up letters from readers, and other similar work from other venues including coverage of reader focus groups about politics, touches on several of last week’s news for humans themes.
You can separately access each of the Times’ eight articles, including those mentioned here, by clicking:
The ones pictured above, for newShrink discussion to come next week:
I was wrong about Mitt Romney (and the Dog) — Gail Collins
I was wrong about Trump voters — Bret Stephens
I was Wrong About Al Franken — Michelle Goldberg
I was wrong about Facebook — Farhad Manjoo —
🔵
Meanwhile, there’s David Brooks:
Here, it seems Brooks had to dig all the way back to the early 2000’s to come up with something he might have been a bit wrong about.
The aw-shucks claim of always tending to be too slow to spot and respond to changes in the culture, political and economic landscape is simply ridiculous. The guy has made an entire 40-year career, body of work, jaw-droppingly wide sphere of influence and lucrative brand identity as “the thinking/person’s sane and bearable conservative.” He’s done that by being several steps ahead of, not behind, trends. He most surely, and wisely, has — and needs — publicists, PR and reputation-management and legal-counsel on every front to poke and prod, should he miss a cue.
Anyway.
In this Times package I was looking for something perhaps more recent, say within a decade or so, for Brooks to give his thoughtful reconsideration. This spring and summer, so soon after mass shootings in Uvalde, Buffalo, Chicago and the endless stream of others, maybe this could use a refresher. It’s Brooks’ response to the 2018 Parkland, Florida, mass shooting:
Respect first, then gun control
(From February 19, 2018, NYT)
Really.
But no, his twice weekly NYT fare has been things like:
The Jan. 6 Committee Has Already Blown It
(There’s that “moderate conservative” regard for preserving our societal institutions, tradition and rule of law… not to mention our essential shared American moral code, or “ecology” he keeps talking about.)
Why on earth is Pelosi supporting the Trumpists?
(Now Dems and liberals aren’t just the other side, misguided, poorly leading or engaging in aggressive strategy. They’re sleazy.)
How Democrats can win the morality wars
(Hmm. No longer a battle of ideas, ideals, principles or even the bitterest of cultural values divide. But good against evil.)
By this point I fear dozing for even a moment, lest I wake up in Ronald Reagan’s 1982 America with Moral Majority-Jerry Falwell on TV, herding us all to the Christian right.
I haven’t (yet!) begun tallying or Googling the number of times a week David Brooks is now getting the words moral or morality into print, on TV, radio, social media. But a brand tattoo, cape and tights, at least a tee shirt can’t be far off.
From two distinct vantage points here:
🔷 On the level of the outside-in ego-public-figure-person (the “resume” self, Brooks’ own term), for a few years now he’s been re-branding himself. And without much notice from a lot of his audiences, his brand already extended in scope far beyond his twice weekly newspaper column, PBS and NPR appearances.
🔷 Second, on the inside-out unconscious Soul level, (his “eulogy” version of our individual lives), for at least a decade across every major area of life in its depth and Soul dimensions, this individual has undergone initiation-crises: The dark night of the Soul, the confrontation with the unconscious that Jung’s entire body of work and analytical psychology has helped map for us.
For me these are extreme contrasts about Brooks that require a deeper dive, first this journalist-scan across the Brooks waterfront.
Next, a scholarly close reading of deeper contexts: his books, biographical and American-historic timelines, and points that are likely crisis thresholds in any life. That section likely looks and reads more as essay or journal article, fully referenced. It may be a link from summarized highlights in a future edition.
The final, third psychological and Soul piece maps all of that to unconscious patterns suggested by the factual conscious data. Patterns include shadow elements, apparent newly energized/awakening functions and archetypes both appearing and newly absent.
On all of this, of course the fairly obvious ear-worm was The Who song, “Who Are You,” surfacing during my recent weeks’ runs. By now it feels like David Brooks has taken up residence in the house! Then in wee hours beneath The Who comes the murky-deep percussion from the 1975 film “Jaws,” and its classic line.
I’m going to need a bigger boat.
(These days, I have come to believe, so does David Brooks…)
🔵
For the journalist take, here’s a headlines-and-images, 10,000-feet overview of David Brooks’ public story over the past decade. They are ordered roughly chronologically, left and right column events and issues clustered around completion, launch and publicity of his two best-selling books in 2015 and 2019, respectively. Center column is symbolic imagery, with historic figure and poet Dante at center in Purgatorio phase of his descent to hell and then toward Paradiso, and Brooks’ Mountain podcast. Not pictured are factors of likely consideration or significance: His 2013-’14 separation and divorce, Donald Trump’s seizure of American conservatism with his 2016 presidency, the 2018 #MeToo movement as well as the death of Brooks’ mother.
A couple of points about this story…
From a news, analysis and decision-making standpoint, Brooks is a valuable voice and influence. From the perspective of psychology and Soul, by his very visibility, ideas, expressed thoughts and opinions and feelings, biography and public life he and his lived experience can help inform and guide us on our own paths both interior and public.
As for what so activates me about Brooks, and more generally this deep-dive work focused on public people…
Just briefly, I ask you to call on memory to think back over your threshold points, the dark nights of the soul whatever their contours, the times we all have that have brought us to tears, knees, therapy, priest, attempts to escape and outrun…
And now, imagine going through all of that under intense public scrutiny that has enormous power and control over your life as you know it and everyone in it.
I have found myself working with, and been worked by, some version of this story over most of my adulthood and career life. It’s to such an eerie extent that it’s inspired jokes about my needing a brand-tattoo (or at least a tee shirt.)
This has been over a decade and a half as a PR consultant, strategist, image/reputation manager at pivotal times with very senior corporate leader-client/bosses… in similar volunteer board-capacity at similar pivotal times in a high-profile liberal church with high-profile pastoral staff… with adult clients at every life stage over another decade and a half in psychotherapy… and with dearest loved ones and family.
The newShrink focus on news and public figures, which emerged as my 2014 dissertation topic, seemed surprising when it surfaced. It shouldn’t have, for it has my name all over it.
As the photo illustrates, Brooks’ is a story-of-many-interwoven-stories. (This journalist step of the process includes factual outcomes, so there are spoilers.)
Note: Given the focus on a wide range of stories and source materials here, I’m keeping items hyperlinked for easier reader access. If the number of those should cause your email provider to shrink/truncate all or part of the post, please just email me. I can easily send you a more readable version that’s still complete but with fewer articles hyperlinked.
🔵
1. It’s a love story.
Most close reading of Brooks’ books, particularly Second Mountain, and my comments including more on this, will be in the second, deep-dive biography, piece.
Here, I’ll just note that in Mountain, beginning at Chapter 21, “A Most Unexpected Turn of Events,” Brooks begins to describe the intertwining joy that is Anne and his newfound sense of spiritual renewal. His entire writing voice changes in a relaxed, deeply authentic, for me moving, way. He also shifts to mostly first-person, allowing himself in, from earlier chapters’ ponderous second-person and sweeping array of unconnected, arms-length third-person stuff.
Whatever else is going on, or to come, with or from David Brooks, this rings so true, miraculously sweet — and astonishingly vulnerable, from a long very tightly defended man. For many of us reading it’s likely some combination of jolt and “whew, I’ll have some of what what they’re having!”
Here’s an excerpt:
THE SUBLIME
Anne lived in Houston for over three years, and both our lives took many twists and turns while she was there. Then, bowing to a love that then seemed impossible and now seems inescapable, we got married in the spring of 2017, four years after the events described above. That part of the story has had a blissful conclusion.
I’ve found that being deliriously in love has been good and bad for my faith. In moments of rapturous love, love overflows. It flows from love of this particular woman upward toward a higher and more general love and eventually to the source of love. On the other hand, in my happiness I have left suffering behind, so I no longer have those deep, dark, smoldering spiritual crises I had when I was really in the dumps.
Worth noting, the entire rest of the book is then presented as a “manifesto” for the moral (and institutional religious) life. At this point, Brooks isn’t just inspired and casually mentioning The Divine Comedy in passing; it’s as though he is Dante, quite literally following Beatrice and for him they are in Paradiso.
🔵
2. It is a story about who is writing the story, authorship and power (including the unconscious kind inherent in every human encounter or transaction.)
This is a good case lesson in power dynamics particularly where sexuality and love are involved. That’s a context missing and desperately needed in our addressing critical #MeToo issues.
With Brooks’ love story, those of us who admire and value him might consider it a close-up look at what is an enormous blind spot for all of us well-educated, thinking types so firmly grounded in facts and reason. (With couples and pairs of any kind, a useful tool for mapping what goes on at this unconscious level of relationship is Jung’s quaternity. This is best and most simply explained via a wide range of different clear and accessible graphic diagrams available online — search words Jung’s quaternity. In my view without this dimension, any relational dynamics work with a couple or any pair is at ego level and thus flying blind.)
In Mountain, this is the unconscious that Brooks mentions long enough to casually dismiss as “Big Shaggy.” So far it seems Big Shaggy is in the room here, and has got him! The Southern woman in me is trying hard not to type, oh, bless his heart…
Check out the serious case of mention-itis back in 2015 that starts smitten Brooks’ acknowledgements in The Road to Character. It (of course) drew attention:
I have left the second paragraph in the screen-shot for the many of us, friends, readers as well as Brooks’ female-journalist colleagues weighing in. Many have been mystified by the poise, grace-under-fire, harnessed intelligence and deep authority (including authority with the powerful men around her) exhibited by Cassidy Hutchinson, and all such aides and influencers regardless of gender who lack formal or institutional power in our contemporary culture.
Whatever else you come to think, feel or believe about Brooks and his wife Anne — if anything at all — it may be well to believe that when you are reading Brooks, you are reading Anne. So it makes sense to also get to know Anne (who keeps a carefully quiet public profile) at least through a thorough look at her factual “resume” biography. (Which part two of this deep-dive will do.)
For now I’ll note that much about Anne seems genuinely lovely, appealing, deep, rather brilliant and impressive. Her overt religiosity, the enormous sway she has with Brooks’ large sphere of influence and her Wheaton College undergraduate education background ring alarm bells in me. (This is the ultra-conservative Christian alma mater of Richard Nixon and Billy Graham, among many high-profile others. In today’s world, at least for women it’s rather the Protestant version of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s far-right Catholic theocratic world-view — one of those “moral ecologies” that Brooks so vaguely and breezily mentions.)
My alarm here is first personal and individual. It’s heightened by years working deeply in psychotherapy with women as well as couples. That’s included some female Wheaton alums, as well as female military, church and institutional chaplains dealing with the enormous shadow cast by the lethally powerful combination of faith with institutional control over all that is deepest and holiest in all humans. The dark sides of that “incandescent” fairytale that has so enchanted David Brooks, from sexual shaming to overt and unspeakasble abuse, are utterly Soul- and life-stealing. (I’m glad I read Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale years ago, for it’s now near-physically unbearable to watch or enjoy the Hulu series… or things like the compelling Under the Banner of Heaven, about extremist LDS, also on Hulu.)
Whether you are charmed, or horrified, by a theocratic or “Christian nationalist” America, you might Google “Wheaton College —the Illinois one—and political involvement.”
Meanwhile, with Brooks and Anne Snyder, think Mark Meadows and Cassidy Hutchinson, but with the explosive accelerants of intense (mutual) meeting of intellects, inspirational ideals, profound love… and long unconsummated sexual attraction. Aside from the big energies of youth, the power of love, intellect/ideas, spirit, and embodied action are the big-4 of our psychological functions/how our energy moves. In Jung’s view they are represented by the four points of the cross and form the ultimate symbol for our individuation, lifelong movement toward wholeness.
Our unconscious dimension is not just personal and individual, but collective and archetypal. When we fail to acknowledge and attend to that, individually and collectively, it can be explosive and disruptive. As we keep seeing, at every level of American life.
🔵
So, with Brooks and Anne (of course)…
3. It’s a PR, risk-and-damage-control, reputation and asset protection story.
As several reviewers note, the second book in 2019 seems rushed and oddly cobbled together (not to mention a bit of a mess from a scholarly discipline standpoint, even superficially compared with Road to Character.)
That’s because it likely was.
Brooks is a brand, a reader-and-revenue draw for his employers and publishers… a valuable asset. Back in 2015, alert journalists had already noted the long on-the-job, powerful-boss/young female worker relationship.
(Politico, April 2015 coverage of book-launch publicity parties)
The social-media internet, including comments on Brooks’ own sites among his followers, have excoriated him over this. The ironies noted about his new “Captain Morality” schtick are far beyond the give and take of his long-familiar, affably self-deprecating “intentional blowhard” stance. These items from back in 2012 through 2015 seem quaint, almost affectionate, by comparison.
Is David Brooks Teaching Humility at Yale the Most Pretentious Moment In History?
(Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi 2012)
What’s your favorite moment in the history of gasbaggery?
Here's the Syllabus for David Brooks's 'Humility' Course at Yale
(The Atlantic, J.K. Trotter, 2013)
He'll be having Yalies read his old New York Times columns for homework. Seriously.
“I’m paid to be a narcissistic blowhard.”
(Brooks’ retort in The Guardian, 2015 interview on launch of The Road to Character.)
[Aside: Hmm, the Yale-teaching thing: Of “conservative ideas” at “liberal-elites” Yale… in the department of philosophy, as in the history of human thought, the Ph in any PhD in any scholarly discipline… by this smart, accomplished, BA-degreed, career-long conservative son of two accomplished liberal academics… dad a PhD English lit professor, now-deceased mom a historian in English history… Interesting on soooo many levels! For curious exploration, later…]
Then in 2017, Brooks and Anne marry.
New York Times Columnist David Brooks Weds His Former Times Research Assistant Anne Snyder
(The Washington Post, April 30, 2017)
Meanwhile, #MeToo has become an enormous thing especially since 2017’s Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken and Brett Kavanaugh stories. This was the period in which The Times won a shared Pulitzer Prize for public service — the most prestigious of mainstream journalism awards — on this.
Whatever else the book Second Mountain is, and whether it ultimately matters to anyone, in PR (and legal) terms it is an exercise and product of regaining and taking control of the narrative. Here various reviewers, coming from different orientations regarding Brooks, attempt to make sense of that. (To me The New Yorker one comes closest.)
David Brooks’s Conversion Story
(The New Yorker, April 19, 2019)
In recent years, the conservative columnist has divorced, remarried, broken with Republicans over Trump, and explored Christianity. How deep was his transformation?
(The New Republic, June 5, 2019)
The New York Times columnist's new book, “The Second Mountain,” is a fount of easily won wisdom.
The Second Mountain by David Brooks review – a self-help guide to escaping the self
(The Guardian, May 2019)
And lastly, more in-house…
In ‘The Second Mountain,’ David Brooks Chronicles His Journey Toward Faith
A New York Times review, by M.D. Mark Epstein (a psychiatrist)
This poor book has been lawyerized and damage-controlled to within an inch of its life!
🔵
And as a result…
4. It’s a #MeToo story…prevented/averted… one that didn’t happen.
Every PR person and book-publicist’s bonus-winning, promotion-earning, good day or year at work...
In my view, and as far as it even remains an issue here, this is rightly so — because of the relative power-in-the room, not because no actual sex was happening. There was little that’s powerless about Anne Snyder in this, or many other situations.
This is one of two contexts that are the psychological basis for my similar take in a close read of the (otherwise very different) Al Franken case. I’ll detail that at some point later, and I think Michelle Goldberg’s mea culpa revisit needs to go further.
🔵
However, Brooks’ is still, ultimately perhaps overhelmingly…
5. A money, power and influence story.
First, roughly chronologically, some different perspectives and news coverage.
David Brooks and the Endless Grift of the Conservative Commentariat
(The New Republic, November 16, 2015)
Conservative columnists have been raking in money from big business for decades.
What David Brooks discovered about the rich on a $120,000 vacation
(The Washington Post, November 6, 2015)
Facebook Helped Fund David Brooks’s Second Job. Nobody Told The Readers Of The New York Times.
(Buzzfeed News March 3, 2021)
The New York Times columnist has been using his perch to promote the Weave Project — without disclosing his potential conflicts of interest to his readers.
David Brooks of New York Times criticized for undisclosed financial ties to project he praised
(The Washington Post, March 4, 2021)
Here is a widened lens on broader context that is not apparent in Brooks’ newspaper column, PBS and NPR presence. He is a brand, an apparently lucrative one for his employer and book publishers. And although these numbers are always wild guesstimates, Brooks’ net worth is most frequently reported in the $16-$20 million range. That’s after what was surely an expensive 2014 divorce, with three not-quite launched sons and a settlement agreement that by his account stipulates his not writing about or publicly discussing the marriage. Not stratospheric, but not your average reporter or neighborhood “people-weaver.”
NYT Columnist David Brooks Resigns From Nonprofit After More Evidence Of Conflicts Emerges
(Buzzfeed News March 6, 2021)
His resignation comes amid new revelations of entanglements with Nextdoor and the Walton Foundation.
The Times Is Adding Disclosures About David Brooks’s Outside Work to His Columns
(The New York Times March 6, 2021
Mr. Brooks has resigned from a paid post at the Aspen Institute, a think tank, and will be involved as a volunteer with a group he founded at Aspen, the paper said.
When asked about it on his regular PBS News Hour spot he minimizes it, saying it is a non-issue since the Institute’s financials and relationships are publicly available and “no journalism was compromised” (whatever that means.) Nothing resembling an apology has turned up in any of my searches.
It’s worth a reminder here, that this kind of ethical violation gets journalists fired all the time. But I’m not sure at what point “journalist” in Brooks’ world as “the thinking-person’s smart, talented, likeable or at least tolerable non-Trump sane conservative” might give way to what is now a lucrative brand-identity, public speaker and influencer status.
This next link to the immense and multi-faceted Aspen Institute website, with some video and event agenda, gives a sense of his “Weave the People” effort. It’s a little different from the folksy title and his descriptions of endlesslly joyful people “in community” at potluck suppers:
Brooks and wife Anne Snyder both on Agenda at “Weave the People” event at Aspen Institute in 2019.
I encourage you also to browse around this slickly done, highly professional, expensive website. If you click on the seemingly endless scroll of what seem like dozens of board members, they are from every imaginable geographic, corporate, private, institutional, community venue of American life. Beyond the wealth party, on the site it’s not overtly political.
This and other speaking engagements are what Brooks is up to, when he is not tossing out folksy little anecdotes, in his column and in the book, from his and Anne’s Weaving community-visits across conservative-convincable America. (Some of his descriptions are amusing though also annoying at best — like in the book where he situates N.C. Piedmont-Foothills Wilkesboro in the middle of “Appalachia” then attributes its woes to that label. I won’t begin to list here the things he managed to miss there while creating its absent “community.” Spartanburg, S.C. doesn’t feel too recognizable, either.)
Then, there is the similarly sophisticated (and pricey) “faith and values” Denver Institute, from which Brooks’ podcast comes.
David Brooks Second Mountain podcast through the Denver Institute
These are just two, relatively random, peeks at what seems a hefty amount and flow of money, power and influence. Where is the money coming from? From whom? To whom and for what purpose?
For what it is worth to anyone, this does not look like a grass-roots or folksy little side-gig. It looks like a top-down, apparently well-funded movement.
So if we are looking for the power-couples and dynasty-builders of a dawning new wave and era of a way smarter, sophisticated theocratic conservatism — or the Hungary-style Christian nationalism now being mentioned aloud in conservative circles — we would do well not to overlook Anne Snyder and David Brooks.
🔵
Whew. To get me off that ledge before signing off, here is a detailed transcript of a good interview from back in 2015 that reads and sounds like a more recognizable Brooks. (Or for me at least a more comfortable one. I need to get him out of my psychic house for awhile.)
(C-Span, video transcript, January 28, 2015)
Here is Brooks’ official NYT biography.
Next week (8.7) will return to finish the above columns-and-columnists piece, and any deep-diving on Brooks or anyone else will be after granddaughter Miz E’s upcoming first week of “sleepover camp”… here! That week (thru Sunday 8.15), she will be in charge of newShrink content — if any.
🔵
I’ll leave you now with this smile…
Loneliest wild horse on Outer Banks finds its happy ending after months of wandering
(From The Charlotte Observer)
And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
•🌀🔵🔷🦋💙
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
🔵