David Brooks (commentator)
David Brooks (born 1961) is a columnist for The New York Times who has become one of the prominent voices of conservative politics in the United States.
He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1983 majoring in History, is a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and has been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly and a commentator on NPR and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
He has written a book of cultural commentary titled Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. Before the Second Gulf War, Brooks had argued forcefully on moral grounds for American military intervention in Iraq, echoing the belief of conservative commentators and political figures that American and British forces would be welcomed as liberators. However, some of his opinion pieces in the spring of 2004, suggested that he had tempered somewhat his earlier optimism about the war.
Brooks also writes articles and makes television appearances as a commentator on various trends in pop culture, such as internet dating. His newest book is entitled Paradise Drive.
Brooks describes himself as being originally a liberal. In 1983 for example he wrote in a parody of conservative pundit William Buckley Jr :
- In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping. (University of Chicago Maroon, April 5, 1983.)
A turning point in Brook's thinking came later that year in a televised debate with Milton Friedman, in which, according to Brooks, Friedman made a "two-sentence rebuttal which totally devastated my point".