Over Done
              
Fresh from mocking his real estate adventures, thoughtful observers have a new stick with which to beat mock socialogist David Brooks, while striking a glancing blow at Eternal President Ronald Reagan.
Brooks storied mendacity offends all right thinking folk, but now he’s throwing music into his pop culture poporiti, with comic results.
He’s joined the cult of Bruce Springsteen, with the added ickyness of traveling to observe The Boss’s caring antics in several of Europe’s tanking economies.
Nothing revulses like the clueless drawing vast conclusions from pretend empathy.
Bonus points to Alex Pareene and  “Mobutu Sese Seko” for recalling Springsteen inspired dimness of the Reagan era, when another Republican failed to strap Bruce to their caring conservatism.
No, Actually 
In retirement, as in his latter years in office, George W. Bush remains among our most dispised Presidents. Â And of our current living legends, Bush is number one, surpassing the hated Jimmy Carter in least liked-ness.
Presidential reputations are of course confections of whimsy and make believe, so hope lives, but the continued loathing of his big brother can only deepen the despair of Jeb “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda” Bush.
Diamond Lame 
The Washington Post’s awful Op-Ed page has long been an embarrassing collection of right wing hacks “correcting” the Post’s non-existent liberal bias, leavened with torture enthusiasts both right and “centrist.”
Now we have fresh evidence where the rot begins.
All choked up over Queen Elizabeth’s looming Diamond Jubilee, Op-Ed Page Editor Autumn Brewington has come out with a wistful plea against democracy, yearning for the “above party” magic only royals can provide.
“What if, instead of debating whether partisans will put the country’s interests ahead of their own or find reasons to move beyond the gridlock in which they have mired Congress, Washington surmounted the political system and put someone above it? Someone who, like a living Statue of Liberty, symbolizes the nation and represents not one ideology but the American people.“
Just how Britain surmounts unsightly  “partisan gridlock” is unexplained,  but this yearning for conflict-free governance is endemic in thoughtful Washington. Utopian “realism” free from any actual analysis of either issues or the structure of American government, the transcendence Brewington pines for usually means bemoaning how stalemate blocks us from “getting things done,” i.e., doing in Social Security.
