Mark takes exception with David Brooks little lampoon of Ward 3 Dem/Bureaucrats, and I respond. I thought it would be worthwhile raising here to see if anyone else wants to chime in. Here's his input:
Bryan: I'm not sure how I feel about David Brooks column, or your response. I guess as a career Federal employee (military and civilian), I was kind of turned off by the implict sneer or backhanded denigration of people like me. Bourgeois, middle class, do gooding bureaucrats who can't park their bikes straight. A George Corley Wallace mentality, without the crass racism. Maybe I misread him (and you) or took a light hearted piece too seriously. But we haven't done well by oursleves in denigrating "bureaucrats", most of whom honestly want to do the right thing. Neither have we done well by obeisance to the Masters of the Universe ( to whom we now deliver ukases on the sumptuary law a la Brooks). I guess I'll have to think about this more.....
Mark
Here's my response:
Mark--great post, and a wonderful Wilsonian defense of the able bureaucrat.
Couple of things.
1. Brooks makes a living out of defining subgroups of humans in a light-hearted sort of parody-laced way (see "Bobos in Paradise, his book length version of this genre on Bourgeois Bohemians....). This is his thing, so to speak. And I think he does it with humor.
2. I don't think Brooks is taking a swipe at hard-working, able bureaucrats. He's taking a swipe at hard-working, able bureaucrats who live in Ward 3, and this is a distinction worth making. It is their INSULARITY from the causes they so loudly espouse (and the concomitant hypocrisy) that sets them apart. It is their drinking of each other's bath water and real lack of any intellectual diveristy that is worth lampooning.
3. Ward 3 is the home of Democrats who think education vouchers are a threat to the public education system in the country, and they'll tell you that after dropping their little prodigies off at the National Presbyterian School. Ward 3 is the home of Democrats who wish to see taxes raised, while assessing none on their domestic help. Ward 3 is ground zero for the kind of insidious, liberal pheromones that bathe the collective federal brains (did you happen to hear the girlish cheer that greeted the swearing in of Eric Holder at Justice? At last, one of US!).
Brooks got it right. I don't think he was trying to eviscerate public service....just hypocrisy.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
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5 comments:
Bryan - well I guess I feel better about being a bureaucrat after your , hmmmmm, robust defense of public service, bureaucrat style. I guess I am easy to take offense.
Luckily, just to put my bona fides out there, I live in Ballston and graduated from public schools (Fairfax County though....not sure if that counts).
Yours,
Mark
Mark--you're the man, and the federal government (and the American people) is lucky to have you.
Believe it or not, there are right-wing Republican, non-bureaucrat, Ward 3 residents, who send their kids to DC public schools. However, David Brooks pegged 97% of my neighbors.
"In short, people in Ward Three disdain three things: cleavage, hunting and dumb people who are richer than they are." Yes, a friend last summer actually asked me what kind of animal a skeet is. Well, at least two out of Brooks' three are reasons why some neighbors cannot believe they have befriended me.
Please don't mention National Presbyterian School in that context. It hosts a refreshingly diverse ideological (politically and religious) community, has many students who come from MD and across the city (not just Ward 3), guides values focused chapel discussions every week for the students, and the anthem and pledge of allegiance are sung and recited at every assembly. If you want a drop-off point for Ward 3 dems, I would look towards Sidwell...as evinced by it being the drop-off for the Limousine Liberal In-Chief.
Sorry, NPS booster! I only used that school as a cutout for expensive private schools and because I used to go to church there. Sidwell would definitely have been a better choice!
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