September 11, 2004
HEAD VS. HEART:
Ruling Class War (DAVID BROOKS, 9/11/04, NY Times)
There are two sorts of people in the information-age elite, spreadsheet people and paragraph people. Spreadsheet people work with numbers, wear loafers and support Republicans. Paragraph people work with prose, don't shine their shoes as often as they should and back Democrats.C.E.O.'s are classic spreadsheet people. According to a sample gathered by PoliticalMoneyLine in July, the number of C.E.O.'s donating funds to Bush's campaign is five times the number donating to Kerry's.
Professors, on the other hand, are classic paragraph people and lean Democratic. Eleven academics gave to the Kerry campaign for every 1 who gave to Bush's. Actors like paragraphs, too, albeit short ones. Almost 18 actors gave to Kerry for every 1 who gave to Bush. For self-described authors, the ratio was about 36 to 1. Among journalists, there were 93 Kerry donors for every Bush donor. For librarians, who must like Faulknerian, sprawling paragraphs, the ratio of Kerry to Bush donations was a whopping 223 to 1.
Laura Bush has a lot of work to do in shoring up her base.
This is, of course, a simple function of the fact that reality confirms conservative ideas while liberalism is utopian, or fictional. If you deal in facts you're forced to believe in conservatism. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 11, 2004 11:19 AM
Brooks just can't stop himself from inventing new demographics. What happened to Patio Man? Maybe he should write for Marvel comics.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at September 11, 2004 11:59 AMDavid Brooks' observation corresponds well with Michael Barone's book "Hard America, Soft America". Maybe there is something about dealing with ideas all day that makes journalists, professors, librarians -- paragraph people -- also Soft Americans?
But I can't square Brooks' theory with the blogosphere. The blogosphere is a 100% idea-driven activity -- bloggers are natural paragraph people. If Brooks is right the blog world oughta be overflowing with lefty/liberal/groupthink, like the average college campus.
Posted by: Gideon at September 11, 2004 12:16 PMPithy and spot on.
I still believe in all of the ideals I believed in as a youth, I just don't believe that we can pay for 'em, or I now see how human nature will defeat their widespread realization.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at September 11, 2004 12:19 PMGideon
I think most bloggers are, at heart, technophiles.
Nothing teaches you about the reality of human faults like dealing with technology designed and built by humans.
Posted by: Chris B at September 11, 2004 12:45 PMGideon has a point about certain types of bloggers, but other types are indeed technical people, and technical people must by definition live in the world of facts. It's what we do and what we are. I've been a professional problem-solver for twenty years now. I definitely find that in interactions with other non-technical people, family, friends, acquaintences, my world view is much more literal, and my thought processes more logical and bottom-line oriented, than the non-technical types. That's why I, and those like me, are drawn to fact-based analysis, and I imagine it's why we find those who don't live in that world so mysterious and, well, goofy!
My $.02 anyway. YMMV!
It's a gross oversimplification. There are as many goofy, left wing, utopian techy number-geeks as there are lefty 'paragraph' professors, and there are many prosaic conservatives as well. This is just left brain/right brain stuff.
A related thesis was expounded by a book entitled "The Goddess and the Alphabet" by Leonard Schlain, which stated that prior to the written word warping culture towards patriarchy and war, pre-literate culture was characterized by peaceful co-existence and goddess worship. I'd consign Brooks latest attempt at dividing the world to the same dustbin that Schlain's book has found itself assigned to.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at September 11, 2004 03:26 PMWhat about database people?
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at September 12, 2004 02:15 AMDavid Brooks is just grasping at straws here so that he can justify his pathetic existence to his leftie, metrosexual friends and neighbors on the Upper West Side.
Richard Reeves, a liberal journalist turned historian, was a physics major at Stevens Institute of Technology. When he received an honorary doctorate there, he said in his speech that the difference between us tech majors and the liberal arts types is that we can do everything they can do, and they can't do any of the things we can do.
Brooks' distinction is loopy. I have a friend who is a professor of physics at a nationally famous university in North Carolina and he is a creationist and an evangelical Christian. The former head of the Math Department at Rutgers, another friend, is the son of Earl Browder, Stalin's hand-picked candidate for US President. And the apple didn't fall far from the tree.
Libertarianism is popular among techies. Where does that land on Brooks' dopey linear model.
Posted by: Bart at September 12, 2004 07:27 AM