October 16, 2004

Soma Sema

Via Julie Saltman's mysterious co-blogger Mok, I am led to contemplate the following cry of metaphysical anguish from everyone's favorite incompetent conservative hack, David Brooks. (He puts it in the mouth of John Kerry, but obviously he's just projecting.)

Spirituality is important to me. I've always felt that we humans are insignificant maggots scuttling across the muck of the universe, and that life itself is just a meaningless moment of agony between the suffocating stench of the womb and the foul decay of the grave.

Mok is right, of course, to say that maggots do not scuttle. But what really puzzles me about this is "the suffocating stench of the womb". What on the earth is Brooks thinking of, and how do his mother and the mother of his children feel about it? On second thought, don't tell me, but do tell me when the Times gets op-ed writers who can handle figurative language and imagery safely, without Brooks's wince-inducing clumsiness, or Thomas Friedman's bloody accidents.

The Running-Dogs of Reaction

Posted at October 16, 2004 11:39 | permanent link

Three-Toed Sloth