Reading journal 3: Cynicism vs. Healthy Skepticism

(*Sorry, I forgot to post last week, but I figured better late than never!)

Admittedly, I know pretty much nothing about global economics (or really any economics for that matter) but David Brooks’s op-ed in the Times last week, titled “The Lost Decade?” which considers the implications of a possible global financial crash, jumped out at me for some inexplicable reason. I guess it’s a good example of what we talked about in class a few weeks ago, of stories that are written both for experts and novices.

I thought that Brooks’s op-ed, though it could have easily slipped over into cynicism given the depressing nature of the topic, managed to stay “healthily skeptical” by backing up his assertions with specific examples. Brooks doesn’t try to sugarcoat the gloomy economic situation in the least (“The prognosis for next few years is bad with a chance of worse,” he says) but at the same time, he doesn’t just come in and tell us we’re all screwed so we might as well give up, either. For each complaint he lodges (and he has a lot), he offers specific evidence of why and how it has unfolded.

His biggest complaint seems to be with partisan responses to the growing crisis. “To put it in fancy terms, the crisis is an emergent condition — even more terrible than the sum of its parts,” writes Brooks. “Yet the ideologues who dominate the political conversation are unable to think in holistic ways. They pick out the one factor that best conforms to their preformed prejudices and, like blind men grabbing a piece of the elephant, they persuade themselves they understand the whole thing.” It seems here like Brooks is implying that the politicians are more concerned with sticking to party lines and regurgitating whatever party rhetoric seems faintly applicable, than with intelligently examining the situation and strategizing appropriate solutions.

He calls both parties to blame for this, saying that Democrats are too ready to name increased government spending as the be-all-end-all solution, and Republicans are too ready say the same of cutting taxes, and reducing regulation—neither of which fully addresses the scope of the problem at hand. (“To a man in love with his hammer, every problem requires a nail,” offers Brooks.)

But although Brooks certainly doesn’t hold any punches, and seems to denigrate both parties equally, I think he manages to escape sounding exactly cynical or nihilistic by balancing his own opinions with outside evidence. He includes expert opinions (he references a former deputy Treasury secretary, and quotes a foreign policy professor from Bard College) and also offers solutions of his own (“Simplify the tax code. End corporate taxes and create a consumption tax. Reshape the European Union to make it either more unified or less, but not halfway as it is now...”)

By contrast, I would compare the “skepticism” of Brooks’s article to basically anything/everything on Gawker. I think the main difference is that Gawker’s clout as a blog is basically predicated on being snarky. Even though Gawker definitely covers news stories that are important and relevant in the metropolitan area, (I'm personally a fan and read their site about ten times a day until they installed the new layout) their goal is to entertain readers more than it is to be objective. It's perfectly acceptable for them to be cynical given the specific media niche that they fill, whereas that kind of opinionated bias would never in a million years fly at harder news publications, and given that they're very different kinds of journalism that seems like an okay thing.