the utter vacuousness of David Brooks

is hidden behind the NY Times firewall, but today's epistle fixates on the recent Smoking Gun postings of the travel needs of Dick Cheney and John Kerry.

In an aside here, I'd like to point out that the Cheney list is meant to be handed over to hotel staff, while Kerry's lists are meant for his personal staff's use. That these are two very different kinds of documents is quite clear if you actually read them.

But it isn't clear to Brooks, who is hell-bent on making some fairly astounding assumptions.

Now there's a leaked memo from the John Kerry campaign to hotel managers [not true - see above aside], informing them that "JK hates celery" (too spicy, perhaps) [note to David Brooks - attempt at snark not a great success]; that, ungratefully, he does not eat tomato-based products [a temporary preference - see this story]; and that his Cobb salads must have both vinaigrette and ranch dressing on the side (flip-flopper). [isn't it long past time to retire that one?]

I've long argued that the first time you see the Kerrys you think he's normal and she's weird, but after you observe them for a while you realize that inwardly he's the weird one and she's normal. This is confirmed by Teresa Heinz Kerry's entirely sensible hotel requirements list: good air circulation, flax bread and chicken caesar salad with lots of garlic.

Where do you start deconstructing such utter crap? How much time has Brooks spent in the company of the Kerrys, "observing" them? What, precisely, in the previous paragraph indicates any kind of weirdness on Kerry's part? A lack of fondness for celery? I don't like the taste of it, either. Big deal. And how does Brooks come by his knowledge of JK's inward being? Is his insight anything like the insight Bush had into Vladimir Putin's soul? Is it not possible that both of the Kerrys are "normal", whatever normal means? I've spent time with both of them, myself, and found that this was in fact the case. And is there some Salad Master List somewhere I haven't seen that labels Cobb salad eaters weird while chicken caesar is an AOK choice?

Brooks's presumably tongue-in cheek claim that this "voyeuristic snooping" amounts to "piercing sociological research" notwithstanding, his column is maybe the zillionth take on the usual Kerry mocking the right wing so enjoys indulging in. There is no truth to it, and no originality either, but when did that ever stop any of them?

There was a comment in an Anne Kornblut piece about the chattering class from Mary Matalin in the Times today that was oddly revealing.

"Where the chattering classes get dangerous is when something becomes an article of faith among the CCCW [chattering classes' conventional wisdom]. Then it becomes static and immutable and absolutely detached from reality."

David Brooks, have you read your own paper today?