David Brooks Bitchslaps The "Cognoscenti"

David Brooks is a strange kind of conservative. His Bobos in Paradise was a brilliant sociological skewering of the typical Upper West Side liberal phoney, but now he turns his eye on the cultural elite ... from the Op Ed section of The New York Times. Hmmm.

Note to David: You cannot get more cultural elitist than the NY Times.

Anyhoo: David peppers his column with mentions of Vogue, InStyle, Diana Vreeland, Helmut Lang, Anna Wintour, and even Kate Spade gift bags. So, The Corsair has to ask: who is David speaking to? Every damned week without fail Brooks slaps us around with mentions of the magazines, pop cultural names, brands, of the NY-LA-DC elites as if it is a mortal sin or something to like that sort of thing. David: One does not go to hell for eating arugula!

I mean, is Brooks talking to the Evangelical Republican small businessman in Colorado? Or is he yelling at the Manhattan cultural elite here? The Corsair is confused.

Whatever the case, Brooks' casual references to Givenchy, Manolo Blahnik suggest more than a passing familiarity with the "cognoscenti."