David Brooks Gets It

I may not agree with everything David Brooks (the New York Times' version of a "conservative" columnist) says, but he is truly the only person at the New York Times who actually gets that there's a world outside of upper middle class Manhattan.

Here's the beginning of his most excellent column from yesterday's paper:

If all the world were south of 96th Street, what a happy place it would be! If all the world were south of 96th Street, then we could greet with unalloyed joy the news that after decades of social change, more American women are living without husbands than with them.

We could revel in the stories of women — from Riverside Drive all the way to TriBeCa! — liberated from constraining marriages and no longer smothered by self-absorbed spouses. We could celebrate with those — the ad executives as well as the law partners! — who now have the time and freedom to go back to school and travel abroad, and who are choosing not to get remarried.

But alas, there are people in this country who do not live within five miles of MoMA, and for them, the fact that many more people are getting divorced or never marrying at all is not such good news.

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