{"id":1041,"date":"2004-12-08T00:00:40","date_gmt":"2004-12-08T04:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2004\/12\/08\/i-thought-there-was-something-weird\/"},"modified":"2007-07-29T21:26:55","modified_gmt":"2007-07-30T01:26:55","slug":"i-thought-there-was-something-weird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2004\/12\/08\/i-thought-there-was-something-weird\/","title":{"rendered":"I thought there was something weird…"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

When I read David Brooks’ column<\/a> this morning, I thought there was something odd about the statistics he was presenting, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I kept focusing on the cultural assumptions that he places on both red staters and blue staters that are nothing more than stereotypes of both groups, and the supposed "bad influences" that he never actually delineates. Well, perhaps it’s because "bad influences" turns out to be "people who aren’t white". Media Matters<\/a> and TAPPED<\/a> break it down in some detail:<\/p>\n

\n

In his December 7 New York Times op-ed column, David Brooks cited research by Steve Sailer — a conservative who has written in defense of a group promoting eugenics — in touting a purported "spiritual" movement of people he called "natalists." Brooks defined this demographic as people who are procreating more than other Americans, moving in droves to "clean, orderly and affordable places where they can nurture children from bad influences," and leaving "what they perceive as disorder, vulgarity and danger." They account for population increases in the fastest-growing regions in the country, Brooks wrote, and politicians will take notice. But his thesis is not supported by the data — unless one limits the analysis, as Brooks apparently did, to procreative white people.<\/strong> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks to Atrios<\/a> for the links.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I read David Brooks’ column this morning, I thought there was something odd about the statistics he was presenting, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I kept focusing on the cultural assumptions that he places on both red staters and blue staters that are nothing more than stereotypes of both groups, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-1041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-current-events"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZBi-gN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}