I have no idea. That was bloody awful bad even by the extremely low standard set by his usual work. “Norwegians win more medals per capita than USians because they are hard! USians have forgotten how to be hard and are soft. Like a flaccid penis. Just in case anyone missed the phallic use of metaphor there. I will demonstrate with a World War II-era anecdote!” Surely it wouldn’t have anything to do with Norway having a longer winter and more people there having access to winter sports than those in the US, despite our far larger population. Gracious no. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the smug off me. 🙁
How long will it be before Brooks refers to them as soft European socialists incapable of competing with the “tough” Asians?
See, there was me thinking that Norway won lots of medals for a small country because that small country has mountains and snow. Just goes to show how wrong I was. It’s because they’re all totally hardcore and manly. The paragraph he chose to cut (in my imagination, at least): “Oh yeah, the Norwegians are good at winter sports because having a black metal scene means everyone has to run around in the snow all the time to be cool. Have you seen those videos? These guys can ski holding a bass guitar and wearing a wizard hat. Can you do that, America? I thought not.”
How long before he refers to soft Scandinavian socialists who can’t compete with the Chinese because they have high taxes and too much vacation??
WTF is he talking about?! Norwegians have a) more snow and b) a democratic socialist safety net, which helps to provide the lifestyle in which one doesn’t have to be a millionaire to go skiing. Then again, this is written by the man who blamed Haiti for not thriving since, hey, Barbados had no problem getting over that little incident called slavery.
That is a loooong bit of wankery there in that column. It reads like a satire of an old, somewhat doddering rich guy rambling on, pipe in hand, seated in the big brown leather chair at the country club. “These Norwegians have a history, you know. Let me tell you the story of Jan Baalsrud … Oh, Finster! Bring me another brandy, good man! What was I saying? Oh yes. Jan Baalsrud …” And he never notices that everyone has left the room.
I don’t know I don’t know I DON’T KNOW!!! Every time I read anything he writes I don’t just disagree with it, I’m deeply offended by his simplistic, essentializing, TOTALLY MISLEADING, WRONG, AND DEMOGOGIC indecency. I cannot express my hatred for this man. It only makes it worse that he’s taken as the voice of “intelligent” or “enlightened” conservatism. I would like to see an intelligent conservative voice every once in a while. David Brooks is not it.
I would like to say I’m surprised, but having read his columns before, this is totally right up his alley. After reading the column he wrote in response to the earthquake in Haiti, I don’t think anything he writes could shock me. And he never notices that everyone has left the room. So funny and so true.
Brooks is just upset that he didn’t get to walk barefoot to school each day both ways uphill in the snow like that Norwegian dude did. Maybe we can have him train our olympians by sending them to practice on a glacier in Afganistan while being shot at by the Taliban. At least they might win the biathalon. Maybe the Norwegians are better at winter sports than us because they invented about half of them, and a higher % of their population skis?
There’s also the fact that the Norwegians *invented* half the sports that are played at the Winter Games. They’ve had more time to perfect them than anyone else.
What I love is the hint at an admission, at the end of “of course, it might perhaps conceivably have something to do with how the winter Olympics consist of a lot of traditional Scandinavian sports which can be easily practiced in the Norwegian climate and terrain,” yet somehow he doesn’t need to justify having spent the entire column raising a different, less plausible explanation. That’s the essence of David Brooks, right there. “There is an obvious, correct answer to this question, but I prefer to concentrate on one which is stupider.” But really, if it’s really about how Norwegians are such super-tough badass WWII awesome heroes, how come they don’t clean up in the summer Olympics, too? How come the memory of Jan Baalsrud doesn’t inspire victories in baseball and judo?
“Lapps” (or what he means by “Laps”) is also considered a derogatory term by a lot of the Sami people. Just wanted to put that out there.
I’ve always been weary whenever someone talks about people living in a set border under a government as having a distinctive personality or set of traits. A nation is a set of individuals. I doubt that the homogeneous “culture” you speak of is really so homogeneous, and I’m even more skeptical of the claim that the specific “culture” is a set thing that has always existed and has a sort of definite essence that must be respected and preserved at all costs. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think it is right to destroy traditions, or that a privileged group has the right to destroy the culture of a less privileged group. It’s just that whenever I hear people talk about the “spirit of they also like to use it to justify the status quo and protect even those within a culture from changing it.
erm. I suck at html. That should read, It’s just that whenever I hear people talk about the “spirit of (insert country/region/religion/ethnic group etc) they also like to use it to justify the status quo and protect even those within a culture from changing it.
As somebody with 50% Norwegian heritage, let me say that this is the most brilliant and incisive column ever written by Mr. Brooks, whom I consider the finest writer in all of Christendom.
well, Norway does much better in the Winter Games than other countries with a similar climate, so “weather” doesn’t account for all of Norway’s gold medals and there actually is something to explain. (Of course, David Brooks should have used some of his wordcount to say that.) And I actually really enjoyed that column. OK, the reasoning was very stupid, but the story was great. So I know your question was rhetorical, Jill, but based on that column I can see why David Brooks still has a job. I assume his readers value storytelling above reasoning skills.
It is so amazing how some US people are completely convinced they and their country are the best in anything, and are so wonderfully surprised when they’re proven wrong. And I also think many people in Europe would actually be very offended at bringing up WW2 in such a context. It made me uncomfortable
Hey, you know where they have mountains, show and really, really hard people? Afghanistan. Yet Afghanistan in the medal count? Not so much. Perhaps peace and prosperity help with that athletic achievement thing. Let’s see … top of the medal count has prosperous nation, prosperous nation, prosperous nation, prosperous nation … not a lot of those countries have more than a thousand troops engaged in combat operations now … I’m sensing a theme.
Last one, I think … Does Brooks know that Victor Davis Hanson’s Carnage and Culture is not actually meant as wank material? I mean, he can stroke to whatever he wants, but most people don’t actually get aroused by military history. Dick Cheney and Helmuth von Moltke (the latter of the two, the schmuck from 1914) are unusual in that regard, and should not perhaps be considered role models.
It’s an inane column, but I don’t really have a problem with it. Snow, plus state support for Olympic athletes=Gold medals. And, yeah, despite American stereotypes about pussified social Democratic feminists, the traditional Norwegian way of life is pretty damned rugged.
Aside from the jangly intro and outro which were clearly slapped onto a WWII story he’d written on a totally separate occasion and was eager to share; and the bizarre attempt to sound like Lao Tzu by sloppily invoking philosophical notions of Blending Hard and Soft; the key point is that Brooks sees helping an injured resistance fighter escape from Nazis as “Flouting any sense of rational cost-benefit analysis”. That’s why he has a job: he’s seemingly celebrating selfless social consciousness while simultaneously normalizing severely myopic hyper-individualism. Capitalists like that.
So, to clarify why I hated this column so much: Yes, it was a nice story. Very entertaining! Very cool! WOW that guy sounds tough! But I’m also reading it in the context of every other David Brooks column. And David Brooks likes to blame (or credit) “culture” for wins and losses. Like how he credits Norwegian culture for their Olympic wins — as if the Olympics were an equally-accessible playing field and not, you know, set up to privilege certain sports and skill sets over others (sports and skill sets which largely happen to originate or at least be traditionally popular in one part of the world). Compare this column on culture to his column on Haiti: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html So, yeah, when David Brooks starts applauding a certain culture, I get uncomfortable and annoyed. Because guess where those great cultures generally originate? And guess where the “problematic” cultures are from?
I for one am placed in a difficult position as day manager at the E. Riverside Jiffy Lube, as everyone single person on the floor (and under it) are derelict in their duties every time a Brooks column comes out.
I read We Die Alone, and it was a flippin’ amazing story. Jan Baalsrud was extraordinarily tough, and the ingenuity, compassion, determination, and fierce Nazi-resistance of those who saved him made me cry with hope for the human spirit. (Also, descriptions of skiing through the mountains! Including up mountains! Very fast! Could provide a hint as to why Norway wins gold medals in things like, say, skiing!) I think what irritates me most about the column was that its meat was a summary of the book with no real value added in terms of insight. Not that I think the story doesn’t deserve wider recognition, but in this context it feels like appropriation, for lack of a better word. Also, guess what? A part of the story was left out! Guess why the Germans were lying in wait for Jan and his party? Because a small-town Norwegian merchant sold them out, for fear that they were actually German spies testing him! This lead to the painful deaths and the torture and massacre of numerous Norwegian resistance sympathizers. In no way do I think this one instance of treachery is reflective of The Norwegian Culture (because that would be stupid!) but it goes to show — it was the individuals making choices, risking their necks, doing amazing feats of physical, mental, and emotional strength hauling Jan up and down mountains. Can we not minimize their heroism into platitudes about The Norwegian Culture, David Brooks? Which does, as Jill points out, also make me feel like you’re uncomfortably close to saying “strong, tough, small-town, real-values, traditional WHITE DUDES FOR THE WIN! THEY ARE NATURALLY AWESOME!”
Jill: Interesting explanation of why Brooks’ columns on culture irritate you. I don’t read his stuff very often. Mostly only when it’s linked in a post like this. And even in this case, I only skimmed it. I turn the channel when he comes on the PBS Newshour, too. Which brings up my biggest problem with Brooks. The question isn’t “why does he still have a job.” Rather: Why does he have SO MANY jobs? He’s fricking everywhere. He’s in the newspaper, he’s on the radio, he’s on the teevee. Why is his pontificating so sought after? “And now for commentary we have David Brooks of the New York Times …” because, shit, we can’t get enough of him elsewhere? Seriously. What is up with this need to hear from David Effing Brooks all the time? Christ, I half expect my doctor to bring him out to offer his analysis on the results of my mammogram next week. I. Do. Not. Get. It.
He’s a self-absorbed provincial middle-aged white guy whose writing makes other self-absorbed provincial middle-aged white guys nod their heads and make vaguely approving grunting noises. Why wouldn’t he still have a job?
Norwegian input! All Americans I’ve met have been a lot more achievement-minded than your average Norwegian. We might win on being outdoorsy, but I doubt there’s a lot more resilience. Here’s what I think the reasons are: 1. A small population leads to a small range of sports available to the young jock. With skiing you don’t need to have enough people around you to put up teams and compete and improve your skill that way. It’s just you and the snow.* 2. State support of athletes, right down to significant support for local sports organisations. Norwegian athletics take part wholly outside schools, even as a kid. 3. A significant amount of previous gold medal winners to look up to and make your dream seem accessible. This one’s just a guess, mind you. *We’ve had good speed skaters but never a good hockey team, for instance
Every once in a while, a high-achieving country just has a bad Olympics season. Exhibit A this year: Russia, which has the money, the winters, the “ruggedness,” and still didn’t do well. I’m not even going to talk about Ukraine, which got no medals at all, though everyone is still too busy talking about political deadlock in order have time to be ashamed. Jan’s story is absolutely amazing, and I’m kind of sad to see it cheapened by Brooks to make some stupid little point. Brooks has a job because he knows how to dress up something perfectly vapid in shiny wrapping, and sell it to the American public.
Great comment, Jill! I think you’re absolutely right. The weird thing is that I wasn’t even aware that something was niggling at me about the column, which I posted above to say I quite enjoyed, but then I read your comment and I had one of those click moments, and now I can’t believe I *didn’t* detect a racist subtext before. I haven’t really read much of his other stuff but… yeah. I must have detected the subtext unconsciously though because I felt a sense of relief, like when you’ve just figured something out. I think that might have been one of those white-privilege-scales falling from your eyes moments that people talk about. Usually it’s not as easy to notice it happening. I don’t think I would have even noticed it this time if I didn’t have have the “I enjoyed that” comment up above to prove that at a very recent point in time I didn’t see any subtext there. But it seems obvious now! Anyway, thank you!
Allow me to offer another perspective: Brooks isn’t offering the Norwegians’ spirit as a reason why they outperform the Senegalese, the Hatians, or the Afghans. That difference doesn’t need a cultural explanation. He’s using culture as one reason to help explain why Norwegians outperform similarly prosperous, peaceful, snowy, and white nations. When you control for all that, a cultural “hardiness” is almost as good an explanation as any (Ingrid’s explanations above are also informative). And if nothing else, it’s a great excuse to share Baalsrud’s amazing story that I’m sure most Americans hadn’t previously heard.
I’m also reading this column in the context of every other David Brooks column, and I gotta say, it’s actually the BEST THING I’VE ACTUALLY EVER READ BY HIM, in the sense that it’s basically a kick-ass war/rescue/survival story bookended by incoherent bullshit, as opposed to an entire column full of same, like everything else the guy writes.