David Brooks

I recently discovered a new columnist whose writing style I really like. His name is David Brooks.

One of my favorite articles is one that he wrote about 5 years ago. It's called Saturday Night Lite.

Here are some of the best quotes from the article:

"I blame the arbiters of virtue. Sometime over the past generation we became less likely to object to something because it is immoral and more likely to object to something because it is unhealthy or unsafe. So smoking is now a worse evil than six of the Ten Commandments, and the word "sinful" is most commonly associated with chocolate.

Now we lead lives in which everything is a pallid parody of itself: fat-free yogurt, salt-free pretzels, milk-free milk. Gone, at least among the responsible professional class, is the exuberance of the feast. Gone is the grand and pointless gesture."

OR

"This isn't the empire of an American Caesar; it's the empire of faux Caesar salad.

I blame parents. Kids are raised amid foam corner protectors and schooled amid flame-retardant construction paper. They're drugged with a vast array of pharmaceuticals to keep them from becoming interesting. They go from adult-structured tutorials to highly padded sports practices to career-counselor-approved summer internships."

He ends with these words:

"no matter how dull and responsible you become, an alternative and much stranger moral universe is always just one slippery step away."

Agreed.