Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Yet Another New York Times Edition)

David Brooks says Nanci Pelosi is some kind of hereditary plutocrat, like George W. Bush:

A snit in first class - Opinion - International Herald Tribune: I have a dream that [Nancy] Pelosi, who was chauffeured to school as a child.... I dream of a great harmonic convergence among the obscenely rich.... [But] I know that both Bush and Pelosi are part of an upper-income whirlwind of strife....

This week, witness Pelosi going on her all-about-me inauguration tour, which is designed to rebrand her as a regular Catholic grandma from Baltimore. Members of the middle classes never have to mount campaign swings to prove how regular they are, but these upper-bracket types can't help themselves, and they always lay it on too thick...

Here is a photo of Nancy Pelosi's childhood home in Baltimore:

Nancy Pelosi grew up at the far end of this block of Albemarle Street in Baltimore. San Francisco Chronicle photo by Michael Macor.

Here's a photo of the Bushes' summer house on Walker Point:

Daughters of ethnic Democratic mayors in the 1950s did get driven to school. But hereditary plutocrats they were not.

As one colleague said on Friday apropos of another issue: "David Brooks? You're using a tenured Harvard statistician to refute David Brooks?! You don't use a tenured statistician, you use a fly-swatter!"

Can the New York Times survive a decade with columns of this low quality?