On Moral Hazard's Human

Our Mr. Brooks Takes a Swim Across the Pond

By Charles P. Pierce
Vogue blog

Moral Hazard, the Irish setter owned for photo-op purposes by New York Times columnist David Brooks, occasionally stretches himself out on one of the wide windowsills of the Young Fogies Club and, licking his balls contemplatively, watches all the ordinary people below as they hustle themselves through their workaday lives. These moments give him great peace. Moral Hazard believes that they connect him more closely to the world outside the Club, where the atmosphere was as close and as stuffy as were most of the members, many of whom took it upon themselves as their life's work to criticize those faceless masses down on the sidewalk. For their own good, of course. Always for their own good.

Moral Hazard sighed. Master had delivered himself of another lesson that morning. He had once again sought to teach the teeming throng how exactly their unreasonable demands upon their country had worked to damage its delicate essence, of which Master long had thought himself the curator. He'd even built a tiny, padded room in the new Cleveland Park family manse in which to store the country's delicate essence far away from the people of the country, who might drop it again in their desire to improve themselves in ways of which Master did not approve. Standards of behavior in Cleveland Park were firm but fair. Moral Hazard looked out the window again and sighed.

There was a newspaper stand just below the window. Moral Hazard saw the little Greek man who ran it ducking in and out behind the counter as people walked up to buy various things to read. One guy walked up in a very nice suit, some starshiney shoes, and a Louis Vuitton briefcase that the guy could use as a mirror, if he needed to do so. Moral Hazard had him pegged for a Times reader. He wondered if the guy would take Master's explanation of why everything that was wrong about the country was the fault of everybody else in the country in the spirit in which it was intended. Moral Hazard watched as the guy in the expensive suit leaned over the counter and bought a copy of Juggs. Moral Hazard was oddly reassured by this. It'd be nice to belong to that guy, he thought. Yeah, that'd be cool.

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