WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2001 — Before last night, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. But David Brooks, the hyper-smart conservative commentator who is perhaps best known as the author of Bobos in Paradise (Touchstone, 2001), a gently mocking ode to the young urban almost-rich, is actually capable of writing a bad article.

Brooks’s stinker, titled "Are We Really One Country? A Report from ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ America," is the cover story of the brand-spanking-new Atlantic Monthly — so new, in fact, that it wasn’t on the magazine’s Web site as of this morning.

No matter, because I can summarize it so quickly that Brooks himself may wonder how he managed to expend so many, many words: Hey, Blue America. You know all those pick-up-driving, churchgoing folks from the Red states, the ones that voted for George W. Bush? Well, guess what? They don’t hate us. In fact, they don’t even think about us all that much. And when the terrorists attacked New York City on September 11, the Red people thought it was really, really bad, even though they don’t particularly like New York. Which, after all, is the apotheosis of Blue.

Brooks’s research methodology, as he describes it, consisted of interviewing people in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, a Red holdout in a Blue state, whose main virtue lies in the fact that it’s a mere 65 miles from Brooks’s home in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Maryland.

His writing methodology is another matter altogether. He offers unsupported generalization after unsupported generalization, stringing them together paragraph after paragraph, page after page, until I would think that his brain would explode. I know mine nearly did. Writing of his new Red friends, Brooks observes — or, rather, asserts: "They are happy to sit quietly with one another. They are hesitant to stir one another’s passions. They appreciate what they have. They value continuity and revere the past. They work hard to reinforce community bonds." And on. And on. And on. Such as:

"In Red America churches are everywhere. In Blue America Thai restaurants are everywhere. In Red America they have QVC, the Pro Bowlers Tour, and hunting. In Blue America we have NPR, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and socially conscious investing. In Red America the Wal-Marts are massive, with parking lots the size of state parks. In Blue America the stores are small but the markups are big."

The underlying thesis, as best as I can tell, is that we Blue folks should recognize that Red folks are, for the most part, kind, decent people whose values may be somewhat different from ours but who in other respects are the kind of people we wouldn’t mind having as neighbors, if only they could afford to live near us.

If that sounds incredibly condescending, well, it’s because it is.

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