David Brooks Thinks Class Has More to Do With Where You Eat Than Where You Work
David Brooks, elite pundit par excellence, has been giving a master lesson for years in how to talk about class without actually talking about class. But class is about material realities, not empty cultural signifiers like one’s TV habits or food preferences.
New York Times columnist David Brooks’s recent gaffe on Twitter/X is hardly the first time he’s tried to write about food and inadvertently revealed something about himself. (William B. Plowman / NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
Last week, New York Times columnist David Brooks posted a tweet complaining about the price of the meal in front of him at an airport restaurant. “This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport,” Brooks wrote mournfully alongside an accompanying image of a very sad-looking hamburger and fries. “This is why Americans think the economy is terrible.”
The tweet was quick to elicit mockery, in part because its central claim obviously wasn’t true. And, within a few hours, Brooks’s hamburger fable had collapsed. By following a few visual breadcrumbs, internet sleuths quickly traced the table, chair, and cut of fries to Smokehouse Restaurant in Newark’s Terminal A, whose menu lists the cost of Brooks’s meal at a much less princely $17.
This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport. This is why Americans think the economy is terrible. pic.twitter.com/1qeV9qOBL3
— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) September 21, 2023
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