This item by Jonathan Bines, staff writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live appears in the Huffington Post
As we all know, 2011 was a difficult year in Washington — a year of gridlock, dysfunction and extremism. And, as we all also know, Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame. How do we know this? Because we have David Brooks, looking down upon the political scrum from his skybox high above midfield, to show us the symmetry lurking beneath the apparent chaos.
Call it Brooks’s Law of Political Equivalency: For any Republican/conservative/right-wing culpability, there is an equal and opposite Democratic/liberal/left-wing culpability: If the Republicans are beset by extremism and fanaticism, then the Democrats are beset by extremism and fanaticism. If the Republicans display intransigence, the Democrats display intransigence. If the Republicans are in thrall to a discredited economic theory, then the Democrats are in thrall to a discredited economic theory. If the Republicans exist in a media echo chamber, then the Democrats exist in a media echo chamber. And so on.
2011 offered a banner year for Brooks to expound his Law, and he did so brilliantly, as seen in the following 19 examples from this year’s columns: