I like how Ross has been attacked on the one hand for the embarrassing sex scenes in his book and simultaneously accused of lacking all the right experiences by Mark (who knows this how?). Naturally, actually reading his book would reveal that Douthat understands very well what intergenerational inequality is—that’s what his book is about!

Since Mark doesn’t actually include any criticisms of Douthat’s column, I can only conclude that he thinks people whose fathers went to Stanford shouldn’t be allowed to write about affirmative action. Or at any rate, not if they’re white and against it.

He opposed affirmative action in a recent column (as though it’s on the top 10 list of important issues right now) but failed to recognize that having a lawyer father who went to Stanford and a private school education that included Harvard might indicate that a different type of affirmative action has played a role in putting him where he is today. Again, a sheltered background has kept him from understanding the reality of this country.

Surely there is a conservative writer in this country with a brain in his head who could communicate something interesting to the Times’ audience. Perhaps that’s asking too much.

As a thinker, Douthat is anodyne and deracinated from the deep expanse of lived reality, and as a writer he is dull, weak and clumsy. Considering the number of non-dogmatic, interesting thinkers and competent writers out there, Douthat’s gig clearly has to do with the usual chimera of balance and not actual quality. Like it or not, Douthat is amongst a peer group that include Kempton and Pfaff, and if he can’t handle the format, that’s his responsibility, not that of the column in which his words are printed.