We have the early winner for the most ironic column of the year, the "estimable" David Brooks delivers:

. . . Al Gore’s “The Assault on Reason” is well worth reading. It reminds us that whatever the effects of our homogenizing mass culture, it is still possible for exceedingly strange individuals to rise to the top.

You remind us of this with every column Mr. Brooks. I have not read Gore's book, and Gore may indeed be a strange egg. But having read David Brooks for too many years, and having dedicated a good deal of time proving (yes, I proved it) that he is a mendacious, insecure, unethical, STRANGE man, it ill behooves him to call anyone else strange. We have many unkind words for Friedman, Broder, Klein and others. But nothing compares to the bizarre mind that David Brooks possesses. Married to his utter lack of fealty to the truth, to honest argument and to decency, it takes some nerve for Brooks to write what he does about Gore. But the success of David Brooks can only be attributed to gall, talent and intelligence surely can not explain it. They are nonexistent in him.