The idea of David Brooks teaching a class on the subject of humility at Yale strikes a lot of people as inherently funny, and making allowances for mean-spiritedness (and I dare say jealousy), the mockers do have a point. Humility, as a virtue, bears the same relation to op-ed columnizing as meekness does to soldiering or hope to the actuarial sciences. David Brooks is not a Cincinnatus or a Celestine V. There are no fingernail marks anywhere marking the site where Bill Keller dragged David Brooks out of seclusion and forced him to start pontificating in public. Pretending to authority you do not possess is right there in an op-ed columnist’s job description, and humility is at best a necessary casualty.
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