Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law)…Wow, that's really...superficial. I guess I should put [Princeton, Princeton Seminary] after my name from now on, then I'd have the right to point out that this collection of Ivy League wonders has roiled the country in a moribund economy, seemingly endless series of scandals, and a cloudy and confused foreign policy. I'd also really like to know who gave the "stand down" order in Benghazi, but that's for another day.
What drew my attention to Brooks this week was another one of his odd columns. One would think that someone who so appreciates the trappings of education would know the Bible a little better than this:
In Corinthians, Jesus tells the crowds, “Not many of you were wise by worldly standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”As everyone reading this knows, Jesus is not the one speaking to the church in Corinth; it's Paul.
Apparently, a number of people noticed this and wrote to the Times about it, as Brooks has since corrected the column. Sorta.
You see, he still hasn't cited from which Epistle to the Corinthians he quotes, which indicates to me that he doesn't know that there are two.
By the way, the correct citation is I Corinthians 3:18.