DAVID BROOKS GONNA DAVID BROOKS. “[T]hey were socially and intellectually unpretentious. They treated the crew as friends and equals and not as staff. Nobody was trying to prove they were better informed or more sophisticated than anybody else. There were times, in fact, when I almost wished there had been a little more pretense and a little more intellectual and spiritual ambition.”

Of course you did. And better pants-leg creases. Because those are the real signifiers.