Via Hot Air, here’s a back-and-forth on Laura Ingraham’s radio show between the hostess and New York Times pet conservative columnist David Brooks – and the latter doesn’t come off particularly well. It starts with Ingraham calling him an elitist for some of the awful things he’s said about the Tea Party, and it ends with Brooks talking about how much fun he had when Rahm Emanuel took him to a Springsteen concert.

Brooks, for someone who is a supposed opinion-maker, has shockingly little to offer. While scuttling away from his more noxious slurs against the Tea Party he clings to his hard line against Michele Bachmann – because he met her on the set of some Sunday talk show and didn’t like her. One imagines Bachmann, who unlike Brooks is actually serious about pursuing a conservative agenda, showed little interest in exchanging Manhattan platitudes with him and thus hurt his feelings. You can hear Brooks belittling Bachmann’s educational achievements in a manner Ingraham immediately objects to, and he drops the subject fairly quickly.

The thing about Brooks is, morally and intellectually he’s a pansy. He makes lots of statements he can’t defend and he constantly has to walk them back. And that makes him exactly what the Times is looking for in their pet conservative – the wishy-washy dunce who lends gravitas to their roster of unhinged lefty columnists like Paul Krugman and Frank Rich.