I just got around to reading the Sunday paper. My Sunday turned out to be a bit busier than I had planned. I took the boys and the dog for a hike in the woods, thinking to tire them all out before bedtime, when I would sit and luxuriate with the Week in Review. Dog decided to roll in something dead, though, necessitating an emergency trip to the self-service dog wash. (Which is why, fellow motorists on 495 North, you may have overheard someone in the next car on her cell phone yelling, “Wash and Wag! Wash and Wag!” at the hapless non-local 411 representative.) What with Dog trying to climb out of the tub and Minor trying to climb in the tub, I was too worn out by the end of the evening to do anything but lie on my couch, drink an Anchor Steam, eat some takeout, and watch the Oscars.

So it was lunchtime today before I had the pleasure of reviewing David Brooks’s latest polemic against “hipster parents” in “black-on-black maternity tunics” who “would get the vapors if their tykes were caught listening to Disney tunes”:

Don’t they observe that with their inevitable hummus snacks, their pastel-free wardrobes, their unearned sense of superiority and their abusively pretentious children’s names like Anouschka and Elijah, they are displaying a degree of conformity that makes your average suburban cul-de-sac look like Renaissance Florence?

Hmm. I don’t think I could ever be described as a “hipster,” but something tells me that non-conservative moi would be lumped in with the targets of Brooks’s attack. I love hummus; I favor clothing that is “black on black” (or as we call it in these parts, “black”); one of my children has an unusual name (named after his immigrant grandfather, but whatever); and I am no fan of Disney tunes. My sense of superiority, however, is entirely earned.

I’m not sure what he would have me do, though. Whose tastes am I supposed to consult when choosing clothing, food, and music for my pre-verbal children but my own? I guess I could just give them the credit cards and let them run wild. Or some well-meaning conservatives could pass some laws restricting me to the appropriate objects. As for my so-called non-conformity, I never imagined that my preference for black clothes set me apart from the herd, but then again I never thought about it that hard. Not as hard as David Brooks thinks about it.

Be very clear on this point: He’s not criticizing the New York Times for wasting precious column inches on stupid stories about upper middle-class urban parents. He’s just making the subtext of the original article explicit.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the opposite page, Nicholas Kristof has a piece about our government’s proposal to reduce spending on global maternal health programs. He describes an Ethiopian woman who suffered from an obstetric fistula, a horrifying yet totally treatable condition. Although he wasn’t able to tie the reduction in spending to this health issue in a compelling way, his article raises an important issue that is worth our time, whereas his counterpart on the other page basically wrote a snarky blog post.