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The cultural criticism of David Brooks and Thomas Frank is worthwhile precisely because it can't be taken too seriously. Unlike the insufferably dogmatic Ann Coulter and Michael Moore, Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, and Frank, the liberal founder of The Baffler, seem to be conscious of how sweeping their generalizations and rhetorical their arguments really are. Unlike Coulter and Moore, they know they're not really going to rouse anyone into action. So their observations come across as responsible gossip rather than heated argument—what they say is just what they've seen, valuable for getting a general impression of a social group but far from a scientific study or political platform.

In a recent cover story of the Boston Globe's "Ideas" section, deputy editor Wen Stephenson noted the striking comparisons between Brooks and Frank: "Born less than four years (but what seems a full generation) apart, Brooks, 42, and Frank, 39, both emerged from the University of Chicago … to become keen, witty, and extravagantly wide-angled cultural critics." Stephenson says both authors "prefer the sweeping vista and the grand statement to the finely tuned argument" and "attempt nothing less than to explain why whole classes of Americans are the way they are today."

Brooks's latest book examines (and exhorts) Americans inhabiting "big-box malls … herds of SUVs, and their exit-ramp office parks." Frank excoriates (lovingly, he says) his native Kansas for abandoning its historical political populism in favor of Reagan conservatism.

Unfortunately, Stephenson refrains from speculating how the authors' "humor" and "moral instruction" is intended. Introducing a comparison of themes and excerpts from the two authors, he leaves it to readers to determine "whether they are talking to you or about you, laughing with you or at you."

• Brooks gained widespread attention with an article asserting that America is divided into Red (rural and conservative) and Blue (urban and liberal) America. John Tierney took on this thesis in the New York Times Week in Review section last week.

"Just because a state votes red or blue in a presidential election doesn't mean that its voters are fixed permanently on one side of a political divide or culture gap," he wrote. "The six bluest states in 2000, the ones where George W. Bush fared worst—Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut and Maryland—all have Republican governors." He quotes political scientist Morris Fiorina, co-author of the new book Culture War? The Myth of Polarized America, who wonders how much calmer our supposed conflict would be "if the two presidential candidates this year were John McCain and Joe Lieberman." Tierney also talks to Alan Wolfe, who wrote One Nation, After All back in 1998, and said recently: "Compared to earlier periods— the Civil War, the 1930's, the 1960's—our disagreements now are not that deep."

Related in the Times: Is Canada 'Blue' territory?

• Brooks' column last Tuesday spun America's divide differently—as the conflict between the two kind of elites Americans esteem. "The members of the aristocracy of mind produce ideas, and pass along knowledge. The members of the aristocracy of money produce products and manage organizations," he says. You can call the knowledge crowd "professionals," the products crowd "managers," Brooks adds. (Since both tend to be rich, it makes it hard to assume that most upper-income voters favor Republicans; they're actually split.) Professionals have "university skills," reading and deliberating and indulging in ambiguity. Managers have leadership skills, cutting through the bureaucratic thickness and making decisive judgments. It so happens, Brooks says, that the presidential election matches a classic "university" Democrat against a classic "manager" Republican.

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