Oh no he couldn't

Virginia Postrel:

If he can resist the comic temptation to make wild generalizations, Brooks could spend the next several months explaining the complicated reality of middle America to the parochial readers of the NYT.

To do that, Brooks himself would have to understand "the complicated reality of middle America". And he doesn't. Trust me, I live in the area where Brooks did his "field work" for his famous Atlantic article. He was only marginally more astute than Maureen Dowd.