Sorry, I had to share this

[derrida]

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/46333/

Thomas Friedman wasn't always this way.

[quote]
Tom Friedman is the oracle of this crowd, the tormented fat kid with a wedgie who got smart in his high school years and figured out that all he had to do to be successful was shamelessly and relentlessly flatter his Greatest-Generation parents, stroke their outdated prejudices, sell them on the idea that the entire aim of the modernization process is the spreading of their amazing legacy through the use of space-age technology.

So he goes into America's sleepy suburbs with his seventies porn-star mustache and he titillates the book clubs full of bored fifty- and sixty-something housewives with tales of how the internet is going to turn Afghanistan into Iowa. The suburban guys he ropes in with a half-baked international policy analysis -- whats "going on" on "the Street," as Friedman usually puts it -- that he cleverly makes sound like the world's sexiest collection of stock tips: "So I was playing golf with the Saudi energy minister last week, and he told me..."

This is just a modern take on the same old bullshit rap that traveling salesmen all over America have been laying on wide-eyed yokels at 99 Steak Houses and Howard Johnsons hotel bars for decades: So I was having lunch with Jack Welch at the Four Seasons last week when I heard about this amazing opportunity... And these middle-manager types who live in Midwestern cubicles or in the bowels of some federal bureaucracy in Maryland eat it up; they buy every one of Friedman's books, treat his every word like gospel, and before you know it they're all talking about Israeli politics and "the situation" in Yemen or Turkey or wherever like they're experts.

And so this is how we got where we are. You get a whole nation full of people who spend 99% of their free time worrying about their lawns or their short iron game, you convince them that they know something about something they actually know nothing about, and next thing you know, they're blundering into a 1000-year blood feud between rival Islamic groups, shooting things left and right in a panic, and thinking that they get make it all right and correct each successive fuckup by "keeping our noses to the grindstone" and "making lemons out of lemonade."

[kahljorn]

I'm pretty sure I'm reading a book by this guy right now and it really bugs me that he says stuff like, "The short-horn electric herd".

[Preechr]

J E W S

[Big Papa Goat]

PEOPLE SUCK
:edgy

[KevinTheOmnivore]

You get a whole nation full of people who spend 99% of their free time worrying about their lawns or their short iron game, you convince them that they know something about something they actually know nothing about, and next thing you know, they're blundering into a 1000-year blood feud between rival Islamic groups, shooting things left and right in a panic, and thinking that they get make it all right and correct each successive fuckup by "keeping our noses to the grindstone" and "making lemons out of lemonade."

Man, if only we couldget Matt Taibbi--shitty political writer who writes for Rolling Stone and other second tier publications--to educate these people in the place of Thomas Friedman.

Friedman is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist who spent years covering war, poverty and politics in the Middle East. i don't care if people don't like his ideas, and yes, he has flip flopped on the war (he certainly isn't alone in that boat). But I find it hysterical that a hack like Taibbi somehow feels he is in any position to not only judge the credentials of Friedman, but the political wisdom and understanding of the "whole nation." What trash.

[derrida]

Hey Kevin: Preechr, the guy who I was taking a dig at by posting the damn thing, got the joke. You take things awful seriously for someone on a site whose mascot represents a brined fruit.

Friedman can be okay sometimes, and I've read and enjoyed at least one book of his, but the vast majority of his output can be categorized as: "said better by Paul Krugman et al" (here I'm talking about stuff like his conventional liberal stances against Bush-era deficits) or "said better by the economist" (here I'm talking about most of what he has to say about "THE STREET")

His output had a major decline in quality once he figured out that he no longer had to hump around in shit to get paid.


I like hateful diatribes. (even ones I don't really agree with. Shock!) You like Mel Brooks movies. I no fucka wit you, you no fucka wit me, ok?

[KevinTheOmnivore]

I don't care if it was a joke. If it was, it wasn't terribly funny.

The critique was sophomoric. Can I point that out without hurting your feelings? Thanks.