Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: roo_ster on April 13, 2011, 10:38:24 AM
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http://reason.com/blog/2011/04/13/fear-and-loathing-at-the-new-y#commentcontainer
We've got Thomas Friedman all wrong. He's no button-down pundit trying to explain the outside world -- he's a gonzo madman who downs unlabeled pills & describes his hallucinations.
I really can not fathom why people think Thomas Friedman is some sort of Deep Thinker. From praising the PRC because they don't care about liberty or their people to insipid commentary about the Mideast, he is a train wreck of mixed metaphors and inanity.
"Are we going to be O.K.? I'm worried."
"Honey, you live in a dictatorship, populated by savages and barbarians. The odds you are going to be OK are not good."
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I really can not fathom why people think Thomas Friedman is some sort of Deep Thinkers
Frankly, none of the 'professional deep thinkers' on the Left and the Right are Deep or Thinkers. This includes practically every Friedman alive today, and probably Milton too.
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His wife sells a lot of beer abroad. That makes him an expert on globalism.
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Thomas Friedman is the globalist's stooge. When he speaks (or writes as the case may be) he represents the globalist's positions.
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The Lexus and the olive tree was to date the dumbest book Ive read on the middle east.
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Tom Friedman may be crazy (I'd argue yes) but the story I read following that link isn't a good example of why.
They're arguing his retelling of what is after all his experience isn't valid and I don't see that.
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Tom Friedman may be crazy (I'd argue yes) but the story I read following that link isn't a good example of why.
They're arguing his retelling of what is after all his experience isn't valid and I don't see that.
Maybe it doesn't highlight the krazee, but it does show the "train wreck of mixed metaphors and inanity."
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Tom Friedman may be crazy (I'd argue yes) but the story I read following that link isn't a good example of why.
They're arguing his retelling of what is after all his experience isn't valid and I don't see that.
Inane - definitely.
Read some Friedman articles and notice how often his "Arab/Asian/whatever" friend pops up to explain things. "See, I have this Syrian friend who is jealous of Israeli cornflakes...."
If Thomas Friedman hadn't married into a billionaire family and become a billionaire scion, he'd be a nobody. Certainly his "merit" has not carried him this far.
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The Lexus and the olive tree was to date the dumbest book Ive read on the middle east.
Yes, the grand tome that gave us the "peace via McDonalds" theory.
Here is Tommy F responding to criticism:
"I was both amazed and amused by how much the Golden Arches Theory had gotten around and how intensely certain people wanted to prove it wrong. They were mostly realists and out-of-work Cold Warriors who insisted that politics, and the never-ending struggle between nation-states, were the immutable defining feature of international affairs, and they were professionally and psychologically threatened by the idea that globalization and economic integration might actually influence geopolitics in some very new and fundamental ways."
Or, it could be that it wasn't true when he wrote it and hasn't gotten any true-er as time progressed. But, I am totally convinced by his ad hom argument because Tommy F is so cool and his critics are just meanies.
Inane - definitely.
Read some Friedman articles and notice how often his "Arab/Asian/whatever" friend pops up to explain things. "See, I have this Syrian friend who is jealous of Israeli cornflakes...."
If Thomas Friedman hadn't married into a billionaire family and become a billionaire scion, he'd be a nobody. Certainly his "merit" has not carried him this far.
Most op-ed writers in the past were content to quote mere cab drivers when pulling things out of their fourth point of contact.
Between Tommy F and Krugman*, the NYT op-ed pages have purt near cornered the market on east coast insaninanity. I suspect that if both appeared in the same day in the same paper with Malcolm Gladwell, all copies would instantaneously disapparate due to the whole "spuernova into a black hole" or "portable hole into a bag of holding" rift in the space-time continuum.
Possible Collaborations:
The Lexus and the Olive Tree on the Tipping Point.
The Accidental Theorist Blinks at What the Dog Saw
* Kinda sad, here. Ever since he was Enron's chief economist, he has gone apey. The other two are mere banal meat sacks with sinecures.
I can't let this pass without linking:
http://www.malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com/