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/
