Bronze-level articleThomas Friedman

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One of the

Pundits

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And a dirty dozen more
Not to be confused with Milton Friedman.
Tom Friedman: I mustache you all to remain calm.

Thomas "Moustache of Understanding"[1] Friedman is an author and journalist at the New York Times. He's won the Pulitzer Prize three times: In 1983 for his coverage of Lebanon, 1988 for his coverage of Israel, and 2002 for his commentary on the War on Terror and its effect on the global political climate.

Friedman's columns are probably the definition of "your mileage may vary." On the plus side, he covers a lot of foreign and international affairs, something sorely lacking in much of the US media. He travels extensively and does a good amount of in-depth first-hand reporting. On the flip side, you'll also get a lot of limp, tepid, "Washington consensus"-type commentary repackaged as something deep and insightful. That's exactly the type he is — Friedman is touted as "the guy all the politicians and Beltway insiders read." That in itself makes him worth reading, right or wrong, though, as a barometer on just what the "Washington consensus" is.

Contents

[edit] Iraq

Friedman is now infamous for his incessant cheerleading for Iraq and repeatedly failing to predict when the mission would actually be accomplished. See Friedman Unit. Interestingly, he skipped right past the trumped up WMD charges Dubya made up and supported the war for the purposes of regime change. Guess he was ahead of the curve on that one:

The right reason for this war, as I argued before it started, was to oust Saddam's regime and partner with the Iraqi people to try to implement the Arab Human Development report's prescriptions in the heart of the Arab world. That report said the Arab world is falling off the globe because of a lack of freedom, women's empowerment, and modern education. The right reason for this war was to partner with Arab moderates in a long-term strategy of dehumiliation and redignification.[2]

[edit] Suck on this!

In an interview with Charlie Rose in 2003, Friedman was asked if it was worth it considering how out of reach peace within Iraq now seemed. Friedman responded with a lecture on US society and claimed that there was a "moral bubble" in the United States in the 1990's which involved Americans being "okay" with terrorism (because Al Qaeda was definitely in Iraq). His gibbering tirade ended with:

What they need to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um, and basically saying, 'Which part of this sentence don't you understand? You don't think, you know, we don't care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we're just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this! That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia - it was part of that bubble. Coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we care. That's the real truth.[3]

It is not clear to the collective brainpower of RationalWiki what average Iraqis had to do with the moral failings of Americans nor how bombing (or torturing) them is showing that we care, but, admittedly, we are simple creatures who cannot comprehend Friedman's wise but mysterious ways.

[edit] Globalization

Friedman has become the high priest of globalization apologetics over the past fifteen years or so. He rarely seems to find any flaws with the free trade agreements he speaks in favor of, probably because he didn't bother reading them. A salient quote on his stance on trade policy:

We got this free market, and I admit, I was speaking out in Minnesota -- my hometown, in fact -- and guy stood up in the audience, said, ‘Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you’d oppose?’ I said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ I said, ‘You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.'[4]

Friedman's columns on globalization invariably lavish praise on a tiny start-up IT company in Bangalore which has never been identified, and which is capable of replacing every job in the world through out-of-the-box, connected know-how. In response to the possible criticism that this will result in everyone else in the world being unemployed, his answer is always that people will "need to be more innovative." Thankfully, software is being currently developed to write automated Friedman columns.[5]

[edit] His books

Friedman should only be ingested in column-sized doses; levels of Friedman beyond that are potentially fatal. His books tend to be a melange of the latest buzzwords, orgasms over the newest office tech toys, and a whole bunch of metaphors and similes that pile up to incredibly asinine heights of literary incompetence. Should you somehow feel the need to read a Friedman book, make sure it comes with a translation device. A peek at a few of his "insights" from The World is Flat:

As I left the Infosys campus that evening along the road back to Bangalore, I kept chewing on that phrase: 'The playing field is being leveled.' What Nandan is saying, I thought, is that the playing field is being flattened... Flattened? Flattened? My God, he's telling me the world is flat!

Later on:

And now the icing on the cake, the ubersteroid[6] that makes it all mobile: wireless. Wireless is what allows you to take everything that has been digitized, made virtual and personal, and do it from anywhere.

George Carlin never knew it, but he actually composed a poem summarizing a Friedman book.

Matt Taibbi's review offers the definitive takedown of Friedman's longer-form writing:

Thomas Friedman in possession of 500 pages of ruminations on the metaphorical theme of flatness would be a very dangerous thing indeed. It would be like letting a chimpanzee loose in the NORAD control room; even the best-case scenario is an image that could keep you awake well into your 50s ... On an ideological level, Friedman's new book is the worst, most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit. If its literary peculiarities could somehow be removed from the equation, The World Is Flat would appear as no more than an unusually long pamphlet replete with the kind of plug-filled, free-trader leg-humping that passes for thought in this country. It is a tale of a man who walks 10 feet in front of his house armed with a late-model BlackBerry and comes back home five minutes later to gush to his wife that hospitals now use the internet to outsource the reading of CAT scans. Man flies on planes, observes the wonders of capitalism, says we're not in Kansas anymore. (He actually says we're not in Kansas anymore.) That's the whole plot right there. If the underlying message is all that interests you, read no further, because that's all there is.[7][8]

[edit] Friedmanisms

A friedmanism is a specific variety of false equivalence, in which a pundit criticizes both sides of a conflict on an issue, because to do otherwise would be inconvenient.[9] The phenomenon is so named because of Friedman's frequently urging of the creation of a new political party that would espouse a certain set of views... all of which are actually already held by Democrats.

I had to catch a train in Washington last week. The paved street in the traffic circle around Union Station was in such poor condition that I felt as though I was on a roller coaster ... Our country needs a renewal. And that is why I still hope Michael Bloomberg will reconsider running for president as an independent candidate, if only to participate in the presidential debates and give our two-party system the shock it needs.
—Friedman[10]
Republicans in the House of Representatives have pressed to cut Amtrak funding in the federal transportation bill, and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently said in a TV news interview that he would eliminate Amtrak’s subsidy.
Forbes[11]

[edit] See also

[edit] External Links

  • Some hilarious imitations of Friendman's distinctive style of expression (he sounds much the same speaking as he does writing) can be found here and here.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. Moustache of Understanding
  2. Four Reasons to Invade Iraq
  3. [1] If Friedman had any hand in foreign policy decisions it's arguable that the Middle East wouldn't be so splintered anymore. (That's not a good thing.)
  4. How I Was Wrong About Thomas Friedman
  5. Thomas Friedman Op/Ed Generator
  6. This is what you get when you Google "ubersteroid." Sorry.
  7. Flathead by Matt Taibbi
  8. Or: "Friedman treats globalization in the way that a 9-year-old treats Michael Bay movies."
  9. "Mike Bloomberg's Gun Control Friedmanism", Slate
  10. "One For the Country"
  11. "Railroads, Republicans Muscling Out Amtrack", Forbes
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