The opinions the Times pays him to share get a lot of bloggers very, very angry. Some ardently believe that Friedman is an ignorant moron, while others think he's a more of a sycophantic nutcase. Part of the reason they get so steamed up is that he's one of the world's most-read columnists and his books sell millions of copies.
Is it all just political difference? Professional jealousy? Could it be that they simply don't like his odd little moustache?
Lionel Beehner of Huffpo has decided that Friedman is "a bad reporter, a negligent sycophant who has compromised his duties as a columnist at the paper of record — and he should be let go."
As you can tell, he's not a big fan. And the exact reason why he thinks Thomas should be given the flick?
"Not because he went from globalisation bible-thumper to born-again environmentalist overnight — columnists are chameleons, cheerleading for whatever cause is hip that day. Not because his columns involve lazy journalism (ie quoting cab drivers), sloppy metaphors (pouring water out of broken vases and such), and a scary reliance on Johns Hopkins' Michael Mandelbaum and an overused quip about how nobody ever washed a rental car ... [but rather, because] he is given tremendous access to the world's business leaders yet he is so utterly pathetic at questioning what they are up to."
"Case in point: When he writes about India as a beacon of innovation, he loves nothing more than to source B. Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computer Services...[apparently without noticing] that Raju had fleeced his company (and the World Bank) for trillions of rupees. Instead, Friedman...applauds the fact that Satyam HQ has a zoo. Wow."
So who is Thomas Friedman and why do people hate him?
Friedman has been one of the loudest cheerleaders of free market capitalism and the Iraq war for years. But his area of expertise has not prevented him from writing about Middle Eastern politics, American foreign policy, environmentalism and how awesome he and all his friends are. He has also won the Pulitzer Prize three times, but as many of his critics point out, that was a while ago (in 1983 and 1988 for international reporting, then in 2002 for commentary journalism in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the US).
Perhaps his most famous work is his 2005 release, The World Is Flat, in which he argues that the global market place has become "a level playing field". It has been hugely successful, although some have reservations.
Matt Taibbi of New York Press says in his review of the book that as soon as he heard its title he could see some of the pain that was to follow. "Thomas Friedman in possession of 500 pages of ruminations on the metaphorical theme of flatness would be a very dangerous thing indeed." He elaborates, claiming that it takes "two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays."
One of the key "flatteners" Friedman describes is the proliferation of the Microsoft Windows operating system and the fall of the Berlin wall. Taibbi writes,
"In a Friedman book, the reader naturally seizes up in dread the instant a suggestive word like 'Windows' is introduced; you wince, knowing what's coming, the same way you do when Leslie Nielsen orders a Black Russian. And Friedman doesn't disappoint. His description of the early 90s: 'The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever been but the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned.' How the f*ck do you open a window in a fallen wall?"
He continues,
"On an ideological level, Thomas Friedman's new book is the worst, most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit... 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."
Taibbi's ultimate judgement? "Friedman is an important American. He is the perfect symbol of our culture of emboldened stupidity."
In 2008, Friedman published Hot, Flat and Crowded which looked at global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the expansion of the global middle class through globalisation. The results, as he saw them, were pretty much summarised in the title's warning, so he therefore looked more than a bit hypocritical when bloggers posted a description of the huge house Friedman lives in and David Rees (of Get Your War On fame) recently added a photo.
We may be suffering from overcrowding and imminent environmental catastrophe but Mr and Mrs Friedman (their two daughters don't live with them) are doing OK, and not really setting much of an example.
While his superficial take on economics and ecology might seem like an amusing exploration of ignorance and hypocrisy, it is when Friedman turns his hand to US foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, that he transforms from bumbling millionaire metaphor-mangler into something a little more sinister. Friedman applauds, for example, what he sees as Israel's "logic" in killing Palestinian civilians to "educate" them not to support Hamas.
Former civil rights litigator and best-selling author Glenn Greenwald takes Friedman to task:
"The war strategy which Friedman is heralding — what he explicitly describes with euphemism-free candor as 'exacting enough pain on civilians' in order to teach them a lesson — is about as definitive of a war crime as it gets. It also happens to be the classic, textbook definition of 'terrorism'."
He goes on to quote the US of State Department's definition of "terrorism" as used in its 2001 publication, Patterns of Global Terrorism.
"The term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. ... [The] term "noncombatant" is interpreted to include, in addition to civilians, military personnel who at the time of the incident are unarmed and/or not on duty."
Greenwald asks,
"Isn't Friedman's logic exactly the rationale used by al Qaeda: we're going to inflict 'civilian pain' on Americans so that they stop supporting their government's domination of our land and so their government thinks twice about bombing more Muslim countries? It's also exactly the same 'logic' that fuels the rockets from Hezbollah and Hamas into Israel."
It is Friedman's punditry rather than his books, however, that have always been the favoured fodder of the blogosphere. In 2006, the term "Friedman unit" was coined by blogger Atrios to describe an amount of time, usually about six months in length, which actually never expires.
"Friedman boiled down the intricacies of the Iraq situation into a make-or-break deadline: 'Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months — probably sooner — whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out.'
"That confident prediction would seem a lot more insightful, however, if Friedman hadn't been making essentially the same forecast almost since the beginning of the Iraq war. A review of Friedman's punditry reveals a long series of similar do-or-die dates that never seem to get any closer."
What ensues is a list of 14 near-identical statements since 2003, in which Friedman espouses the importance of, "the next six months".
Friedman's cheerleading for the Iraq war has evolved over time. On the Charlie Rose Show, he explained that hindsight has given him a greater understanding of what the war was about. He said he believed a "terrorism bubble" had grown throughout the 1990s, during which popular consciousness had accommodated and accepted the idea of terrorism and allowed it to flourish in the Middle East. He said that what America needed to do was:
"To go over there basically, and take out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that bubble... And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going from house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: 'Which part of this sentence do you understand? You don't think we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy — we're going to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.' That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That's the real truth."
Crooks and Liar's Nicole Bell reacted, saying,
"I am so horrified by this macho over-compensation manifesting itself as foreign policy that I must again ask, when you say something so heinous, so egregious, so over-the-top offensive, why in the HELL are you allowed a continued place on the national platform?"
The scavengers of the blogosphere were given some hope that they would, in fact, be thrown Friedman's carcass when an article entitled "The End of the Experts?" written by "Thomas J. Friedman" was published on nytimes-se.com:
"To have been so completely and fundamentally wrong about so huge a disaster as what we have done to Iraq — and ourselves — is outrageous enough to prove that people like me have no business posing as wise men, and, more importantly, that The New York Times has no business continuing to provide me with a national platform."
"We were all wrong again and again — and the consequences were devastating. Can anyone tell me why any of us should ever be asked, let alone paid, for our opinions ever again? ...To err is human, but to print, reprint, and re-reprint error-mad humans like me is a criminally moronic editorial policy.
The "J" in Friedman's name and the suspicious-looking "-se" in the web address of the website may have tipped you off. The website is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by liberal activists, The Yes Men, late last year. Gawker describes the stunt:
"The Iraq war is over, according to the fake New York Times! This morning a cadre of volunteers has fanned out across New York City to pass out a remarkably good, faux-copy of the Times dated 4 July, 2009. They've even set up an entire website with all of the liberal fantasy headlines. Universities to be free! Bike paths to be expanded! Thomas Friedman to resign, praise the Unitarian Jesus!"
For the moment, however, Friedman remains on the loose, armed with crazy talk and not afraid to use it.
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GraemeF
Posted Tuesday, March 3, 2009 - 16:52
At least Piers Akerman doesn't write books does he? I don't know why these knee jerk collumnists, who are proven wrong time and time again, still get to keep their jobs. If they were car drivers you would need at least six digits to display their demerit points. Is it just fawning idiots who are ectatic to find someone as small minded as themselves that justify the so called 'news' papers to employ them. Or are they useful tools to distract from what the real influential right wingers are getting up to, the baffle them with bullshit brigade.
I liked the article on Rush Limbaugh in the paper that referred to him as the US answer to Alan Jones. Over paid and over exposed.
revilo
Posted Tuesday, March 3, 2009 - 21:16
Books are boring. I read a few once for the HSC, and they asked me a lot of questions that I could'nt answer. So I said that was a colossal waste of time so now I just watch the videos. At least it's pretty clear what they're on about.
Like Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" where reading books was banned, but boy do they burn well. Hitler was an advocate of burning Jewish books.
Then there is "Bowling for Columbine" a culture where humanity is banned. Also, as well as serving as shark food, humans burn well too at hot enough temperatures.
I think that guy Moore made one called curiously "Fahrenheit 911" what a master, have'nt seen it, but what I've heard sounds predictable; like "An inconvenient truth".
In any case the last American president was a buffoon, a chump, I would'nt insult our ape cousins by calling him one, but geez he looked and moved like a chimpanzee, at least there's some endearing trait to remember what's is name 'W'.
So it should'nt surprise anyone about the NY times columnist being a simpleton.
The whole culture is riddled with them in influential places.
Finance, Fashion, Talk back radio...
So is it any wonder that when Alan Jones was shown to be favoured by John Howard over John Laws, poor (wrong term) dear old John took his mouth and left the arena.
Let's enjoy the whole thing unravel.
"We won't get fooled again!!!
Children of the revolution...Oh OO...children of the revolution...
Maintain the rage and pass the Chardonnay...hee hee
Enjoy it while you still can, Soylent Green may be just around the corner.
Bottoms up comrades OLi
Dr Dog
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - 09:45
Well, he sure sounds like a real jerk.
It should be shocking, shouldn't it, that so many people who influence policy and public opinion are opinionated shitheels with little or no appreciation of their own ignorance.
Why do we listen to these buffoons? What self destructive urge makes us, the people, give this man and his employers hard earned cash to lie to us, tell us how to live and at worst, when to kill.
Thomas Friedman, as repugnant as he is, is only representative of a society that chooses convenience over truth. If the people of New York were thinking clearly they would have marched on the Times building, dragged this cheese eating hate monger out of his office and beaten him naked with a birch branch down the main street of every American town with a population over 25 000.
I guess there's just no accounting for taste.
Dr Dog
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - 09:49
Sorry, I meant to say also that was a great and slightly worrying post revilo. That last bit reads like you were capering about on the brink of a fiery pit holding the one true ring in your shaking hands. Viva la revilotion.
bladeofgrass
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - 10:37
Isn't it obvious that Friedman is part of the well-oiled pro-Israel machine committed to utilizing the USA's formidable resources for furthering Zionist objectives?
And why should the Times fire him when that institution's support for the invasion of Iraq was hardly less enthusiastic than Friedman's?
Bob Karmin
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - 10:49
Only quoting Matt Taibbi's 'review' of 'The World Is Flat' does it no justice.
For guaranteed laughs (I was rolling around on the floor), please follow the link to a full version of the review, appropriately titled 'Flathead':
http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html
GraemeF
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - 12:21
Another US collumnist who still gets to keep his job despite being caught out manipulating facts is George Will from the Washington Post.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/25-13
What criteria to they use to keep employing these people?
MissnOmar
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - 13:34
""What criteria to they use to keep employing these people?""
Can't help wondering if the old Regurgitator song explains it well;
....
your smile is stretching but
you're gonna go far
your life is pain you can't complain
you keep on rinsing it again and again
Dr Dog
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - 15:56
MissnOmar, didn't you reference that activity in the last post of yours I saw? Obsessed much? In Friedman's case though I think you are on the money. He is a grade 'A' smiler.
In further news, he gets to keep his job because he is a brutal, bigotted ignoramus who incites hatred, not in spite of it. He is responsible for being a fuckwit but we are responsible for making him a famous fuckwit.
martyns
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - 16:35
I am indebted to New Matilda for this article. Frankly, I knew nothing much about this nasty man before. Unfortunately these people have been with us from the beginning and it is great that today we have 'blogs', New Matilda being one such, where they can be exposed. Why do people follow the Friedmans of this world? That is the $64 million dollar question and I don't know the answer. One thing is for sure, that the capacity for self delusion of human beings seems to be infinite.
MissnOmar
Posted Thursday, March 5, 2009 - 11:45
Dr Dog I have no idea which post of mine you last saw - but yeah if I reference something twice I must be obsessed.
Sorry if I offend your delicate sensibilities - working for a blue collar union tends to influence ones speech a tad
cumos
Posted Thursday, March 5, 2009 - 18:31
On the occasions I have read Thomas Friedman in the SMH or NYT, I have found him reasonably thought-provoking (and stand condemned). His book - written long ago - 'From Beirut to Jerusalem' was a genuinely interesting and nuanced perspective on Palestine and its neighbourhood, written subsequent to a long period as Middle-east correspondent for the NYT.
To be fair, 'The World is Flat' documented a phenomenon that drove the world over the past 15-20 years - and it was good journalism, explaining change in the words of those who had wrought and experienced it. The book's folksy style made it accessible to many - if unbearable to some.
I suspect that subsequent to his popularity, and accelerated by an author's celebrity, he started writing contemporaneous accounts of matters far more complex (e.g. Invading Iraq; fighting terrorism) than the day to day narratives of an opinion columnist.
BPobjie
Posted Friday, March 6, 2009 - 00:41
Where's that guy with the anti-semite comments? He'd love this piece.
amphibious
Posted Monday, March 9, 2009 - 19:27
The only book of Freidman's that I read was the triumphalist "Lotus & Lexus" which, even by the air-head 90s criteria, was drivel.
The question as to why we, as a species, continue to genuflect to demonstrably dangerous phantasies & the promulgators, is an unholy mix of the Stockholm Syndrome & Uriah Heep masochism.
Step beyond the lumpen mindset and there are plenty of examples of the consequences, from Ibsen's "Enemy of the People" to simpler folk tales such as "who will hang the bell on thecat?".
Jacqueline Reidpath
Posted Monday, March 9, 2009 - 19:54
He doesn't sound like a very likeable fellow, does he.
I would echo the sentiments of Dr Dog.
I'd never heard of him anyway, we have enough big mouths here.
philannetta
Posted Thursday, March 12, 2009 - 11:56
That Taibbi review was fantastic stuff. Yes, the man is both a fool and possibly a sociopath ('Suck. On. This' was disgusting). My personal favourite Friedmanism was more recent though - a musing on why the oil was put in all these unstable states ...
The gods help us all.
http://philannetta.blogspot.com
Ngunawal
Posted Thursday, March 12, 2009 - 15:59
I agree with blade of grass that Friedman is an owned object of a bigger well oiled machine. He is just another product brought to you by a NGO. There is little or not independent thought in any US writers anymore.