The New York Times has many excellent writers. They also employ Thomas L. Friedman, triple Pulitzer Prize winner, the man who single-handedly revolutionized the art of the political column. Known to connoisseurs as "The Moustache of Understanding" (explained here and here), Friedman is like a gazelle dancing across the ice, always picking up golden seeds as he fearlessly explores the rugged mountains of truth in his reed boat of prose. Words fall from his pen like diamonds from a waterfall, and his lofty metaphors soar above the land with the grace of a mighty penguin.
One man's genius is another man's ridicule. Why isn't Tom Friedman in Dickipedia? « Carsons Post
Anytime you reduce complex issues to catchy, if confusing slogans you risk ridicule. Do it often enough and you become ridiculous.
Even better was this gem from one of Friedman's latest columns: "The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it's all too familiar. It's the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: "Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn't we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?"
The Dan Brown of op-ed journalism.
In The World is Flat, the key action scene of the book comes when Friedman experiences his pseudo-epiphany about the Flat world while talking with himself in front of InfoSys CEO Nandan Nilekani. In Hot, Flat and Crowded, the money shot comes when Friedman starts doodling on a napkin over lunch with Moisés Naím, editor of Foreign Policy magazine. The pre-lunching Friedman starts drawing, and the wisdom just comes pouring out: I laid out my napkin and drew a graph showing how there seemed to be a rough correlation between the price of oil, between 1975 and 2005, and the pace of freedom in oil-producing states during those same years. Friedman then draws his napkin-graph, and much to the pundit's surprise, it turns out that there is almost an exact correlation between high oil prices and "unfreedom"! The graph contains two lines, one showing a rising and then descending slope of "freedom," and one showing a descending and then rising course of oil prices.
I laid out my napkin and drew a graph showing how there seemed to be a rough correlation between the price of oil, between 1975 and 2005, and the pace of freedom in oil-producing states during those same years.
Friedman then draws his napkin-graph, and much to the pundit's surprise, it turns out that there is almost an exact correlation between high oil prices and "unfreedom"! The graph contains two lines, one showing a rising and then descending slope of "freedom," and one showing a descending and then rising course of oil prices.
(Département du Lot-et-Garonne, 47).
(The Stupid. It burns.)
The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever beenbut the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned. How the fuck do you open a window in a fallen wall? More to the point, why would you open a window in a fallen wall? Or did the walls somehow fall in such a way that they left the windows floating in place to be opened? Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God?
The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever beenbut the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned.
How the fuck do you open a window in a fallen wall? More to the point, why would you open a window in a fallen wall? Or did the walls somehow fall in such a way that they left the windows floating in place to be opened?
Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God?
