| Subject: Friedman |
| From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> |
| Date: 2/12/09, 16:54 |
| To: barriticus@gmail.com |
Uncategorized
*** Is actually, for the most part, not a particularly bad columnist. Going back through much of his work in the '90s, one generally finds very reasonable foreign policy commentary of the moderate/internationalist school Arab regimes are failing to attract foreign investment or develop internal markets and should probably get around to doing so,
*** Thomas Friedman's 2003 bestseller Longitudes and Attitudes which, let the record show, is actually called that begins with a style of execution with which we will quickly become familiar. It also begins, reasonably enough, with an introduction. And the introduction itself is titled Introduction: A World Album. At this point, a member of Friedman's target demographic will no doubt think to himself, "A 'word album'? I've heard of a 'photo album,' but what is all of this about a 'word album'? I have never heard of such a thing. Perhaps Friedman will explain this new and unique concept further!"
And, of course, he will. "My hope is that this collection and diary will constitute a 'word album' for the September 11th experience," he writes. "There are many photo albums that people will collect to remind themselves, their children, or their grandchildren what it was like to experience 9/11. These columns and this diary are an attempt to capture and preserve in words, rather than pictures, some of those same emotions."
*** Has a strange and irritating habit of writing entire columns in which he sort of pretends to be the sitting president, delivering some or another speech which he presumably believes that the sitting president in question ought be giving. One is from the Bill Clinton of some parallel universe, one who is capable of writing a very direct and honest memo to the Arab Street. Another is from George W. Bush, triumphantly extolling the virtues of America to bin Laden. I would be lying if I said that I myself have not spent many, many hours pacing back and forth with a cigarette in my hand, daydreaming about the awesome speeches I would be giving on any and all subject were I to be president. But I find this an embarrassing trait.
*** During the next six months, the world is going to be treated to two remarkable trials in Baghdad. It is going to be the mother of all split screens. On one side, you're going to see the trial of Saddam Hussein. On the other side, you're going to see the trial of the Iraqi people. That's right, the Iraqi people will also be on trial -- for whether they can really live together without the iron fist of the man on the other side of the screen.
Weird Contradictions
*** pg. 6 "Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States in the late 1990s. After he organized the bombing of two American embassies, the U.S. Air Force retaliated with a cruise missile attack on his bases in Afghanistan as though he were another nation-state... The United States fired 75 cruise missiles at bin Laden. The United States fired 75 cruise missiles, at $1 million a piece, at a person! That was the first battle in history between a superpower and a super-empowered angry man."
Calling Things Things
*** He is constantly calling things things.
*** "I am a big believer in the idea of the super-story, the notion that we all carry around with us a big lens, a big framework, through which we look at the world, order events, and decide what is important and what is not."
*** In the midst of a discussion on globalization and whatnot: "These global markets are made up of millions of investors moving money around the world with a click of a mouse. I call them the Electronic Herd, and this herd gathers in key global financial centers such as Wall Street, Hong Kong, London, and Frankfurt which I call the Supermarkets." So, there you go. The Electronic Herd meets in the Supermarkets.
*** "One way to think about Mr. Powell is this: He spent thirty-five years of his life with America Onduty, as a military officer. But for the past two year's he's been associated with America Online, as a member of the AOL corporate board. So which perspective will Mr. Powell bring to his job as Secretary of State the perspective he gleaned with America Onduty during the cold war or the perspective he gleaned with America Online in the post-cold war?" The whole concept of this column is basically, "Look, I thought of a cute instance of wordplay." No serious discussion of Powell's overall mental framework follows; no new information is provided; and it is never acknowledged that perhaps Powell is capable of thinking of the world in both the terms of a military officer and the terms of an information-age corporate advisory board member, in spite of the fact that Powell has clearly served as both of these things. After all, Friedman has already coined the term America Onduty, contrasted it with the term America Online, and provided some allegedly clever distinction between the two. We are informed, for instance, that 'America Onduty' likes the film A Few Good Men and sees the world in terms of walls and nation states, because, you see, a character in that very film delivered some line to that effect and it seems to have made an impression on Friedman. 'America Online,' by contrast, likes the film You've Got Mail because it/they/whatever understands that the world is now integrated, and that getting e-mail is a sort of living metaphor for anything that happens somewhere else but which effects you and I. Later: "They reflect two different ways of looking at the world. So which lens is Mr. Powell wearing the one he developed with America Onduty, or with America Online?"
*** I will admit that I almost gave up reading the book when I came across a chapter/column entitled "Spiritual Missile Shield," this being yet another of dozens of columns calling on the Muslim world to calm down and for the West to facilitate same.
Predictions
Takes trends and extrapolates in the same sort of haphazard manner in which anyone else would, except that he is praised for his failed predictions. This dynamic is generally wrapped up in inane observations of the sort that have already been made by slice-of-life columnists and bad stand-up comedians.
*** pg. 22 In 2005, he says, this crazy internet connectivity stuff will be all crazy. People will always been calling you on your cell phone and all of your appliances will be hooked up to the "Evernet" and whatnot. "People will boast: 'I have twenty-five Web addresses in my house; how many do you have? My wired refrigerator automatically reorders milk. How about yours?'" "So there is a big misfit brewing here. I still can't program my VCR; how am I going to program my toaster?" One gets the impression that this was cribbed from an Andy Rooney segment from 1994 or thereabouts.
*** pg. 91 "A month into the war in Afghanistan, the hand-wringing has already begun over how long this might last... I have no doubt, for now, that the Bush team has a military strategy for winning a long war. I do worry, though, whether it has a public relations strategy for sustaining a long war."
*** http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19friedman.html
"Most likely the Bush team will say the surge is a "partial" success and needs more time. But that is like your contractor telling you that your home is almost finished the bricks are up, but there's no cement. Thanks a lot."
*** pg. 109 "Think of all the nonsense written in the press particularly the European and Arab media about the concern for 'civilian casualties' in Afghanistan." Why he uses scare quotes is unclear; presumably, no such thing occurs. "It turns out that many of those Afghan 'civilians' were praying for another dose of B-52s to liberate them from the Taliban, casualties or not. Now that the Taliban are gone, Afghans can freely fight out, among themselves, the war of ideas for what sort of society they want."
*** pg. 142 "All hail to President Bush for how he has conducted the war against Osama bin Laden. Mr. Bush has emerged a far better commander in chief than anyone predicted.
*** pg. 136: calls Putin "Russia's Deng Xiaoping Mao's pragmatic successor who first told the Chinese that 'to get rich is glorious' and put in place the modernizing reforms to do it." "So keep rootin' for Putin and hope that he makes it to the front of Russia's last line." The last line in question, incidentally, is honest and reformed geoeconomics.
*** http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E3DB153AF933A15757C0A9659C8B63
"The stock market bubble we're all too familiar with. When it burst three years ago, millions of people all over the world were made more sober investors. The second bubble was the corporate governance bubble -- a buildup of ethical lapses by management that burst with Enron and Arthur Andersen, producing a revolution in boardroom practices. " Perhaps a more reasonable person would have said, "Boy, there sure have been a lot of these big companies getting into these wacky scandals lately. I wonder if perhaps this is only a symptom of a larger problem, and that there may very well be other, similar scandals revealed in the corporate world at some point in the future?"
*** "And it did so because our soldiers so cherish what they have that they were ready to fight house to house from Basra to Baghdad. That was the real shock and awe for Iraqis -- because the terrorism bubble said Nasdaq-obsessed Americans were so caught up with the frivolity of modern life, they had lost the will to fight. Wrong."
Iraq
*** http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E0D71330F931A15752C0A9659C8B63
Today I explain why I think liberals under-appreciate the value of removing Saddam Hussein. And on Sunday I will explain why conservatives under-appreciate the risks of doing so -- and how we should balance the two.
*** "And liberals need to take heed. Just by mobilizing for war against Iraq, the U.S. has sent this region a powerful message: We will not leave you alone anymore to play with matches, because the last time you did, we got burned."
***"Just the threat of a U.S. attack has already prompted Hezbollah to be on its best behavior in Lebanon (for fear of being next)."
*** http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06E6D8153CF937A35756C0A9659C8B63
"Conservatives, though, are so intent on proving George Bush right and liberals wrong -- so the Bush team can drive its radical right agenda at home -- they have rushed to impose a single liberation story line on this much more complex reality."