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Nemesis 4: This Time It's not Nemesis 3

TorgoX on 2003-08-18T09:12:30

Dear Log,

I'm starting to think that loathing Thomas Friedman is something I should leave to the professionals and the armies of armies of seething amateurs (odiateurs?). That frees up my time for other things.

So it looks like I'm going to have to jump!

jjohn on 2003-08-18T14:41:13

Ouch.

And a professional job it is, too.

jordan on 2003-08-18T16:42:20

From the article:

I can only compare the sensation of reading The Lexus and the Olive Tree to the first time I heard Newt Gingrich speak publicly and it began to dawn on me that this is what the ruling class calls thinking, that this handful of pathetic, palpably untrue prejudices are all the ruling class has to guide it as it shuttles back and forth between the State Department and the big think tanks, discussing what it means to do with us and how it plans to dispose of our nation.

Zing!

cheap labor conservative

jjohn on 2003-08-21T12:38:25

From Frank's article:
« Most revealing is Friedman's understanding of the United States itself, a country in whose image markets quite naturally wish to remake the world. In a closing chapter Friedman asks us to wonder with him at how "a visionary geo-architect" (i.e., God) would go about designing the ultimate nation, how He would insist that it have "the most flexible labor market in the world," that all manner of rebellions and zany lifestyle accessories be tolerated in the boardroom as the signs of creativity that they are, that corporate managements be allowed "to hire and fire workers with relative ease." Evidently it's not enough anymore to claim, as Rockefeller did, that "God gave me my money"; in passages like these Friedman is virtually asking us to imagine God ghostwriting the Tom Peters books, God descending from the heavens to bust PATCO, to pass the Taft‑Hartley Act over Truman's veto, to send in the strikebreakers, to make Manpower the largest employer in the land. »

You see? It really is about cheap labor. The marxist interpretion of history as class warfare once again rears its banal head.

Re:cheap labor conservative

TorgoX on 2003-08-21T22:49:28

You see? It really is about cheap labor. The marxist interpretion of history as class warfare once again rears its banal head.

Hushup, you, and get back to mopping my floors and washing my dishes! Some scullerymaid you are!

Eerily Wrong

pudge on 2003-08-26T23:28:16

I don't know where Friedman went wrong ... it wasn't 9/11, it was before that. But I have found it best to listen to what he has to say, not how he says it -- when that's possible -- which is why I prefer to listen to him than read him, because he is forced to get to his point a lot more quickly.

I think maybe the only thing about him that has changed since 9/11, that I have noticed, is that he seems to think more of himself, which might be a big part of the problem. A guy that Tim Russert (IIRC) dubbed "someone who knows as much about the complexities of the Middle East as anyone" (paraphrased) became in high demand, and I think he believed the hype.