We are not worthy.
Matt Taibbi eviscerates one of the pundits who deserves it most in “Someone Take Away Thomas Friedman’s Computer Before He Types Another Sentence”:
When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman’s new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing.
Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America’s ability to fall for absolutely anything — just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts — along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-‘stached resident of a positively obscene 11,400-square-foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism…
It gets better. Go. Read the whole thing.
This is our world. A “serious” pundit can be wrong about almost everything, but he’ll still be a favorite of the inside the beltway cocktail weenie circuit, he’ll still have the “serious” writing gig, he’ll still be on the cable news channel panels of “serious and learned” villagers, and he’ll still get the lucrative book contracts. Though I figure in six months the influx of material into the remainder bin at the local chain bookstore might allow me to get some cheap insulation for my garage.
He’s been wrong about almost everything and he’s an enthusiastic cheerleader for the conventional wisdom which got us in to this mess (from 2003):
America. You can be wrong all the time and an idiot and still make millions. That about sums up where our nation finds itself right now.
It’s their world, we just live in it.
Sunday mornings are impossibly painful to watch when you see the same group every week: George Will, Co(o)kie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, (I can’t watch Fox. Is it the case that they change only when the person dies?)
At least Maddow and Olberman have people you have only read before.
However, let’s thank the Nobel Committee for making it safe to hear Paul Krugman on Sunday morning
Have you seen this? Get Your War On just did a hilarious comic strip to accompany Taibbi’s article.
in regard to the Middle-East, and his exultation of globalization. However, this particular book is fairly effective. I read it after hearing him talking about it on Fresh Air (I wrote a post on that interview here and it is rhetorically telling if somewhat obvious–although I don’t grudge obvious since there people who will be persuaded by Friedman when they won’t listen to more serious environmentalits.
While Taibbi’s rage is entertaining, it strikes me that he says almost nothing valuable about the book he is purportedly reviewing in this piece except to fulminate that Friedman’s sins, personal and intellectual, are so massive that nothing he every writes or thinks should be entertained by decent humans. I feel that way about some writers and thinkers but I don’t really think relying on those emotions constitutes good criticism.
For instance, I spit when people tell me what a great man Eli Weizel is. I cannot forgive his refusal to condemn Israel for acting as a U.S. surrogate by assisting Central American death squads—while proclaiming that “…to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.” But, objectively, I know that he often expressed insights that were relatively profound and occasionally noble–despite his personal and intellectual failings.