[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Against Thomas Green Friedman

[Trivern Ramjettan]

Well put. A perfect example of angry, vitriol-laden critique. For some one
who has never read Friedman but has heard of his flaws, I'll make a note
never to waste my time reading what he publishes.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Bond" <pbond at mail.ngo.za>
To: "debate: SA discussion list" <debate at debate.kabissa.org>;
<cjn at lists.riseup.net>; "ELA-Discuss" <ela-discuss at lists.kabissa.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 8:45 PM
Subject: [DEBATE] : (Fwd) Against Thomas Green Friedman


> <http://www.nypress.com/article-19271-flat-n-all-that.html>
>
> Flat N All That
> MATT TAIBBI takes on porn-stached New York Times columnist Thomas
> Friedman’s greenish ways.
>
> 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
> 114,000 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.
>
> Where does a man who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to
> keep the east wing of his house heated get the balls to write a book
> chiding America for driving energy inefficient automobiles? Where does a
> guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian
> wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a
> motherfucking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of
> us about the need for a “Green Revolution”? Well, he’ll explain it all
> to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have
> the misfortune to be Canadian.
>
> I’ve been unhealthily obsessed with Thomas Friedman for more than a
> decade now. For most of that time, I just thought he was funny. And
> admittedly, what I thought was funniest about him was the kind of stuff
> that only another writer would really care about—in particular his
> tortured use of the English language. Like George W. Bush with his
> Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn’t make
> them up even if you were trying—and when you tried to actually picture
> the “illustrative” figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what
> you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster
> Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and
> falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.
> Remember Friedman’s take on Bush’s Iraq policy? “It’s OK to throw out
> your steering wheel,” he wrote, “as long as you remember you’re driving
> without one.” Picture that for a minute. Or how about Friedman’s
> analysis of America’s foreign policy outlook last May: "The first rule
> of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three,
> bring a lot of shovels.”
>
> First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once?
> Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you’re supposed to stop
> digging when you’re in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How
> does that even begin to make sense? It’s stuff like this that makes me
> wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend
> their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol. Sending a
> line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security
> guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests
> through the front gate. It should never, ever happen.
>
> 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?” There are many serious
> questions one could ask about this passage, but the one that leaped out
> at me was this: In the “title” of that long-running play, is it supposed
> to be the same person asking all three of those questions? If so, does
> that person suffer from multiple personality disorder? Because in the
> first question, he is a neutral/ignorant observer of the Mideast drama;
> in the second he sympathizes with the Jews; in the third he’s a radical
> Muslim. Moreover, after you blow up the bar and replace it with a
> mosque, is the surrounding hotel still there? Why would anyone build a
> mosque in a half-blown-up hotel?
>
> Perhaps Friedman should have written the passage like this: “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? And why did a person suffering from multiple personality disorder
> build a mosque inside it after blowing up the bar and asking if there
> was a room for the Jews? Why? Because his editor’s been drinking rubbing
> alcohol!” OK, so maybe all of this is unfair. There are a lot of people
> out there who think Friedman has not been treated fairly by critics like
> me, that focusing on his literary struggles is a snobbish,
> below-the-belt tactic—a cheap shot that belies the strength of his
> overall “arguments.” Who cares, these people say, if Friedman’s book The
> World is Flat should probably have been titled Theif he had wanted the
> book’s title to match its “point” about living in an age of increased
> global interconnectedness? And who cares if it doesn’t quite make sense
> when Friedman says that Iraq is like a “vase we broke in order to get
> rid of the rancid water inside? ”Who cares that you can just pour water
> out of a vase, that only a fucking lunatic breaks a perfectly good vase
> just to empty it of water? You’re missing the point, folks say, and the
> point is all in Friedman’s highly nuanced ideas about world politics and
> the economy—if you could just get past his well-meaning attempts to
> explain himself, you’d see that, and maybe you’d even learn something.
>
> My initial answer to that is that Friedman’s language choices over the
> years have been highly revealing: When a man who thinks you need to
> break a vase to get the water out of it starts arguing that you need to
> invade a country in order to change the minds of its people, you might
> want to start paying attention to how his approach to the vase problem
> worked out. Thomas Friedman is not a president, a pope, a general on the
> field of battle or any other kind of man of action. He doesn’t actually
> do anything apart from talk about shit in a newspaper. So in my mind
> it’s highly relevant if his manner of speaking is fucked.
>
> But whatever, let’s concede the point, forget about the crazy metaphors
> for a moment, and look at the actual content of Hot, Flat and Crowded.
> Many people have rightly seen this new greenish pseudo- progressive
> tract as an ideological departure from Friedman’s previous works, which
> were all virtually identical exercises in bald greed- worship and
> capitalist tent-pitching. Approach-and-rhetoric wise, however, it’s the
> same old Friedman, a tireless social scientist whose research methods
> mainly include lunching, reading road signs, and watching people board
> airplanes.
>
> Like The World is Flat, a book borne of Friedman’s stirring experience
> of seeing an IBM sign in the distance while golfing in Bangalore, Hot,
> Flat and Crowded is a book whose great insights come when Friedman golfs
> (on global warming allowing him more winter golf days: “I will still
> take advantage of it—but I no longer think of it as something I got for
> free”), looks at Burger King signs (upon seeing a “nightmarish neon
> blur” of KFC, BK and McDonald’s signs in Texas, he realizes: “We’re on a
> fool’s errand”), and reads bumper stickers (the “Osama Loves your SUV”
> sticker he read turns into the thesis of his “Fill ‘er up with
> Dictators” chapter). This is Friedman’s life: He flies around the world,
> eats pricey lunches with other rich people and draws conclusions about
> the future of humanity by looking out his hotel window and counting the
> Applebee’s signs.
>
> Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique that goes something like
> this: “I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching
> 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train, when suddenly I said to
> myself, ‘We need better headlights for our tri-plane.’” And off he goes.
> You the reader end up spending so much time wondering what Dubai, BP and
> all those Balinese workers have to do with the rest of the story that
> you don’t notice that tri-planes don’t have headlights. And by the time
> you get all that sorted out, your well-lit tri-plane is flying from
> chapter to chapter delivering a million geo- green pizzas to a million
> Noahs on a million Arks. And you give up. There’s so much shit flying
> around the book’s atmosphere that you don’t notice the only action is
> Friedman talking to himself.
>
> 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.
>
> Friedman plots exactly four points on the graph over the course of those
> 30 years. In 1989, as oil prices are falling, Friedman writes, “Berlin
> Wall Torn Down.” In 1993, again as oil prices are low, he writes,
> “Nigeria Privatizes First Oil Field.” 1997, oil prices still low, “Iran
> Calls for Dialogue of Civilizations.” Then, finally, 2005, a year of
> high oil prices: “Iran calls for Israel’s destruction.” Take a look for
> yourself: I looked at this and thought: “Gosh, what a neat trick!” Then
> I sat down and drew up my own graph, called SIZE OF VALERIE BERTINELLI’S
> ASS, 1985-2008, vs. HAPPINESS. It turns out that there is an almost
> exact correlation! Note the four points on the graph:
>
> 1990: Release of Miller’s Crossing
> 1996-97: Crabs
> 2001: Ate bad tuna fish sandwich at Times Square Blimpie; felt sick
> 2008: Barack Obama elected
>
> That was so much fun, I drew another one! This one is called AMERICAN
> PORK BELLY PRICES vs. WHAT MIDGETS THINK ABOUT AUSTRALIA 1972-2002.
>
> Or how about this one, called NUMBER OF ONE-EYED RETARDED FLIES IN THE
> STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA vs. LIKELIHOOD OF NUCLEAR COMBAT ON INDIAN
> SUBCONTINENT.
>
> Obviously this sounds like a flippant analysis, but that’s more or less
> exactly what Friedman is up to here. If you’re going to draw a line that
> measures the level of “freedom” across the entire world and on that line
> plot just four randomly-selected points in time over the course of 30
> years—and one of your top four “freedom points” in a 30- year period of
> human history is the privatization of a Nigerian oil field—well, what
> the fuck? What can’t you argue, if that’s how you’re going to make your
> point? He could have graphed a line in the opposite direction by
> replacing Berlin with Tiananmen Square, substituting Iraqi elections for
> Iran’s call for Israel’s destruction
> (incidentally, when in the last half-century or so have Islamic
> extremists not called for Israel’s destruction?), junking Iran’s 1997
> call for dialogue for the U.S. sanctions against Iran in ’95, and so on.
> It’s crazy, a game of Scrabble where the words don’t have to connect on
> the board, or a mathematician coming up with the equation A B -3X =
> Swedish girls like chocolate.
>
> Getting to the “ideas” in the book: Its basic premise is that America’s
> decades-long habit of gluttonous energy consumption has adversely
> affected humanity because a) while the earth could support America’s
> indulgence, it can’t sustain two billion endlessly- copulating Chinese
> should they all choose to live in American-style excess, and b) the
> exploding global demand for oil artificially subsidizes repressive
> Middle Eastern dictatorships that would otherwise have to rely on tax
> revenue (read: listen to their people) in order to survive, and this
> subsidy leads to terrorism and a spread of “unfreedom.”
>
> Regarding the first point, Friedman writes:
>
> Because if the spread of freedom and free markets is not accompanied by
> a new approach to how we produce energy and treat the environment… then
> Mother Nature and planet earth will impose their own constraints and
> limits on our way of life—constraints that will be worse than communism.
>
> Three observations about this touching and seemingly remarkable
> development, i.e. onetime unrepentant free-market icon Thomas Friedman
> suddenly coming out huge for the environment and against the evils of
> gross consumerism:
>
> 1. The need for massive investment in green energy is an idea so obvious
> and inoffensive that even presidential candidates from both parties
> could be seen fighting over who's for it more in nationally televised
> debates last fall;
>
> 2. I wish I had the balls to first spend six long years madly cheering
> on an Iraq war that not only reintroduced Sharia law to the streets of
> Baghdad, but radicalized the entire Islamic world against American
> influence—and then write a book blaming the spread of fundamentalist
> Islam on the ignorant consumers of the middle American heartland, who
> bought too many Hummers and spent too much time shopping for iPods in my
> wife's giganto-malls.
>
> 3. To review quickly, the "Long Bomb" Iraq war plan Friedman supported
> as a means of transforming the Middle East blew up in his and everyone
> else's face; the "Electronic Herd" of highly volatile international
> capital markets he once touted as an economic cure-all not only didn't
> pan out, but led the world into a terrifying chasm of seemingly
> irreversible economic catastrophe; his beloved "Golden Straitjacket" of
> American-style global development (forced on the world by the "hidden
> fist" of American military power) turned out to be the vehicle for the
> very energy/ecological crisis Friedman himself warns about in his new
> book; and, most humorously, the "Flat World" consumer economics Friedman
> marveled at so voluminously turned out to be grounded in such total
> unreality that even his wife's once-mighty shopping mall empire, General
> Growth Properties, has lost 99 percent of its value in this year alone.
>
> So, yes, Friedman is suddenly an environmentalist of sorts.
>
> What the fuck else is he going to be? All the other ideas he spent the
> last ten years humping have been blown to hell. Color me unimpressed
> that he scrounged one more thing to sell out of the smoldering,
> discredited wreck that should be his career; that he had the good sense
> to quickly reinvent himself before angry Gods remembered to dash his
> brains out with a lightning bolt. But better late than never, I suppose.
> Or as Friedman might say, “Better two cell phones than a fish in your
> zipper.”
>
> Matt Taibbi’s last critique of Thomas Friedman,“Flathead,” appeared in
> the April 26, 2005 edition of New York Press.
>
>
>
>
>
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