This Modern World: Thomas Friedman Private Eye-Dial M For Moustache

kpete

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Sun Jul-22-07 09:13 PM
Original message

This Modern World: Thomas Friedman Private Eye-Dial M For Moustache

Edited on Sun Jul-22-07 09:14 PM by kpete

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/07/23/tomo/

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ComerPerro

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Sun Jul-22-07 09:15 PM
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1. LOL, that is perfect, Friedman is such a fucking douchebag

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AX10

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Sun Jul-22-07 09:18 PM
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2. kick

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Aviation Pro

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Sun Jul-22-07 09:25 PM
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3. Why can't these pundits admit that they are wrong....

...and just plain stupid? And why does the Gray Lady reward incompetence by letting him keep his job?

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dorkulon

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Sun Jul-22-07 09:30 PM
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4. Very funny; reminds me of

this allegorical "play" in which Friedman (and Kristol, Krauthammer and Peter Beinart) are mechanics, fixing America's car:

America: Yeah, I looked under the hood, and�I can't believe I'm saying this�I looked under the hood, and my engine's not there. And uh... instead of the engine, there's a... a pig in there, on a treadmill, and a monkey. The monkey's not moving.

Friedman: Yeah, we had to replace the engine.

America: Replace it? There's a pig and a dead monkey in there! What the hell? You guys are supposed to be good at this?

Beinart: Dead? Oh god...

Kristol: Well, hehe, that explains your problem, hehe.

America: Yes, dead. There's a dead monkey with a whip taped to his hand and two wires stuck into his side. And a goddamn pig in a harness on a treadmill!

Krauthammer: What's going on here, guys?

Friedman: Well, how else were we going to get the pig to run, besides training a monkey to whip it when electrically shocked?

America: That's completely insane! Why not just fix the damn engine?

Friedman: Look, the problems your engine faced were like a Superbowl halftime show: powerful and flashy, and everywhere. But fixing it would have been costly, difficult and time-consuming, like going to the moon and back. So, actually fixing your engine would have been like eradicating a Superbowl halftime show on the moon. And who wants to do that? I like the Superbowl halftime show.

America: What the hell is this guy talking about?

Beinart: Just humor him.

Friedman: I'm not done. So, you see, the halftime show�so that's too hard, actually fixing your engine. But simply removing and replacing it with a pig and a monkey, now that is inspired, audacious thinking. We are totally, 110% outside of the box here. The box is around the corner behind us. A homeless man has moved into it.

America: But it doesn't work!

Friedman: But just imagine how incredible, how wonderful everything would be if it had! It would be like magic donuts, but cooler! I mean, sure, the results have been disappointing, but what kind of people would we be if we hadn't at least tried? We'd be like uneaten donuts!

:rofl:

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gumby

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Sun Jul-22-07 09:57 PM
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5. HOL

Howl Out Loud.

That's what I did.... hoowwwwllll. Tom Tomorrow is Tom Terrific.

The 'Film Noir' is Just Perfect .... As Always.

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EVDebs

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Sun Jul-22-07 10:14 PM
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6. Flathead, Matt Taibbi's article on Tom

Edited on Sun Jul-22-07 10:16 PM by EVDebs

http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

"Let's speak Friedmanese for a moment and examine just a few of the notches on these antlers (Friedman, incidentally, measures the flattening of the world in notches, i.e. "The flattening process had to go another notch"; I'm not sure where the notches go in the flat plane, but there they are.) Flattener #1 is actually two flatteners, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the spread of the Windows operating system. In a Friedman book, the reader naturally seizes up in dread the instant a suggestive word like "Windows" is introduced; you wince, knowing what's coming, the same way you do when Leslie Nielsen orders a Black Russian. And Friedman doesn't disappoint. His description of the early 90s:

The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever been�but 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?"

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dorkulon

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Sun Jul-22-07 10:34 PM
Response to Reply #6

7. Taibbi is the shit.

Love that guy.

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EVDebs

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Sun Jul-22-07 10:37 PM
Response to Reply #7

8. Taibbi is Da Bomb ! nt

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