Posted on 12/03/2016 10:04:37 PM PST by ameribbean expat
We will remember Friedman for interviewing 76 percent of the world's taxi drivers, for predicting "the next six months will be critical" on 14 occasions over two and a half years (birthing the neologism, "the Friedman unit"), and for his unmatched, God-given ability to write nonsensical metaphors, like his classic "rule of holes": "When you're in one, stop digging. When you're in three, bring a lot of shovels.
Friedman's great anti-gift is his ability to use many words when only a few are necessary. He became famous as a newspaper columnist for taking simple one-sentence observations like, "Wow, everyone has a cell phone these days," and blowing them out into furious 850-word trash-fires of mismatched imagery and circular argument.
(Excerpt) Read more at rollingstone.com ...
Wasn’t Matt Tiabbi discredited for some badly bungled pseudo-journalism a while back? I seem to recall some incident like that.
Bring to mind the hilarious “Thomas Friedman Op/ed generator”. It’s uncanny how good it is.
http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/about.php
Reading through a current list of articles in Rolling Stone is like reading a Thomas Friedman article. Words that describe the experience include outrageous, disconnected, obtuse, identical, flagrant, fraudulent, fake news, starry eyed, trivialized, nonsensical, obtuse, (yes they really do repeat themselves), edgy, eerily dissimilar, and, why am I wasting my time reading this.
Everything Matt Taibbi writes is badly bungled pseudo journalism.
He once claimed he was inspired to become a journalist by Hunter S. Thompson; either he is unclear on the distinction between straight reportage and satire, or perhaps he’s attempting to mimic the gonzo style for which Thompson became famous, and he just fails miserably.
I’ve read several of his articles. Honesty was nowhere to be found in any of them.
Tom Friedman churned out numerous superficial puff pieces, but had been lionized for many years. The cheerleader extraordinaire had more than 15 minutes of fame. Tom, Abby, Jim, and Alan(Greenspan) can commiserate together now that their days were over.
Tom Friedman AND Matt Taibbi are pompous asses.
Friedman’s “the world is flat” sucked. My X-son in law gave me a copy of it. It was a horrible read.
I have no intentions of reading this one.
FYI, Tiabi R-r-r-r-r-ips Friedman’s idiot writing and blasts the NYT review. Mocks him mercilessly.
It’s quite a fun read, actually. A much better read about how lousy a job Friedman does of translating English into English that you’d imagine.
Don’t read Friedman, but this article would give you pleasure in the way it needles the hot air balloon that is TF.
I’ve always said Friedman was a legend in his own mind . . . nice to see Matt agrees.
Thanks for the link - hadn’t heard of it before, and when I visited the site it looked (and sounded) so real I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Then I called up second Friedman “column” and almost lost it.
What a wonderful send-up of that particular pompous ass. I just wish I knew somebody who did the modern equivalent of type-setting at the NYT - it would be loads of fun to substitute one of those generated columns for a Friedman submission, and then see how long it would take (if ever) for folks to realize it was just a parody.
OK, I read the article. It’s clear he does not like Friedman. I have no use for Friedman’s attitudes either.
I have no use for Rolling Stones either. Lefties are Lefties, same, whether they are Globalist Lefties or Dumb Lib Lefties.
That’s awesome!
Fully respect your “uses” and “no uses.” Everything you say is true.
However, even people and institutions we dislike are capable of saying and writing the truths we admire. Dissing Friedman’s book is something I admire (I reviewed the Flat Earth book for the magazine I edited and found it horribly biased and illogical). Next week RS will print something biased and illogical, but that won’t diminish the respect I have for this piece that I agree with.
Often enough, people and institutions we do admire will say and write something we don’t agree with. I won’t be abandoning them in total. Surely, you will not either. Life is so seldom black and white. My opinion is we shouldn’t isolate ourselves in the World Ideal, a lonely place where nobody can ever live up to our unrealistic expectations.
Rather, we should admire the random, messy, colorful world we live in, sticking to our principles to the extent we can chide our friends when they err (by our standards) and credit our enemies when they happen upon a moment of truth (by our standards).
If we were seeking a perfect candidate in the last election, we would not have bothered to vote. PE Trump will, at moments exceed our expectations. At other times, he will fall short of our hopes. The same is true of our enemies, except for those rarest of satanic jerks.
Soften up, Fossil. RS just had a stopped-clock moment. Enjoy it.
“RS just had a stopped-clock moment. Enjoy it.”
Agree. smile.
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