Tom Friedman may be the single stupidest figure in American public life, and certainly is the stupidest writer with such a large platform. I don't mean that he's wrong on everything (although he is substantively wrong on a lot of things) - I mean that he's actually an extremely dim bulb in that he displays a stunning lack of basic cognitive function. Specifically, he shows almost zero ability to realize that the arguments made by Tom Friedman often undermine the arguments made by Tom Friedman.
A great example of this is Friedman's recent column, decrying the truly lamentable fact that federal stimulus money is subsidizing job off-shoring and foreign green industries, and not building jobs and green industries at home:
So, right now, our federal and state subsidies for installing solar systems are largely paying for the cost of importing solar panels made in China, by Chinese workers, using hi-tech manufacturing equipment invented in America ... if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you're going to love importing solar panels from China.
He's right on the substance, of course. Stimulus money is subsidizing all of that, as many of us predicted well before the stimulus passed. Why? In part because Tom Friedman, other pundits and corporations all made sure that the stimulus's "Buy American" provisions were severely watered down. Here was Friedman not-so-subtly attacking "Buy America" provisions as "protectionist" back during the stimulus debate:
President Obama has been doing his best to keep the worst protectionist impulses in Congress out of his stimulus plan. ... Each Indian state tries to protect its little economy with its own rules. America should not be trying to copy that. ... Protectionism did not cause the Great Depression, but it sure helped to make it "Great."
So here you have the same pundit who helped water down the "Buy America" provisions in the stimulus bill now complaining that the stimulus bill is being used to buy products from other countries. Likewise, this same pundit continues to aggressively support "free" trade policies that encourage the outsourcing he now decries - the policies that he admits he doesn't even bother to read.
Clearly, Friedman also doesn't bother to read his own columns - or perhaps he does and doesn't care that he contradicts himself all the time. Frankly, while I think Friedman is so self-obsessed he probably does read his old columns over and over and over again, I also think his contradictions are not so much a product of dishonesty as they are of sheer stupidity. Putting all (admittedly strong) desire to insult aside, I've genuinely come to believe that he's just an extraordinarily unintelligent and incurious person - a 12-year-old mind trapped in a pudgy, 50-something body. Only this isn't the movie Big and we're not talking about a toy company headed by Robert Loggia - Friedman is respected as a Great Thinker worthy of advising the President of the United States and influencing U.S. government policy.
Maybe that says all you need to know about the American Idiocracy and why we're so far up shit's creek.
Isn't he always having lunch with the under assistant vice chairman for China's green industry, or some such?
And does he not then muse about some possible future in some possible world that looks similar to our own, but isn't ?
Possibly somewhere outside the rolling hills of Virginia.
Another mystery is why the NYT, America's flagship newspaper, has an editorial writers who, with one or two exceptions, suck. I suspect that's down to Pinch and the people who pull his strings.
about self-contradiction is not by any stretch of the imagination GROUNDS for these kinds
of general repudiations and disrepectul negative slams.....not at all. IT would be far far better directed at the YESTERDAYS CNN INTERVIEWS with the VENEZUEALAN PRES. and the director of the LOVIN CAPITALISM flick, by LARRY KINGS AND WOLF BLITZER.
......................IF EVER THERE WERE back to back IDIOTIC AND STUPID INTERVIEWS
THESE WERE THE TWO DUMBEST OF ALL TIME. THE FACT IS WOLF AND LARRY
GAVE REPEATED EVEIDENCE of being TOTAL IDIOTS................
READY
and.........................................for the MOTH BALL FLEET.....................THE MOST
EMBARRASSING INTERVIEW in CNN HISTORY.....................THE BOARD
OF
..................DIRECTORS OF TIMEWARNER INC should be thoroughly embarrassed
......................................................................LARRY KING is THE KING OF CLOWNS
rules regarding interviewing people who are promoting their movies and books, namely
questioning their FINANCIAL SUCCESS and GOALS. BLITZTER DID THIS IN SUCH
AN EXTRAORDINARY CALLOUS WAY it was clearly intended to UNDERMINE
THE INTEGRITY OF Moore achievements and aspirations.....................THE SITUATION ROOM SHOULD BE SHUT DOWN AND BLIZTER BE SENT BACK TO JOURNALISM 101
writing today.
If we sit mired in job-less recovery while the Chinese yuan co-prosperity sphere dominates Southeast Asia and Oceania (through Singapore), then we have no one to blame but ourselves. Solar IS the future, whether BP-Exxon-Koch Industries will it otherwise or not! mdtaichi /
Either your math is bad or you've had too much of your handiwork?
or both....... ; D
I am a fan and habitual reader of David Sirota. And I'm sure you're right that Friedman is contradicting himself.
Most people aren't aware of everything that he ever wrote, but reasonably informed people know that he was an Iraq war cheerleader and a 'free trader' (but then again who in MSM pundocracy isn't).
And "The World Is Flat" was more cheerleading/advocacy/justification/cover for globalization aka the outsourcing of all the tech manufacturing, high-paying American jobs.
BUT, in this case, his point about home-grown renewable energy & the required technology is 100% correct and 1000000% needed.
He has been talking/writing about Green Jobs for a few years and considering the large megaphone that he has, it's a good thing.
He's finally doing the right thing. Doesn't seem that right now is the time to pillory him.
Great post, David.
Great post David!
Another great post David. Keep 'em coming!
to be fair, i agree w mr. sirota when i agree.......
d