here’s the deal. when mr friedman is quoted by people as if he were a real journalist, i find it hard to keep a straight face, for i am constantly entertained by what naomi klein calls his “fake-sense pronouncements”.
some examples: (my comments in parenthesis)
(1) TF’s assessment of the 1990s, on the charlie rose show:
there were 3 big bubbles in the 1990s – the nasdaq bubble, the corporate governance bubble and the terrorism bubble. the first two bubbles were based on creative accounting, the third was grounded in moral creative accounting (what the ???).
this so-called terrorism bubble is a “fundamental threat to our open society”. and that’s why america needed to burst this bubble because otherwise, the terrorists would feel they could use suicide bombers to level the balance of power between them and the united states.
the only way to do it was for the united states to go into the muslim world: “what they needed to see was american boys and girls going from house to house, basra to baghdad, and basically saying, ‘which part of this sentence you don’t understand? you don’t think we don’t care about our open society? you think this bubble fantasy–we’re just going to let it grow? well, suck on this. okay'”. (nicely put TF)
TF continued: “that, charlie was what this war was about. we could have hit saudi arabia. it was part of that bubble. we could have hit pakistan. we hit iraq because we could. that’s the real truth.” (that might actually be true)
(2) TF’s endorsement of rabid capitalism: two countries with mcdonald’s restaurants won’t go to war (fast food will save us all in the end…)
(3) his metric for success in iraq (whatever that means): when salman rushdie can give a lecture in baghdad… you are not going to get a reformation in islam or arab politics without this.
is that supposed to be journalism or something?