Rancid water
You can’t make a vase-omelette without breaking vases
January 20, 2009 10 comments
An awe-inspiring takedown of Thomas Friedman by Matt Taibbi of the New York Press:
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?
(Via Daring Fireball.)
The final section of Taibbi’s particularly vicious slapping of The World Is Flat, Friedman’s previous literary atrocity…
“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?
http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html
Hey, the guy got talent. Talent for kitsch is still talent. Isn’t Dali a genius?
Ah, Flying Rodent’s own recent post on Friedman reminds me of this recent Friedman column, in which he describes bombing the shit out of Gazans as the education of Hamas.
the education of Hamas
Well, if bombardment is educational, he can’t complain when people throw pies at him again.
*loads pastrycases for war*
David Rees, as ever, brings the surreal:
http://www.mnftiu.cc/wp-conten.....iedman.gif
I don’t think this adds much to the conversation, but it seems about the right level for discussing Friedman’s oeuvre.
This post is something of a sepulchre, marking a moment when the rag that is the New York Press supplants the Hentoff-firing Village Voice. Well, I suppose the Voice still carries Musto and Dan Savage.
That’s brilliant… but it actually makes me want to buy all of Friedman’s books.
I guess someone at the New York Times’ editorial desk is thinking:
I know what you mean — they sound so entertaining, in a completely batshit way.
The New Yorker’s recent profile of Friedman shows us the man at work spinning metaphors and other figures. I came away thinking that as a popularizer of ideas he’s really not that bad. But, boy, did Ian Parker have a blast capturing him in action. Without malice, it’s very funny at Friedman’s expense.