The Path of Thomas Friedman Is Beset on All Sides by the Inequities of the Selfish

[n2doc]

Hirsute-lipped Sesame Street character Thomas Friedman, America's most respected newspaper columnist, does not "have it easy," just because he lives in a sprawling mansion and holds a job that consists of rewriting the same exact column over and over again every week, merely substituting different—but equally trivial—anecdotes gleaned while looking out of the window of a car, train, or airplane in which Thomas Friedman rode on his way to meet some business person.

No. Thomas Friedman has to go through some shit.

I had to catch a train in Washington last week. The paved street in the traffic circle around Union Station was in such poor condition that I felt as though I was on a roller coaster. I traveled on the Amtrak Acela, our sorry excuse for a fast train, on which I had so many dropped calls on my cellphone that you'd have thought I was on a remote desert island, not traveling from Washington to New York City. When I got back to Union Station, the escalator in the parking garage was broken. Maybe you've gotten used to all this and have stopped noticing. I haven't. Our country needs a renewal.

Man sees pothole, has cell phone call dropped, encounters out-of-service escalator. This is literally the opening paragraph of Thomas Friedman's newspaper column today, published on the op-ed page of The New York Times, the world's most influential newspaper.

Should Thomas Friedman just fuck off? Or what?

http://gawker.com/5903012/the-path-of-thomas-friedman-is-beset-on-all-sides-by-the-inequities-of-the-selfish?tag=the-rich

[rfranklin]

1. for a guy in his position he's close to moronic...cannot connect the dots...

we need to fund the government and prepare for the future. But he and his neocons friends somehow cannot understand that.

[RainDog]

2. he really makes me want to puke

kudos to anyone who has the patience to read through his bullshit.

[Warpy]

3. He has a point, actually

Because the rich have successfully starved government for so long, the infrastructure is inadequate or simply falling apart. This is what small government means at the most basic level: nothing at all for the commons, only a bloated military to protect the rich.

Now I've read Freidman and I sincerely doubt he has the ability to make this point: connecting the dots has never been his strong suit and this column degenerated into maundering about Republican politicians.

However, it would be refreshing to read this stuff written by someone who does have the smarts to connect the dots. People really need to hear that rotten bridges, rutted roads, an unreliable electrical grid and spotty cell phone reception can all be laid at the feet of the low tax on billionaires, small government hucksters. The sorry state of our infrastructure is proof of just how successful they've been.

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. +1 K&R. n/t

[KG]

5. rather, he doesn't want to connect the dots, not in print anyway.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

6. loved that 1st paragraph discription of Friedman

[HiPointDem]

7. "a job that consists of rewriting the same exact column over and every week" = ain't it the truth!

[Fumesucker]

8. There's a good reason that there's a unit known as a Friedman. n/t

[Chan790]

9. It would never occur to Thomas Friedman that he's part of the problem. n/t