Tom Friedman, ultimate wanker

i completely forgot about atrios' top ten wankers of the decade, a list he compiled to celebrate his ten years in blogging... i'd followed the other nine but it slipped my mind that he was to announce number one on tuesday... so, without further ado, here it is...

THE ONE TRUE WANKER OF THE DECADE

Tom Friedman.

He fetishizes a false "centrism" which is basically whatever Tom Friedman likes, imagining the Friedman agenda is both incredibly popular in the country and lacking any support from our current politicians, when in fact the opposite is usually true. Washington worships at the altar of the agenda of false centrism, and people often hate it. Problems abroad, even ones which really have nothing to do with us, should be solved by war, and problems at home should be solved by increasing the suffering of poor and middle class people. Even though one political party is pretty much implementing, or trying to implement, 99.999999% of the Friedman agenda, what we really need is a third party catering precisely to this silent majority of Friedmanites.

Truly great wankers possess a kind of glib narcissism, the belief that everything is about them while simultaneously disavowing any responsibility for anything. The important thing about an issue is whether it proves Tom Friedman fucking right, but if it doesn't we can just move on to the next big thing that will prove Tom Friedman fucking right. If you advocate for wars that go a bit bad, well, it's not your fault. If only Tom Friedman had been in charge everything would have been great.

Such wankers are impervious to criticism because they're always doing battle with straw critics. They never remember what they said last week, and assume you won't either.

i remember the first and only friedman book i read - The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization... i read it when it first came out in 1999 and thought that in doing so i had joined the ranks of wise and sophisticated global thinkers... in the thirteen years since, i have come to share atrios' opinion...

thomas friedman's biggest fan is thomas friedman... friedman loves to bask in the praise those worshipful acolytes who think he's the ultimate representation of wisdom and political savvy... atrios thinks he's merely a buffoon... i agree...

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