Tommy the Robot

That explains everything, I thought, when I read the headline in Tommy's lastest: "How Did the Robot End Up With My Job?" The tone-deafness, the endless repetition ("the next six months will be critical"), the mangled metaphors, the difficulty mastering syntax, the callousness about human life. Tommy is a robot!*

Alas. The headline was a cruel tease. It's turns out its your job that's been outsourced, not Friedman's:

I’VE done a lot of television book interviews lately, and I continue to be struck at what a difference there is in the technology in just a few years’ time.

Here is a typical evening at a major cable TV network: arrive at Washington studio and be asked to sign in by a contract security guard. Be met by either a young employee who appears to still be in college or an older person who seems to have hung on with tenure. Have your nose powdered by that person. Have your microphone attached by that person. Be positioned in the studio chair by that person, and then look directly into a robotic camera being manipulated by someone in a control room in New York and speak to whoever the host is wherever he or she is. That’s it: one employee, a robot and you.

Tommy's math is a little telling here. He actually describes 4 jobs -- the security guard, the nose powderer/microphone attacher, the robotic camera operator, and the host -- but I'm guessing Friedman only counts his fellow bloviator, the host, as working. But regardless, it's a little touching that Tommy seems to miss his old makeup artist from the last time he made the talk show rounds. Maybe he's even a little concerned about all those Americans who don't have cushy pundit jobs?

Ha!

It has never been harder to find a job and never been easier — for those prepared for this world — to invent a job or find a customer. Anyone with the spark of an idea can start a company overnight, using a credit card, while accessing brains, brawn and customers anywhere.

Tommy goes on to point out that, thanks to sites like freelancer.com, you can make $268 designing a functioning dune buggy! By my calculations, all you need to make $50 K/year is 200 clients who want dune buggy designs. (Where's the Manson family when you need them?).

And dune buggy design isn't the only opportunity out there. If you can come up with 6 formulations of chewing gum for the Australian market, you could make $375. That's $63 - enough to feed your family for literally days! -- per gum formulation.

The point is that if you're struggling, you're not really trying. And that you're getting what you deserve since, more than ever, we live in a global meritocracy.

The term “outsourcing” is also out of date. There is no more “out” anymore. Firms can and will seek the best leaders and talent to achieve their goals anywhere in the world.

So cheer up, jobless! Your job hasn't moved overseas because companies are exploiting a cheaper version of you. It's actually because they've found a better version of you. Isn't it more comforting to know that the system works?

Of course, Tommy's been singing the flat world/technology "wow"/free trade song for years, but there's something about the present moment that makes even off-key. It's telling that on the same day that Friedman filed this piece of crap, his fellow op-eders Kristoff and Blow wrote about the exhilarating Occupy Wall Street movement. But maybe I'm being too hard on Tommy. A robot can only do what it's been programmed to.*

Fire Tom Friedman

*My view of robots is based primarily on bad fifties sci-fi. My apologies to today's robots who are undoubtedly much smarter, kinder, and better writers than Tom Friedman.

Tom Friedman's Finest Hour

Do you remember September 12, 2001? We were all in a daze, trying to make sense of the unthinkable. We were glued to our TV screens watching the same footage over and over and hoping to hear about successful rescue efforts. We were angry. We were scared. We were traumatized. And amidst the chaos and anguish, one clear-headed rational voice rose above the din and pointed the way forward: Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman.

While others sobbed uncontrollably or called for Muslim blood, Tommy urged America to respond rationally and use the attacks to dramatically alter some of our most disastrous policies. Who can forget when Tommy, with the towers still smoldering, called for a $1/gallon gas tax?

Tommy certainly can't. In yesterday's column, he repeats his assertion that America and Bush botched the response to 9/11 because they didn't listen to him!

[Bush] used 9/11 as an excuse to lower taxes, to start two wars that — for the first time in our history — were not paid for by tax increases, and to create a costly new entitlement in Medicare prescription drugs. Imagine where we’d be today if on the morning of 9/12 Bush had announced (as some of us advocated) a “Patriot Tax” of $1 per gallon of gas to pay for education, infrastructure and government research, to help finance our wars and to slash our dependence on Middle East oil.

I wanted to relive Tommy's most glorious moment so I went back and read his post 9-11 columns.

On 9/13/01, Tommy's first column after the attacks, he urged America to fight "World War Three."

Not exactly a gas tax, but maybe he didn't literally mean that he said that on September 12. Let's see what else he wrote.

The next day, he wrote that the U.S. must "retaliate ferociously."

OK. Even Tom Friedman deserves a couple of days to blow off some steam. Let's see what Tommy wrote on September 25, 2001:

I went to the ballgame Friday night, took in Dvorak's ''New World'' Symphony at the Kennedy Center Saturday, took my girls out to breakfast in Washington Sunday morning, and then flew to the University of Michigan. Heck, I even went out yesterday and bought some stock. What a great country.

I wonder what Osama bin Laden did in his cave in Afghanistan yesterday?

Wow. Childishly taunting bin Laden from Bethesda. If only Bush had listened to Tommy! Still, I'll keep reading. Gotta be a Patriot Tax in here somewhere.

Hmmm, nothing in 2001. Let's try 2002. There's the columns urging an attack on Iraq but no Patriot Tax. Wow, this is nothing like Tommy and I remember it.

Wait - Here it is! On October 5, 2003! Two years later. With Tommy's wars in full swing. What courage!

Shouldn't Tommy's editors refuse to print his lies about himself? Shouldn't one of the hosts of the endless talk shows that Tommy appears on point out that the US did exactly what Tommy wanted -- attack Afghanistan and Iraq -- and that's one reason we're fucked right now? Is there a profession that's more free from accountability that punditry?

Fire Tom Friedman

When Tommy met Tommy

Tommy is justifiably catching a lot of shit for today's train wreck of a column, but it's one of my favorites. For years, a standard Tommy column gimmick has been to pen a letter from some world leader like President Bush or the Chinese Ministry of State Security. The point of these columns, like his recent calls for a third party made of Tom Friedmans, is that if the world leaders thought (shudder) and wrote (triple shudder!) exactly like Tommy does, all of our problems would disappear.

Today, Tommy ups the ante, envisioning a fantasy press conference in which the roles of Obama, Boehner, McConnoll, Reid and Pelosi are all played by Tom Friedman. Both Boehner and Obama give long-winded speeches where they promise to be more like Tom Friedman (including by never mentioning those icky wars that Tommy doesn't like to talk about any more.) At one point, Tommy Obama and Tommy Boehner even hug. And as a result of all this Tommy-on-Tommy love, the stock market surges like never before!

It's a bold column -- not in its ideas which are boring, conventional, and wrong -- but in Tommy's openness about the fact that he dreams (a la Buster Keaton in The Playhouse) about a world inhabited by no one but himself. Which is almost enough to make you feel a little better about the world we actually live in now.

Fire Tom Friedman

Wondering why we're fucked?

Ryan Lizza, in this week's New Yorker, describing how then-Senator Obama got himself up to speed on foreign policy:

Obama had always read widely, and now he was determined to get a deeper education. He read popular books on foreign affairs by Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman.

Almost makes you nostalgic for Bush reading My Pet Goat.

Fire Tom Friedman (and those who read him for a "deeper education").

The Revolution Will Have Room Service!

Today's Tommy column starts off with what might be his greatest opening paragraph ever:

When I was in Cairo during the Egyptian uprising, I wanted to change hotels one day to be closer to the action and called the Marriott to see if it had any openings. The young-sounding Egyptian woman who spoke with me from the reservations department offered me a room and then asked: “Do you have a corporate rate?” I said, “I don’t know. I work for The New York Times.” There was a silence on the phone for a few moments, and then she said: “ Can I ask you something?” Sure. “Are we going to be O.K.? I’m worried.”

There's so much great stuff in here, starting with the fact that there is no fucking way this conversation actually took place. I'm pretty sure Tommy cribbed the first part from an ad in an in-flight magazine: "Marriott -- when you want to be closer to the action" (or "Some revolutions are too historic for the Hilton!"). There's the fact that in Tommy's fantasies, worried (female!) Egyptians were asking the great pundit how things were going to turn out. And then there are the brilliant little touches like the irrelevant banter about a corporate rate and the pregnant pause before her first question.

But if you think that paragraph was hilarious the first time you read it, try this exercise: Re-read, only this time picture it as a black and white movie. The "Egyptian" hotel receptionist is played by an American actress who can do ethnic. Her "Do you have a corporate rate" is sultry, but when she asks if she's going to be OK, she's a vulnerable little girl. And Tommy? He's as hard-boiled as they come.

I think the rest of the column was about how Arabs countries are full of tribalistic savages who don't take naturally to democracy like Europeans do. But to be honest, I haven't really got that far. I just keep watching Tommy's movie.

Fire Tom Friedman

On Killing Non-Danes and Non-Norwegians

Late last Thursday night, Tommy was bombing. Just like his recent Meet the Press appearance, he seemed remarkably unprepared to discuss current events that he must have known he would be asked about. As David Letterman asked questions after question about L'affaire McChrystal, Tommy responded with a lot of "ums" and a peculiar neck rolling gesture that had the unfortunate effect of emphasizing his resemblance to a walrus. But suddenly, while discussing the General's work "eliminating bad guys" in Iraq, Tommy found his voice.

In that neighborhood, you need warriors. You know, I lived in Beirut during the civil war. Bashir Gemayel, leader of the Phalange militia, used to have a saying. "This is not Denmark. And this is not Norway."

Now when Tommy speaks with confidence in a media interview, you can be bet he's quoting one of his own columns. And sure enough, there's the Bashir Gemayel quote in a post 9/11 column where Tommy beat his chest and channeled his inner-Cheney to argue that the war in Afghanistan was going to require "a new attitude toward the battle" including acting "just a little bit crazy" and unconstrained on the battlefield:

• (P)eople have to see that we are focused, serious and ready to use whatever tactics will make the terrorists feel bad, not make us feel good. As the Lebanese militia leader Bashir Gemayel once said about the Middle East -- before he himself was assassinated -- ''This is not Norway here, and it is not Denmark.''

Fast forward to Sunday's NYT column and Tommy's Sunday morning CNN appearance: Bashir is back, but this time the quote is trotted out to justify Israel's attacks on civilians in Gaza and Lebanon.

In Israel’s case, it found itself confronting enemies in Gaza and Lebanon armed with rockets, but nested among local civilians, and Israel chose to go after them without being deterred by the prospect of civilian casualties. As the Lebanese militia leader Bashir Gemayel was fond of saying — before he himself was blown up — “This is not Denmark here. And it is not Norway.”

Let's put aside the fact that Denmark and Norway keep swapping places in the Gemayal quote and focus on what really matters here: Tommy has used the same quote about an event that took place 28 years ago -- the 1982 Lebanese civil war -- to justify the down and dirty fighting (including killing civilians) of the 1) the United States in Afghanistan; 2) The U.S. in Iraq; 3) Israel in Gaza and 4) Israel in Lebanon (2006). Never mind that these are five unique conflicts spread out over four decades. For Friedman, it's all one long war against the enemies of Israel and the United States (which, of course, are the same). And wars where the majority of people getting killed are non-Israeli Middle Easterners (they are not Norwegians and they are not Danes), are governed by a different set of rules -- i.e. there are none.

To sum up, here's Tommy's views on the Middle East:

1. All non-Israeli countries, people, and situations are interchangeable (because those people are all the same to him). That's how he can argue with a straight face on Charlie Rose that the U.S. was right to invade Iraq because we just needed to attack a Muslim country -- regardless of whether they were involved with the attacks -- after 9/11; and
2. Non-Israeli lives in the Middle East are worth less than Israeli, European and American lives. That's why Tommy's only concern yesterday about civilians death in Gaza and Lebanon was the potential fallout for Israel ("U.N. indictments of generals and political leaders for war crimes and corroding relations with democrats everywhere"), not the fact that the civilians are dead.
   

Now to be fair, there are certainly lots of people who believe both of the above. But they don't appear regularly on the pages of the New York Times or on TV as a Serious Expert on Middle East Affairs. Of course there's a reason we take everything Tommy says about the Middle East so seriously. After all, as he never gets tired of reminding us, he did live in Beirut twenty-eight years ago.

Fire Tom Friedman

The Repulsive Paternalism of Tom Friedman

Are you raising a troubled country? If so, parenting expert Thomas L. Friedman has some advice for you. Here's Papa Tommy on Turkey:

Is there anything the U.S. can do? My advice: Avoid a public confrontation that Erdogan can exploit to build more support, draw U.S. redlines in private and let Turkish democrats take the lead. Turkey is full of energy and hormones, and is trying to figure out its new identity. There is an inner struggle over that identity, between those who would like to see Turkey more aligned with the Islamic world and values and those who want it to remain more secular, Western and pluralistic. Who defines Turkey will determine a lot about whether we end up in a war of civilizations. We need to be involved but proceed delicately.

In case you're in a coma, let's spell out what Tommy is doing here. He's oh-so-subtly comparing
Turkey -- a country of 70 million people -- to a rebellious adolescent. Full of hormones! Trying to figure out its identity! So let's be an involved parent, but don't push too hard or junior may drop out of high school. Or start a "war of civilizations."

Regular Tommy readers (like this masochist) know that comparing predominantly Muslim countries to children is a Friedman staple. Sometimes they're even babies. Like Afghanistan, about which, Tommy wrote last September, we need a vigorous debate (in the U.S; Afghan voices, of course, don't count) if we're going to change our mission there from "babysitting to adoption." Tommy liked this infantilizing metaphor so much that he used it over and over until he figured out a way to make it even more offensive -- by comparing escalating the war in Afghanistan to "adopt(ing) a special needs baby." (I'm not making this up; go ahead and click if you don't believe me but promise you'll come back).

Before Afghanistan was a baby, it was Iraq. In five different New York Times columns, Tommy lamented that the occupation was now a babysitting mission, as the original noble purpose for invading (which for Tommy was always about bombing them into democracy, not WMD) had deteriorated into keeping those naughty Shia and Sunnis from fighting with each other. In one of those columns, Tommy also declared that the Iraqis are "notoriously difficult" and advocated a sterner parenting approach led by Dick Cheney to try to push them into finally growing up. (Tommy's got a point -- when are those Iraqis going to give up their childish grievances about being invaded and killed and occupied? Actually, I'm surprised he's never written a column about sending Muslims to a metaphorical psychologist so they can work through their Western issues).

It's worth noting that Tommy has never uses these metaphors except to refer to Muslim countries. Turkey is the only country in Europe that's a teen acting out. And you'll never hear Tommy say that a dysfunctional institution like the United States Congress needs a babysitter.

Since infantilizing Muslims and Muslim countries is so obviously and inherently wrong, I don't think I need to say much more except this: One, Tommy's repulsive paternalism allows him to spin his constant call for Muslim deaths as the equivalent of telling a child to eat their vegetables. So when Tommy openly calls for Israel to inflict "heavy pain on the Gaza population," a policy others might call a war crime or terrorism, it's framed as "education." Two, as I've noted before, no form of prejudice is more socially acceptable in so-called polite company than anti-Muslim sentiments. If anyone, even Thomas L. Friedman, talked about another group of people the way Tommy talks about Muslims, they wouldn't have a New York Times column for very long.

Fire Tom Friedman.

The Mansion With No Mirrors

According to the large-type teaser in the print edition, Tommy's latest column is about "Looking in the mirror after the oil spill."

Wowee! Looking in the mirror? Which mirror? The Iraq mirror? The Israel mirror? The free trade is my god mirror? And is just a coincidence that America's most mirror-adverse pundit has finally decided to to embark on a little self-reflection just weeks after the launch of Fire Tom Friedman? All those visits to FTF from Bethesda -- I just knew it!

My friend, Mark Mykleby, who works in the Pentagon, shared with me this personal letter to the editor he got published last week in his hometown paper, The Beaufort Gazette in South Carolina. It is the best reaction I’ve seen to the BP oil spill.

OK. I guess it wasn't me that got Tommy got to the mirror. Ego a little bruised, but what's important is that someone did. Huzzah for Mark Mykleby! Can't wait to read this letter:

“I’d like to join in on the blame game that has come to define our national approach to the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. This isn’t BP’s or Transocean’s fault. It’s not the government’s fault. It’s my fault. I’m the one to blame and I’m sorry. It’s my fault because I haven’t digested the world’s in-your-face hints that maybe I ought to think about the future and change the unsustainable way I live my life. If the geopolitical, economic, and technological shifts of the 1990s didn’t do it; if the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 didn’t do it; if the current economic crisis didn’t do it; perhaps this oil spill will be the catalyst for me, as a citizen, to wean myself off of my petroleum-based lifestyle. ‘Citizen’ is the key word. It’s what we do as individuals that count. For those on the left, government regulation will not solve this problem. Government’s role should be to create an environment of opportunity that taps into the innovation and entrepreneurialism that define us as Americans. For those on the right, if you want less government and taxes, then decide what you’ll give up and what you’ll contribute. Here’s the bottom line: If we want to end our oil addiction, we, as citizens, need to pony up: bike to work, plant a garden, do something. So again, the oil spill is my fault. I’m sorry. I haven’t done my part. Now I have to convince my wife to give up her S.U.V. Mark Mykleby.”

This is the best reaction to the BP oil spill Tommy read? I guess that's technically true since it's the only one he's read besides his own. Still, it's a piece of crap letter. Assigning equal blame to those who want to "Drill, Baby, Drill" and those who want to regulate oil companies? Making individual lifestyle changes not government policy the key to ending our addiction to oil? ("How dare you tax my carbon - I changed my light bulb!") And what sacrifice is the great Mark Mykelby going to make? He's going to convince his wife to give up her car.

(Which gives me a great idea for a sitcom. Global warming has gotten so bad that every time someone does something environmentally wasteful, catastrophe ensues. Yet, women can't stop shopping! Mark Mykelby to wife: "Honey, they just said on the radio that Bangladesh is entirely under water. Is there something you want you tell me?" Mrs. M., standing in front of a gleaming new Lincoln Navigator, "No." Cue laugh track!)

Quit your nitpicking and sitcom writing, Fire Tom Friedman. Who cares about the substance of the letter? Thomas L. Friedman is headed to the mirror. Tom Friedman, the great environmentalist, is finally going to deal with the fact that he lives here:

Hot, Flat, and Crowded Manor

And while I would prefer a mea culpa on Iraq or Palestine, this is an important start. So lay it on me:

I think Mykleby’s letter gets at something very important: We cannot fix what ails America unless we look honestly at our own roles in creating our own problems.

Amen, brother Tommy. Tell us how you sinned!

We — both parties — created an awful set of incentives that encouraged our best students to go to Wall Street to create crazy financial instruments instead of to Silicon Valley to create new products that improve people’s lives.

Uh-oh. This isn't a very promising start. Good confessions start with I, not we. And what's with the rambling nonsense about the boys of Goldman being victims? But maybe Tommy's nervous and this is a little throat clearing before we get to the mansion, the golf, the countless flights to the Middle East and China, the family fortune made in the not-so-green shopping mall business.

We — both parties — created massive tax incentives and cheap money to make home mortgages available to people who really didn’t have the means to sustain them.

OK, Friedman. We're going to ask you one more time. Your friend Mark, he already confessed he hasn't been doing his part. What about you? Did your lifestyle contribute to the oil spill?

And we — both parties — sent BP out in the gulf to get us as much oil as possible at the cheapest price.

As Pogo would say, we have met the enemy and he is us.

Ladies and gentleman, Tommy has confessed! . . . to collective guilt. He is guilty in the sense that we are a little guilty. Equally. Angry bloggers who live with their families in 2.5 bedroom apartments and smug pundits who live in houses the size of the Gaza Stripe. People who drive to low-paying jobs because they have no other way to get there and rich blowhards who fly around the world giving lectures that they could have crapped out on Skype.

Thomas L. Friedman, you are America. You promote your brand and interests at all costs, including other people's deaths. You've devoured everything in sight -- and now you want everyone who didn't get a piece of the pie to tighten their belt because it is threatening your lifestyle. You preach endlessly about others' flaws without ever pausing to consider whether you live in a glass mansion. And you can't understand why everyone hates you.

Fire Tom Friedman.

Tommy Rules!

It's time for a Tommy quiz!

Which , according to Thomas L. Friedman, is the first rule of warfare:
a) Take the high ground.
b) Never launch a war that you can't explain to your people and the world on a bumper sticker.
c) Never take the lid off a boiling pot unless you also have a strategy for turning down the heat.
d) All of the above.

If you answered "d" (and you probably did -- the first rule of quizzes like this is go with "all of the above"), you are correct. In three different columns, Tommy has declared three different first rules of warfare. One might think that one of them might be the second and one might be third, but let's face it: Nothing sounds as authoritatively folksy as a "first rule." That's why Tommy has treated us to the first rule of holes on four different occasions, as well as the first rule of any Iraq invasion, the first rule of giving money to Israel, and Friedman's first rule of Middle East reporting.

And sometimes it's more than just a first rule - it's a lot of them! There are the three cardinal rules of Middle East diplomacy and a whopping fifteen Middle East rules to live by. I'll stop firing links at you now; you get the point: Tommy really, really likes rules.

So you might think he'd know what one is. But here's what he said yesterday:

Arthur was harmless; some of the others, though, were mendacious, which prompted me to promulgate this rule: I adore the Israelis and Palestinians, but God save me from some of their European and American friends.

That's not a rule. "I like A and B, but not C and D" is not a rule. That's just Tommy stating his preferences. If I had to guess, I think Tommy thinks that because C and D are related to A and B, that makes it a rule. But it doesn't. "I adore the New York Mets, but I think some of their fans are obnoxious morons." Nope - no rule promulgated there.

Am I nitpicking? Perhaps. But I think it's worth noting that Tom Friedman, the man who thinks that nothing is more clever than reducing the complexity of the world to his Freidmanesque rules, doesn't even really understand what a rule is. And yet, when things like the attack on the Mavi Marmara happen, we as a nation, turn to Thomas L. Friedman to explain to us what's really going on in the Middle East.

And what's Tommy's take? The attempts to break the blockade are just a "grandstanding intervention" that diverts "our energies from the only thing that is important: forging a two-state solution." If you live in Gaza -- where 65% of the population is food insecure; where almost 50% of children under 5 are anemic; where the economy has been strangled so you're dependent on aid and less than half of what you need is getting through -- you might not think that calling the world's attention to and ending the blockade is the equivalent of watching American Idol. But then again, if you live in Gaza, Tommy doesn't give a fuck about you (even though he "adores" you).

The blockade, Israel's killing of civilians, investigating the flotilla ambush, conditions in Gaza and anything else he doesn't care about, Tommy labels "the sideshow." What we should be focused on is, let me guess, "the main event." Wrong! For some reason, it's "the ball game." The ball game and the sideshow?

Anyway, the point is Tommy doesn't think you're capable of thinking about more than one thing at once. So if you're allowing yourself to get distracted by little things like civilian deaths and Palestinian suffering, you're not thinking about what Tommy is thinking about! Which is:

The effort by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to build the institutional foundations of a Palestinian state from the ground up — replacing the corrupt, jerry-built structure that Yasir Arafat created and Israel destroyed — is actually making progress. This matters — and must be nurtured.

You see, there are two models of Arab governance. The old Nasserite model, which Hamas still practices, where leaders say: “Judge me by how I resist Israel or America.” And: “First we get a state, then we build the institutions.” The new model, pioneered in the West Bank by Abbas and Fayyad is: “Judge me by how I perform — how I generate investment and employment, deliver services and pick up the garbage. First we build transparent and effective political and security institutions. Then we declare a state. That is what the Zionists did, and it sure worked for them.”

If there's one thing that Tommy loves nearly as much as a rule or a tortured metaphor, it's a binary opposition. The sideshow or the ballgame. The old model of Arab governance or the new.

But there's a problem. Just because Tom Friedman thinks resisting Israel and America is bad and generating investment and delivering services is good, it doesn't logically follow that these two things are mutually exclusive. Take Hamas. One of the main reasons Hamas won the 2006 elections because they were doing a better job of delivering services than the Palestinian Authority. Imagine that, Tommy. Hamas is capable of opposing Israel's existence (bad) and picking up the garbage (good) at the same time. Israel understands this -- that's why they have a blockade in place to undermine the ability of the democratically elected Hamas to govern.

I'm pretty sure even Tom "I don't know what a rule is" Friedman gets this. But he has to pretend that his dislike of Hamas and new-found love for the Palestinian Authority have something to do to with their ability or inability to deliver services to people he pretends to adore. So he can pretend, as he loves to do, to be thinking outside the box, when he's really, as he loves to do, just defending the status quo.

Fire Tom Friedman

Tommy By the Numbers

Since this blog was inspired by the late, great Fire Joe Morgan, I thought I'd post a quick follow- up yesterday's post on Tommy's freedom flotilla column with a little Friedman sabermetrics.

• Number of times Tommy mentioned the 9 dead activists in his freedom flotilla column: 0.
• Number of times Tommy referred to himself: 15.
• Number of times Tommy mentioned the suffering of the people of Gaza: 0.
• Number of times he mentioned his own suffering (this week's events have been hard for him to watch): 2.
  
• Number of times Tommy espoused centrism or balance as the key to solving the current crisis: 4.
  
• Number of specific acts of violence committed by Israel detailed by Tommy (in a column written in response to Israel's killing of nine civilians): 0.
• Number of specific acts of violence committed by Muslims detailed by Tommy (in a column written in response to Israel's killing of nine civilians): 5.

Fire Tom Friedman.

The Freedom Flotilla: Is Tom Friedman the Real Victim?

Against my better judgment, I read Tommy's freedom flotilla column yesterday.

As a friend of both Turkey and Israel, it has been agonizing to watch the disastrous clash between Israeli naval commandos and a flotilla of “humanitarian” activists seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Thanks, Tommy. With all the suffering and death, I hadn't stopped to think about how this was affecting you personally. But you put it in terms I think we all can relate to. I remember when my friend Matt stopped talking to my friend Eddie -- agonizing! You really put all that Muslim whining about "blockades" and "dead" civilians in perspective. (Alternate interpretation: Tommy to Virginia Heffernan: You think you have a lot of friends? Anyone can be friends with people. Tom Friedman is friends with fuckin' countries.)

Personally, I think both Israel and Turkey have gotten out of balance lately, and it is America’s job to help both get back to the center — urgently.

You get that? Tom Friedman is a Serious Centrist and that he blames both sides. No matter how much this column may look like the rantings of a pro-Israeli zealot, it is not.

I’ve long had a soft spot for Turkey. I once even argued that if the European Union wouldn’t admit Turkey, we should invite Turkey to join Nafta. Why? Because historically, Turkey has been good to Israel and I don't give a shit about the Kurds or Armenians.

OK - you caught me. I made that last sentence up. But let's review the math: Ahmadinejad + Genocide Denial = As Ugly as it Gets. Turkey + Genocide Denial = Long Soft Spot.

I have seen Turkey play an important role mediating between Israel and Syria and voting just a month ago in favor of Israel joining the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.

Got it. You like Turkey when they're good to Israel.

Therefore, it has been painful to hear the same Prime Minister Erdogan in recent years publicly lash out with ever-greater vehemence at Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza. Many see this as Turkey looking to ingratiate itself with the Muslim world after having been rebuffed by the European Union.

On Tuesday, Tommy offered this theory about Turkey's motives on Imus. But it was just his own theory. Twenty-four hours later, its the collected, conventional wisdom that that's what the Turks are up to. Tommy Friedman is a one-man tipping point. How is Turkey's vote last month in favor of Israel joining the OECD a part of Turkey's grand Muslim world ingratiation scheme? Friedman doesn't say. The important thing is that Prime Minister Erdogan's lashing out with ever-greater vehemence at Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza has nothing to do with with Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza.

I have no problem with Turkey or humanitarian groups loudly criticizing Israel.

Every time I'm ready to completely write off Thomas L. Friedman, he does something so breathtakingly magnanimous that I'm moved to the brink of tears. Permission granted to criticize Israel!!!

But wait. Apparently there's a set of conditions:

But I have a big problem when people get so agitated by Israel’s actions in Gaza but are unmoved by Syria’s involvement in the murder of the prime minister of Lebanon, by the Iranian regime’s killing of its own citizens demonstrating for the right to have their votes counted, by Muslim suicide bombers murdering nearly 100 Ahmadi Muslims in mosques in Pakistan on Friday and by pro-Hamas gunmen destroying a U.N.-sponsored summer camp in Gaza because it wouldn’t force Islamic fundamentalism down the throats of children.

In order to receive Tommy's blessing to be angry, you have to agree to also be angry about the things Tommy Friedman pretends to be angry about. That's right: Tommy Friedman who proclaimed that the U.S. was right to invade Iraq to send a message after 9/11 even if we got the country wrong and that Israel should try to "educate" Hamas by inflicting heavy pain on the Gaza population is lecturing the Muslim world on what they should be angry about. Sometimes I think I actually hate smug paternalistic Tommy more than I hate overtly racist Tommy. Forty-three rooms in that Bethesda mansion and apparently not one mirror.

There is no question that this flotilla was a setup.

Since Tommy established way back in paragraph one that he's a friend to both sides and therefore an impartial referee, there's no question that there's no question that this flotilla was a setup. No further explanation needed.

Israel’s intelligence failed to fully appreciate who was on board, and Israel’s leaders certainly failed to think more creatively about how to avoid the very violent confrontation that the blockade-busters wanted.

More classic Tommy Centrism. "See, both sides have flaws. The Muslims are morally-depraved, blood-thirsty hypocrites and the Israelis make tactical mistakes." Isn't that always the Serious Centrist analysis of Israel's colossal fuck-ups? (See, e.g., Israel-Lebanon 2006).

It is overwhelmingly in Israel’s interest to bring more diplomatic imagination and energy to ending this Gaza siege. How long is this going to go on? Are we going to have a whole new generation grow up in Gaza with Israel counting how many calories they each get? That surely can’t be in Israel’s interest.

Starving the people of Gaza is bad . . . because it's bad for Israel. Not because the Gazans are starving (65% of the population is food insecure).

And the breathtaking conclusion:

This is a critical moment. Two of America’s best friends are out of balance and infuriatingly at each other’s throats. We have got to move quickly to get them both back to the center before this spins out of control.

Only in America can a Serious Middle East Expert bemoan the fact that things are out of balance in the Middle East and never once mention the great imbalancer in the Middle East: The United States' unconditional support of -- and aid to -- to Israel. And only Tommy Friedman could write a column about the freedom flotilla that literally talked more about his own suffering than that of the Palestinians.

Fire Tom Friedman.

As Ugly as It Gets

When I first read Tommy's latest, "As Ugly as It Gets," I thought, "What an apt title." After all, it's got it all: Saber-rattling against Iran based on discredited and exaggerated estimates of Iran's nuclear capabilities (more here); imperial arrogance where Tommy lectures Brazil and Turkey for negotiating with Ahmadinejad with nary a peep about how his own country coddles dictators and human rights abusers around the world and, of course, has a bit of a human rights problem of its own; and complete ignorance (he contrasts Iran with Colombia, which he calls "one of the great democratic success stories " -- more on this front here)." And then there was this:

I confess that when I first saw the May 17 picture of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, joining his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with raised arms — after their signing of a putative deal to defuse the crisis over Iran’s nuclear weapons program — all I could think of was: Is there anything uglier than watching democrats sell out other democrats to a Holocaust-denying, vote-stealing Iranian thug just to tweak the U.S. and show that they, too, can play at the big power table?

No, that’s about as ugly as it gets.

I wouldn't be the first to point out (man, other people blog fast) that even if one accepts Tommy's extremely questionable version of events, there are many things that are uglier, like for instance, Tommy's infamous "Suck on This" Charlie Rose appearance. As Jonathan Weiler notes:

You need to watch the video to see the sneering, snarling bloodlust in Tom Friedman's withered soul to appreciate fully what ugliness really looks like, when a self-described democrat explains why it's OK to murder innocent civilians in a country that had nothing to do with the attack that Friedman says was the culminating justification for our invasion.

And speaking of ugly, there's the fact that Friedman seems completely unaware that he's doing it again -- taking neocon arguments and lies and putting a respectable, mustached "liberal" face on them, and in the process, pushing the argument for war a little further into the mainstream. Or that Green Tommy is being shunted aside for Beat-Your-Chest Tommy the same week that Friedman is taking a beating from conservatives for his "I wish I was China for a day" comments on Meet the Press.

But as I sat there sitting there thinking about everything about Tommy that is considerably uglier than the ugliest Tommy can imagine, my eye wandered across the editorial page and I was confronted by ugly in its purest, ugliest form: A whopper of an op-ed by John Yoo -- yes that John Yoo - on Elena Kagan.

Now John Yoo is either:

1. The legal architect behind the Bush torture program; or
2. One of the few low-level flunkies at the Bush DOJ who was willing to write memos giving legal cover for the torture that the Bush administration had already decided it was going to do; or
3. At best: A really bad lawyer with poor judgement, which is what a Justice Department review ultimately decided in "exonerating" Yoo and not recommending further sanctions.

None of these, obviously, should qualify Yoo to evaluate Kagan's views on executive privilege in the newspaper of record. But that's America for you. First, you're infamous. Then you're famous. Then somehow you're an expert -- call it the Ollie North career trajectory. And then you get to write a 1,330 word smug, condescending op-ed (theTimes suggested length for op-ed submissions is 750) on the very editoral page that called you out a few months ago where you excoriate a candidate for the Supreme Court because you're worried she might not be so keen on torturing Muslims. (God let's hope so, but I'm not as sure as Dungeon Master Yoo).

That might really be as ugly as it gets.

Karzai the Carpet Salesman

A few weeks ago, Tommy was angry. According to a Times article,Hamid Karzai had "recently told lunch guests at the presidential palace that he believes the Americans are in Afghanistan because they want to dominate his country and the region." This assessment of American aims upset Friedman so much in the very next paragraph he repeated it essentially verbatim, "Karzai believes that America is trying to dominate the region". (I've subsequently learned from a conversation with someone in the NYT editorial office that Friedman doesn't have an editor).

Tommy, of course, didn't pause to consider what might make that paranoid Karzai think the U.S. was trying to dominate the region. Instead, he started in in on a typical Friedman theme: the ingratitude of those whose countries we invade and people we kill: "That is what we’re getting for risking thousands of U.S. soldiers and having spent $200 billion already."

Much of what followed was pretty forgettable. Apparently, the U.S. is violating THREE CARDINAL RULES OF MIDDLE EAST DIPLOMACY. I'll spare you, except for what he said about rule # 2:

Rule No. 2: “Never want it more than they do.” If we want good governance in Afghanistan more than Karzai, he will sell us that carpet over and over.

Karzai will sell us what?!? "Selling us that carpet" is simply not an an expression. And while Friedman is famous for making up his own tortured metaphors, you cannot just throw out racist caricatures about the President of Afghanistan on the editorial page of The New York Times.

Except apparently you can. Not only did Friedman write that and The New York Times printed it, but no one said a word about it. I spent a lot of time reading reaction to that op-ed (it might surprise you to learn I'm a little obsessed with Friedman), and there were lots of people who oohed and aahed over the THREE CARDINAL RULES. But except for a lone solitary tweet, no one said, "what the fuck did you mean by that carpet crack, Tommy? What caused you to choose those particular words? Were you were playing off of the racist stereotype of Arabs and Persians from the Middle East as slick carpet salesmen?"

The sad fact is no form of prejudice is more socially acceptable in so-called polite company than anti-Muslim sentiments. Can you imagine the uproar if someone had written in the New York Times, "If we want peace more than Netanyahu, he'll lend us money at exorbitant rates over and over"? But that's essentially what Friedman did.

In the grand scheme of things, of course, Tommy's racist writings are a drop in the bucket compared to the atrocities committed by the U.S. in our -- dare I say it -- attempt to dominate the region. But in a just world, Friedman would making his carpet salesman cracks on some obscure xenophobic website and not as Esteemed Thinker on the pages of The New York Times.

Fire Tom Friedman.