Friedman, a NY times op ed writer, who I admired after 9/11, but who has gradually gone off the deep end in the last several years. Why and how? I posit that in supporting the invasion of Iraq and dispatching of Hussein (and he did support it), he violated Liberal Orthodoxy and feels he has to make it up to his NY Times-reading base.
His most recent book is "'That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back", and I've seen him promoting it on Imus and a few other outlets. I also posted this little exchange he had, a couple of weeks ago. NYT Tom Friedman vs. CNBC's Rick Santelli on whether social security is a ponzi scheme.
Anyway, a bit over a week ago the Wall Street Journal had a review of Friedman's book (which he co-authored) and I thought it was great. I put it aside to post, and then forgot about it.
But I was reminded a couple of days ago when a friend of mine sent me an 8 page summary of Friedman's "important new book."
Here's the WSJ review -
As a writer, Mr. Friedman is best known for his galloping assaults on Strunk and White's Rule No. 9: "Do Not Affect a Breezy Manner." "The World Is Flat" & Co. were cyclones of breeziness, mixing metaphors by the dozens and whipping up slang and clichés and jokey catchphrases of the author's own invention. ...
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In "That Used to Be Us," the method has been slightly altered. It would be going too far to describe the writing as "subdued," but its relative readability marks a break with its predecessors. How to explain it? My guess is that we can thank Mr. Friedman's co-author, Michael Mandelbaum. A close friend of Mr. Friedman, he is the author of many normal, un-Friedmanlike books, including "The Meaning of Sports." ("Delightful"—Thomas L. Friedman, the New York Times.)
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To be sure, I should insert a "to be sure" paragraph here. ...
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"Faced with era-defining challenges," he writes, "the country has responded with all the vigor and determination of a lollipop." One chapter is called "Homework x 2 = The American Dream." He advocates "empowering powerful breakthroughs" and notes that "the cloud . . . is driving the flattening further and faster." (Pointless alliteration + runaway metaphor = Friedmanism.) Certain phrases crop up so often that they must have been rejected book titles: "Average is over" is one of the new ones, if you want to give it a try. (You'll be hearing it on "Charlie Rose.")
Mr. Friedman can turn a phrase into cliché faster than any Madison Avenue jingle writer. He announces that "America declared war on math and physics." Three paragraphs later, we learn that we're "waging war on math and physics." Three sentences later: "We went to war against math and physics." And onto the next page: "We need a systemic response to both our math and physics challenges, not a war on both." Three sentences later: We must "reverse the damage we have done by making war on both math and physics," because, we learn two sentences later, soon the war on terror "won't seem nearly as important as the wars we waged against physics and math." He must think we're idiots.
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If the authors' frustration is unoriginal and ill-defined, their optimism is terrifying. America will rebound—we will become the us that we used to be again, you might say and Mr. Friedman does—when we regain our ability to do "big things" through "collective action." Collective action is a phrase that means "the federal government." Among the big things that we will do are rework American industry, through regulation and taxation, to drastically cut carbon emissions. Another one of our big things is a big increase in the gasoline tax. We will also impose on us a new big carbon tax. We will use revenues to create a "clean energy" industry with millions of "green jobs" like the ones that were eliminated earlier this month at Solyndra. Readers will wonder, like the early environmentalist Tonto, "What do you mean 'we,' kemo sabe?"
Conclusion:
You're welcome to it, but do remember to bring a lot of shovels.
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