Here it is. Matt Taibbi’s long-awaited review of Thomas Friedman’s latest screed, Hot, Flat and Crowded. It’s not as cutting as his review of Friedman’s preceding laughably idiotic book, The World Is Flat, but it’s still got some solid moments – I highly, highly recommend checking it out. And in other Friedman-related news, check out these two recent doozies (one hilarious, one horrifying).
First, the hilarious – a metaphor so convoluted, inappropriate and Friedman-esque that it almost seems like he wrote this column and others with some personally conceived, stunningly ill-considered Mad Libs:
Over the next couple of years, two very big countries, America and China, will give birth to something very important. They’re each going to give birth to close to $1 trillion worth of economic stimulus — in the form of tax cuts, infrastructure, highways, mass transit and new energy systems. But a lot is riding on these two babies. If China and America each give birth to a pig — a big, energy-devouring, climate-spoiling stimulus hog — our kids are done for. It will be the burden of their lifetimes. If they each give birth to a gazelle — a lean, energy-efficient and innovation-friendly stimulus — it will be the opportunity of their lifetimes.
Amazing! China, America, pigs, and gazelles. Honestly, though – what the fuck? Buried somewhere here is a good point, but still – how can countries give birth? Why are they doing so? What does this have to do with economic stimulus? Why wouldn’t they be giving birth to humans? And why would either of them give birth to a gazelle? Neither of the countries actually have gazelles (aside from the endangered Mongolian gazelle in some parts of China – and yeah, I looked it up), putting aside any questions about why a gazelle is more environmentally friendly in the first place. All this, of course, without noting that there will be far more than a trillion dollars being circulated in the U.S. alone, nevermind China. In this case, Friedman is both wrong and an idiot. But hilarious.
And the scary:
In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population. If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims. Now its focus, and the Obama team’s focus, should be on creating a clear choice for Hamas for the world to see: Are you about destroying Israel or building Gaza?
But that requires diplomacy. Israel de facto recognizes Hamas’s right to rule Gaza and to provide for the well-being and security of the people of Gaza — which was actually Hamas’s original campaign message, not rocketing Israel. And, in return, Hamas has to signal a willingness to assume responsibility for a lasting cease-fire and to abandon efforts to change the strategic equation with Israel by deploying longer and longer range rockets. That’s the only deal. Let’s give it a try.
Friedman’s point – thankfully un-muddled by useless metaphors – is that when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, it ‘educated’ Hezbollah (in addition, of course, to killing more than 1,000 civilians and injuring more than 4,000, a needless digression for Friedman). Following this, Friedman argues, is that Israel should ‘educate’, rather than ‘eradicate’, Hamas. Leaving aside the fact that Israel cannot eradicate Hamas, publicly calling for the continued ‘education’ of Hamas and its population – which has led to almost 1,100 deaths so far, many of them civilians and almost 300 of them children – is abhorrent. As has been reported nearly everywhere, the relentless destruction of Gaza and its inhabitants has, far from lowering support for Hamas, increased it. The Israeli strategy, as it were, is a complete and utter mess – high-up IDF and government officials are unable to even half-articulate it (being unable to, of course, explain that a large part of the reason for the attack was Israel’s upcoming elections). At this point it is difficult – near impossible, actually – to deny that Israel has committed war crimes in its attack and continues to do so (on that note, the UN Human Rights chief is calling for an investigation into war crimes involving Israel’s indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, and the UN is reporting that today’s attack on its UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) headquarters involved the employment of white phosphorous, a burning agent thats use as a weapon is proscribed by the Geneva Convention).
And Friedman, of course, completely detaches the situation from any meaningful context – a criticism of the media I mentioned in a previous post. And while it’s difficult to fault Friedman in particular here – he is merely one of many whose writing on the Gaza invasion betrays an absurdly limited and partisan knowledge of the topic – it is a shame that the public discourse on the conflict in the U.S. media is so skewed toward Israel. It’s columns like this, and the thousands of others that have twisted and mischaracterized the conflict, that have helped forever undermine the image of the U.S. as an honest broker in the region (an image that never stood much of a chance at existing, but still). One can only hope Israel will back out of Gaza soon, if only to stop Friedman from blathering idiotically and dangerously about the need for the continued illegal and immoral collective punishment of a civilian population. One almost wishes that he would re-up on the incoherent environmentalist missives sometime soon – I suppose the grass is always greener, eh?
