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July 25, 2006
Philosophy and Tom Friedman
Behold your nation's op-ed columnists. Here's Tom Friedman confiding his secret authorial techniques to Tim Russert:
“We got this free market, and I admit, I was speaking out in Minnesota–my hometown, in fact, and guy stood up in the audience, said, `Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you’d oppose?’ I said, `No, absolutely not.’ I said, `You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.”
I'm tempted to wonder if Friedman isn't making a complicated philosophical point, trying to clumsily demonstrate semantic externalism by playing a moron. If the contents of Tom Friedman's brain are insufficient to understand that "free trade" does not mean the same thing in all contexts, then you can much better understand the Friedman ouvre, which proceeds from some initial judgment that some concept X is both good and an example of "free trade," and thus all examples of apparent free trade are good. You can't blame him for the mistake, but you would learn that Tom Friedman's judgments are not, in and of themselves, sufficient information with which to inform yourself.
As I said, I'm tempted, but Friedman is far too egotistical to play the moron in pursuit of some educational bit of performance art that would assumedly be revealed in Friedman's twelfth and final book: The World isn't Flat, My Metaphors Don't Make Sense, And You People Should Be More Discerning In Who You Listen To.
Instead, Friedman's comments should trigger a conversation with his editors in which being fired hangs as a distinct possibility: If Tom Friedman is indeed writing about legislation based on his gut reactions to words in their titles, he's probably not the sort of guy the New York Times wants to hand an op-ed page slot to. If he's just lying about the stratagem in order to prove how fully he's bought into the elite consensus on free trade, he should be given paid leave and sent to a psychologist until his self esteem is no longer so low that he's obsessed with being the most enthusiastic lemming in the line. In any case, this is a very stupid statement by someone who's career is predicated on the belief that he's not a very stupid man. Friedman has some 'splainin' to do.
July 25, 2006 | Permalink
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Comments
"Friedman has some 'splainin' to do."
Indeed. And you know what? He'll never be asked to do it. His entirely undeserved prestige is such that he is immune from the need to justify anything he says with anything other than yet another stupid and quite possibly fictitious anecdote.
Posted by: Farinata X | Jul 25, 2006 3:30:47 PM
"Friedman's comments should trigger a conversation with his editors in which being fired hangs as a distinct possibility"
You are obviously not wearing the Moustache of Understanding.
Posted by: Petey | Jul 25, 2006 3:31:25 PM
This explains a lot about pundits and the Bush administration-
"I don't know what's in the law, but it's called clear skies- sounds good!"
"I support this legislation because of two words- healthy forests!"
"I didn't read the whole plan, but it says it's going to Save Social Security- and we need to!"
Posted by: SP | Jul 25, 2006 3:34:59 PM
In any case, this is a very stupid statement by someone who's career is predicated on the belief that he's not a very stupid man.
Except that he is a very, very stupid, thoughtless man, and I believe the quote probably accurately reflects his thought processes.
As Matt Taibbi wrote in probably the best ever single review of Friedman's work:
It's impossible to divorce The World Is Flat from its rhetorical approach. It's not for nothing that Thomas Friedman is called "the most important columnist in America today." That it's Friedman's own colleague at the New York Times (Walter Russell Mead) calling him this, on the back of Friedman's own book, is immaterial. Friedman is an important American. He is the perfect symbol of our culture of emboldened stupidity. Like George Bush, he's in the reality-making business. In the new flat world, argument is no longer a two-way street for people like the president and the country's most important columnist. You no longer have to worry about actually convincing anyone; the process ends when you make the case.
Things are true because you say they are. The only thing that matters is how sure you sound when you say it. In politics, this allows America to invade a castrated Iraq in self-defense. In the intellectual world, Friedman is now probing the outer limits of this trick's potential, and it's absolutely perfect, a stroke of genius, that he's choosing to argue that the world is flat. The only thing that would have been better would be if he had chosen to argue that the moon was made of cheese.
Posted by: Antid Oto | Jul 25, 2006 3:45:58 PM
If Tom Friedman is indeed writing about legislation based on his gut reactions to words in their titles, he's probably not the sort of guy the New York Times wants to hand an op-ed page slot to.
Errrrmmmmm.... It's an obvious thing, but this NYT op-ed page you talk about, home to Dowd and Brooks and Rich -- how the hell does Friedman not belong there?
Posted by: sglover | Jul 25, 2006 3:46:58 PM
I didn't see this live, but is there a chance he was joking? Seriously, we don't want to be like the right-wingers disssing Al Gore for saying his mom used the "Union Label" as a lullabye.
Posted by: Magenta | Jul 25, 2006 4:31:38 PM
On the other hand, the Wash Post still has Richard Cohen who admitted that he can't do simple math. And David Broder who wrote that Bush - the most powerful leader in the world - had nothing to do with 7 major international crises. Except of course for Iraq which he invaded. Or George Will, in addition to Maureen Dowd, Brooks, Tierney, and the rest. Or how about the Journal's editorial page?
What's scary when you review the op ed pages that are supposed to give reasoned commentary - it's very believable that Friedman hasn't read any of the trade agreements. He certainly has never gone past the simple argument: trade good, thus free trade agreement good.
Nor does it seem that other than Krugman, is it really worth one's while to read any of the major editorialists, nor watch any of the Sunday morning shows. And he was best seller too and won a few book awards. An amazing culture of institutionalized stupidity.
Wow.
Posted by: Samuel Knight | Jul 25, 2006 4:51:37 PM
'I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative.' . . . Friedman's comments should trigger a conversation with his editors in which being fired hangs as a distinct possibility
Ezra, you missed one other thing here, he doesn't even know the proper title of the bill: The Central America Free Trade Agreement.
Posted by: Fledermaus | Jul 25, 2006 7:05:59 PM
I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.
Somewhere, Dean Baker is screaming into his pillow...
Posted by: Brad Plumer | Jul 25, 2006 7:17:59 PM
Thank you Fledermaus - that alone means T.F. didn't know what CAFTA was.
Posted by: ET | Jul 26, 2006 11:03:01 AM
So here's a theory why Friedman is "the most important columnist". Friedman is an ardent libertarian, who believes economic libertarianism is good and trivializes cultural differences, and also believes the US should act strongly to enforce this view. These are all things that the well-to-do commentariat believes, and that the average voter is rather afraid of (they often respond to rabble-rousing for worker protections and bans on certain social behaviors).
If you were in that position, what you would desire most is not more intellectually satisfying evidence that libertinism is good. You would want someone who can "talk down" to the people, like the good Mr. Bush does so well, to convince them of the value of free trade. Without books like TWIF, how else are you going to convince rust-belt-ers that outsourcing really is a good thing?
Posted by: Tony v | Jul 26, 2006 11:15:32 AM
Exactly; the "just us folks talkin'" routine. Do not forget that Friedman is CIA (is one ever retired from the company?). He is pure, unadultrated propaganda, of the old-school Trilateral/CFR tradition, i.e., neo-liberal 'soft' imperialism. How quaint, actually, in these days of Roman glory. But Friedman must be examined through this lens first, last, and always: nothing he writes, not one word, is genuine, unless one means genuine bullshit. Taibbi is right, though; it is Friedman's writing that gives him away as the highly paid, weasely sycophant for corporate imperialism he obviously is.
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