<< NEXT LEVEL REACHED ~ MAIN ~ LIES A TEACHER TOLD >>
“WORLD IS FLAT” FLATTENED
Matt Taibbi celebrates the peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman:
I think it was about five months ago that Press editor Alex Zaitchik whispered to me in the office hallway that Thomas Friedman had a new book coming out. All he knew about it was the title, but that was enough; he approached me with the chilled demeanor of a British spy who has just discovered that Hitler was secretly buying up the world’s manganese supply. Who knew what it meant—but one had to assume the worst.
“It’s going to be called ‘The Flattening’,” he whispered. Then he stood there, eyebrows raised, staring at me, waiting to see the effect of the news when it landed. I said nothing.
It turned out Alex had bad information; the book that ultimately came out would be called ‘The World Is Flat’. It didn’t matter. Either version suggested the same horrifying possibility. Thomas Friedman in possession of 500 pages of ruminations on the metaphorical theme of flatness would be a very dangerous thing indeed. It would be like letting a chimpanzee loose in the NORAD control room; even the best-case scenario is an image that could keep you awake well into your 50s.
Still, less scary than Project Huff ‘n’ Puffington, described below.
I feel kind of bad - I’m 38 and I’ve been a libertarian since I was about twelve (although I didn’t know my worldview was a coherent philosophy with a name until I was twenty).
Of course , before twelve I was a whining crybaby who expected everyone else to give me everything without having to do anything for it, so I guess maybe I was a leftist then.
Have to agree Mike G, although I suspect that much of this bile is a result of Taibbi being ideologically opposed to the basic premise of the book.
I do not intend to read Friedman’s book. I was ultimately dissapointed with “the lexus and the olive tree” (LATOT) precisely because there were too many glib phrases endlessly repeated. I think in the LATOT the “golden strait jacket” was well and truely flogged to death. He also relied on his lefty mates in the NYT to get a handle on how Howard beat Keating in the 1996 election. He implied that Keating was the good guy, and Howard was only elected by bagging rational economic policy, but once elcted was forced to adopt economic policies, because of the Golden Strait Jacket! ROTFL.While his basic premise is correct (of the book, not of Howard), Friedman’s style’s main fault is that he grabs the premise, wraps it up in a snappy phrase, gives it a good rogering, runs it up the flagpole, shoots the breeze, floats the issue and drives a mack truck over it before beating you over the head with it
in four hundred different ways in four hundred pages.My advice is stick to the condensed version in the friday editon of the AFR (whenever it comes out)
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
Tim -off topic
Re Andrew Bolts spiel on tribes and soccer violence, riots etc. A few nights ago ten indigenous kids attacked two asian students on a deserted railway station platform. The attackers punched and kicked their victims and finally threw one onto the electrified rail line.All caught on video. Two of the assailants were thirteen year old girls, one in the “care” of the Dept.