The New York Times has discontinued its subscriber-only Times Select service and unleashed columnist Tom Friedman upon the world once again. In what cannot be a coincidence, Friedman celebrated his release with one of his most deeply stupid columns in years.
Six years on from 9/11, Friedman has realized that his reaction to the attacks was stupid. He says, with the emphasis his, “9/11 has made us stupid.” And he says, with the emphasis his, that “[the U.S.] can’t afford to keep being this stupid!”
Yeah well. No shit. But what’s really stupid here is that many Americans weren’t stupefied by 9/11, and many of those who were are victims of Friedman and his stupid pundit colleagues. Americans didn’t rise up en masse and demand that our government alienate the world and invade Iraq; despite the best efforts of Friedman, his satellites, the press collectively and the Bush administration to sell Iraq as an existential threat in the starkest possible terms, polls from 2002 and 2003 show majorities and substantial minorities of Americans (depending on the framing of the questions) in favor of diplomacy and opposed to the invasion right up to the point that the intent to invade became inescapably clear to even the dimmest or most optimistic observers. We, many of us, weren’t deranged: it was just Tom and a bunch of his influential friends.
Friedman, though, can’t bring himself to admit that it wasn’t “us”, but him. He probably can’t imagine circumstances under which he could be deluded or deranged or imbecilic while a hundred million or so of his fellow citizens weren’t. Louis XIV said “L’État, c’est Moi” — “I am the State”; Tom Friedman says “Si je suis aliéné, nous sommes tous aliénés” — “If I’m insane, we’re all insane.” It’s a Friedman-centric universe.
Well, but he’s better now, and shouldn’t we welcome him back to the fold?
No. Screw him. The column, which is a broadside against Rudy Giuliani and any other presidential candidate “who runs on the 9/11 platform”, contains not a word of apology. 800 words, and he couldn’t bring himself to tell his readers he’s sorry for spending the past five years advocating the deliberate slaughter of Arabs and others who not only didn’t attack us but for the most part actually liked us. Now that the consequences of that insane, corpse-based foreign policy have finally sunk in, he’s blithely issuing a clarion call to reason, just as if the recognition of the need for it is original to him. You can almost hear him thinking: “My G-d! If my own finely-crafted vessel of reason could be swamped so easily, what must lesser mortals have suffered?”
And so it is that Friedman now tells us that “9/11 has made us stupid,” that “our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.”
“Mine included.” Glory be.
So now Tom wants to dispense with the murderous 9/11 demagoguery he’s been promoting over the course of six years, some 500 columns and innumerable public appearances. But in favor of what? Well, here’s the very first criterion he lists for what he calls “a 9/12 president.”
You may think Guantánamo Bay is a prison camp in Cuba for Al Qaeda terrorists. A lot of the world thinks it’s a place we send visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration. I will not vote for any candidate who is not committed to dismantling Guantánamo Bay and replacing it with a free field hospital for poor Cubans. Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty. (emphasis mine)
As the cool cats on MTV say, “Waddafux up with that?” Never mind that Cubans have extremely low-cost government-funded health care delivered by more than twice as many physicians per capita as the U.S., something one could reasonably expect America’s preeminent foreign policy columnist to know — who in their right mind would propose establishing a free hospital in Cuba as recompense for everything Gitmo represents? And who could think that any presidential candidate would endorse the idea?
Tom, if you don’t want to vote, or you want company at the rest home, just say so.
I just read his column and you are entirely correct. My first thought was of the old Lone Ranger joke: What do you mean “we,” white man?
Well, he did establish a new unit of time, the “Friedman.”
OK, this is nuts. Friedman may be the stupidest, but he’s tied for stupidest with so many pundits that the title becomes meaningless.
Take Jonah Goldberg. Please. This is the guy who said that “Sub-Saharan Africa could pretty much vanish from the world economy tomorrow and it would have virtually no effect on the global economy.” No effect from the loss of South African gold, Nigerian oil and West African coffee, diamonds and chocolate.
It’s Goldberg who said, “I think {hint: first clue} all intelligent, patriotic and informed people can agree: It would be great if the U.S. could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet. In fact, an Iraqi Pinochet would be even better than an Iraqi Castro.”
It’s Goldberg who said, “I predict that Iraq won’t have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it.” He predicted that on Feb. 8, 2005.
OK, OK, everybody knows Goldberg is a dumbass and Friedman is supposed to be smart. Now what other pundit is supposed to be smart but is actually in the running for stupidest, if not stupider than Friedman?
How about David Brooks? University of Chicago, so he must be smart. Right? I mean, isn’t that where Milton Friedman’s from? John Ashcroft? Antonin Scalia, Paul Wolfowitz and Barack Obama?
A little while ago Brooks wrote: “Americans are having a debate about how to proceed in Iraq, but we are not having a strategic debate about retracting American power and influence…What’s happening today is just another chapter in that long expansionist story…they don’t question the need for America to play a leading role. They take it for granted that the U.S. is going to be in the Middle East for a long time to come…The hegemon will change. The hegemon will do more negotiating. But the hegemon will live.”
Which Americans is he talking about? Where’s the evidence of that claim? And god help us all…the hegemon? Brooks admits he’s influenced by Ender’s Game. Stoopid.
Brooks also believes that “Now it’s evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the ‘netroots.’ You can learn most of what you need to know by paying attention to two different groups – high school educated women in the Midwest, and the old Clinton establishment in Washington.”
Well, David seems to have learned nothing from the 2006 election. That’s ingloriously dumb.
Y’know, this stuff is contagious. I’m feeling stoopider by the minute. Somebody else carry on.
Oh, and with so many pundits tied for stupidest, and with stupidest therefore losing its meaning, maybe it’s time for a new word to describe the particular kind of agonizing, astonishing stupidity infecting these chatterers, a stupidity that, by its epidemic viral insemination of the public media and discourse, causes an exquisitely immobilizing depression in its otherwise (and previously) intelligent victims.
Punditest?
The NYT has ended its ‘pay for gems like TF’ policy, thus we can read his **** each time on the website w/o cost.
Well there have been a lot of 9/11′s since 2001…so he might be getter stupider each year.
Stupid. What is stupider than a country of brainwashed people believing the propoganda that 911 was caused by some arab. Ha Ha. Wake up from your slumber, was your eyes, clean your ears and take the time to see and hear the truth. May God bless AMERICA Corp(With descernment then wisdom)before it destroys itself along with America the people.
And now those same stupid pundits want to force Billary on the Democrats. People of America unite! Don’t let the pundits pick our candidates for the general election!