When I was in high school over 30 years ago I remember being told that our sources for serious news- Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report- were written on a sixth grade level.

It seems that Mr. Friedman learned that well. I am sure he congratulates himself for writing above the level of TV news.

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It was Thomas Friedman's writings that opened my eyes to the dynamics of the Middle East. Prior to accessing his insights in some three of his books, nothing there made any sense to me. I now read him with interest, anticipating useful insights. I recognize that he well understands "the trouble with being smart: (you know exactly what is going to happen but no one listens to you)."

My take on his column, so roundly trashed here by someone who makes considerable effort to avoid taking his words at face value, is his effort to articulate the naive, confused, ignorant, sad and sorry state of mind of the typical American voter. If a candidate (Obama) wishes to win a National election for president, he will be well advised to consider how to motivate those whose votes he needs. I would suggest that Mr. Friedman has a better grasp of that reality than the candidate and the author (Jill Filipovic) of this bashing, unuseful article. Madam: you may have credentials as a feminist - but upon viewing your knee jerk reaction to Mr. Friedman, I must guess you are no intellectual (as is Mr. Friedman). If this article suggests typical expectations of the coming election, Democrats and progressives are walking a field mined by fragments of our own inner movements.

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I do NOT want Cheney to have any sort of presidential power.

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Why do people keep insisting Friedman is somehow a 'good writer'? He writes like a third rate management seminar huckster.

"Dial up?" Dial down"? What the fuck inspired him to come up with that little bit of dribble? What the fuck is "dialing down your inner Carter"?

This is of course in addition to the fact that he is an absolute moron.

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Well, this is overwhelming: the negative reactions to Friedman. I lack the energy, the time and the resources to address each of these responses. However, I feel they are all refutable. Mostly, it strikes me, it is about interpretation. He says "X" and you say he said "Y" and then you argue against "Y."

May I suggest to each of you: Your biases are steering your intellect and you got it wrong? Wake up. The war in Iraq adds new dimensions to the word complex. I don't think most of you get it. You can't get past "we don't belong there." What you do get is we should never have gone there in the first place. I agree. However, against my will, we did. And we are stuck with some very nasty results: our president and his appointees have broken pottery all over the planet with very heavy implications for the future - immediate and long term. He ain't gonna clean it up. Now what? Quit yelling at me about Friedman as though he were the problem. You will never put your words in his mouth or anyone else with his intellectual integrity.

I feel like I stirred up a fundamentalist religious anti-war group. A single issue group that has to have its own way or else?

I'm out of here - got a life to live. Truly sorry you all just don't get it. (Too bad you can't listen to me without screaming back at me - cause I'm not nearly as smart as Mr. Friedman.)

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Thomas Friedman writes, "lately I've been wondering whether, if it is Barack Obama, he might want to consider keeping Dick Cheney on as his vice president". So Cheney can continue to subvert democracy in the United States? Lately I've been wondering if Thomas Friedman might consider having Dick Cheney sittng on his face for the next four years.

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Friedman has really gone over the edge finally I suspect the early onset of Alzheimer's sad really he's so young...!


Of course he is still a complete certified ass-hole but think of his family and how they'll suffer..

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I'd call Tom Friedman a horse's ass, but that would demean horses. He produces a lot of hot air, and has been wrong many, many times. He has been predicting success in Iraq for years. "Victory is in sight."
To paraphrase the late Johnny Carson,
Tom Friedman is like Johnny's idiot stockbroker,"Bombastic Friedman."

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I believe that gender is not going to be the issue in the electorates' minds. However, MSM and blogs of all persuasions cannot see past this gender shtick. It's a talking heads issue.

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Friedman gets a lot wrong and Chaney is possibly the most corrupt vice president since Agnew...and may well be worse. Having conceeded that, it is intellectually childish and logically ignorant to simply discount everything with their name attached. If I wanted that kind of pouting hot air, I'd listen to Bill O'Reilly.

Of course, Obama will not have Chaney as his running mate, but to stop there totally misses the value of Friedman's suggestion. Obama is a great guy, but if he is affected by whether or not Hillary says "Hi" to him, it would be prudent for him to have a second in command who has credibility as "muscle." Nearly all effective negotiations have both carrot and stick components. Obama is great on the carrot side, but for the more macho and entrenched adversaries (and there are many) he will need someone with the kind of unrestrained hawkish reputation that Chaney carries (and no, Virginia, that doesn't mean that Obama's VP has to also lie to the American people, line the pockets of his buddies and trash the American Constitution, too).

I realize that analogies require an element of intellectual work, but is it OK to trust that our audience has an IQ over 100?

Sometimes our adversaries will actually have a good idea or two. If we are too shallow and reactive to notice, we will end up like Bush: Always right, but with tons of squandered opportunities strewn about the landscape nearby.

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It's easy to cheerlead for foreign invasions and jingoistic leadership when they keep your $9.3 million 11,400 sq ft Bethesda mansion safe from Iranian nukes, progressive tax reform, and Iraq war veterans. But Friedman's "the world is flat" vision doesn't leave a lot of scraps for the peons to fight over.

Glenn Greenwald's Salon post on Sunday picks out two key lines from Flathead's article:

"Vice President Cheney is the hawk-eating hawk, who regularly swoops down and declares that the U.S. will not permit Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Trust me, the Iranians take his threats seriously. But Mr. Cheney's Dr. Strangelove imitation is totally wasted with President Bush and Secretary of State Condi Rice."

And:

"When negotiating with murderous regimes like Iran's or Syria's, you want Tony Soprano by your side, not Big Bird. Mr. Obama's gift for outreach would be so much more effective with a Dick Cheney standing over his right shoulder, quietly pounding a baseball bat into his palm."

America needs a hawk-eating hawk, a Tony Soprano, and a Dr Stragelove? Or is it Friedman's Privileged Class that suddenly needs legions of psycho-killers to protect themselves from the impoverished masses and other victims of Globalization Inc? Hmmm... mutant aerial predators, and romanticized Italian and German fascists. Flathead's leadership comfort zone is... crazy?

Greenwald then pulls out this 2002 Friedman classic quote:

"There is a lot about the Bush team's foreign policy I don't like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right. It is the only way we're going to get our turkey back."

Yep. Turkey. If that isn't crazy, it's certainly rich.

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Freidman's track record:

Wrong on Iraq. (proof of this? Just read any of his columns from 2002 onward)

Wrong on his Flat-World prophecy. (Simply by using the term "Flat Earth" he shows he is out of synch with... everyone since the 15th century???)

Wrong on Economics. Give me Paul Krugman any day of the week!!! He's a good writer AND a good economist.

Thomas Freidman is a legend in his own mind, and was "annointed" by the MSM as being some kind of expert on everything from Economics to the Middle East to war. WHY? He certainly hasn't proven himself to be so!

He's one of the main reasons I cancelled my subscription to the NYT!

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HOw do you figure the essence of Cheney is hot--he is probably the most hated man in America. Why should we pander to hate and war-mongering? NO. It's time we took control and gagged hateful, war-mongering ignorant people. This country is twisted. Only in America is revisionist history the norm. Out of the reletively civilized world, it's only in America that 2 plus 2 equals 5. The answer is not to swing to the right and appeal to idiots. The answer is to swing to the left and we might find ourself somewhere in the middle of Europe. Get a grip! You advocate conforming to racism, stupidity, and inhumanity, because the so-called masses are screaming for blood. We would still have slavery with that attitude. Women would not be able to vote. Ah, shit your right i can't wait until everybody conforms to the mob--and then we can all shoot black children twenty times for fun! The only thing we should do with Cheny and everyone who thinks like him is put them in prison or on parole, or in community service.

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HOw do you figure the essence of Cheney is hot--he is probably the most hated man in America. Why should we pander to hate and war-mongering? NO. It's time we took control and gagged hateful, war-mongering ignorant people. This country is twisted. Only in America is revisionist history the norm. Out of the reletively civilized world, it's only in America that 2 plus 2 equals 5. The answer is not to swing to the right and appeal to idiots. The answer is to swing to the left and we might find ourself somewhere in the middle of Europe. Get a grip! You advocate conforming to racism, stupidity, and inhumanity, because the so-called masses are screaming for blood. We would still have slavery with that attitude. Women would not be able to vote. Ah, shit your right i can't wait until everybody conforms to the mob--and then we can all shoot black children twenty times for fun! The only thing we should do with Cheny and everyone who thinks like him is put them in prison or on parole, or in community service.

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I am reading his book the world is flat--(i didn't buy it in a bookstore, but on the street in China so he 'ain't' getting my money. He states some interesting facts but it's his comments that irk me. I have one word for him and his cohorts in the media--TRAITOR! His book is not objective. It reads like he's kissing ass. He only tells one side of the story concerning outsourcing and glorifies it, with absolutely no concern (other than a hollow aside) for the millions who are loosing jobs in America. He actually says, in so many words, they should suck it up and learn to adapt--hmmm...intersting argument, but you could say the same thing about big-business, concerning the environment, renewable energy, dwindling resources, health care, pensions, respect towards humanity and society, and social welfare. You could say the same thing to the big business (military-industrial complex) that is the infrastructure of America--in that, the argument goes, if we downsize the military or even STOP dealing in arms too many jobs would be lost--as much of America depends on the military and weapons manufacturing and design--but, hay--shouldn't they suck it up and adapt. In his book he explains how everything, absolutely everything is or will be outsourced--including tutoring jobs (good part-time work for students). I never thought of myself as a conservative, or even patriotic, but he totally advocates and glorifies the enormous loss of so many livlihoods. He writes as if it is a good thing to provide jobs and benefits to Indians and Chinese, but what about the Americans who have few other skills or experiences to find new work? He even writes baout how these Indians get plush benefits to do the same unskilled labor, turoring, secretary jobs,and research assitant jobs that Americans can do, and whom are repeatedly denied any benefits or even a good wage. He brags about it. The whole media and goevernment is TRAITOROUS! I consider myself a global citizen but this is beyond betrayal of a nation--this is betrayal of humanity. He's relishing the flattening of the world (yes some of it is indeed wonderful) but he seems to relish that we are all being made into wage slaves, and he says nothing about the degredation of the environment and displacement of people due to these corporations fleeing the 'homeland' for slave labor, and to avoid environmental regulations. A tragedy is a tragedy no matter what country your in or from. I'm excited to see where the world is going but there is more than one kind of globalization. I'm sick of Americanization.

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lowest common denominator. You know, the whole dumbing down of America kinda thing. This phenom has gone to the highest levels of government (CW ['see Dubya' for all you 5th graders]), and permeates the very fabric of our existence. When you have so many people who still believe in the King James Bible stories, that the Earth is only 10,000 years old (see Mitt Romney and that ex-fat guy, Mike Huckleberry Huckabee), and when one of the most popular shows on the alphabet channels [ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX for all of you 5th graders] TV being, "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader", is there any wonder?

Now where did I put my Nancy Drew book that I was reading?

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just like Joe Lieberman...he can't help himself. They have the subconscious desire to side with Israel on all things policy wise. I still think he (Tom not Joe for all you 5th graders) makes a lot of sense about some things.

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