Tom Friedman, straight up racist

Before I'd read anything else on the Middle East, I read Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem, a journalistic memoir of his time as a Middle East correspondent. I'll be honest with you, I remember virtually nothing but that I liked it.

Subsequent to that I paid to see him speak in Tacoma. Braving that fair city's storied aroma, I sat up straight in some campus auditorium bleacher seat, pen in hand, ready to document the wisdom. Within 5 minutes my jaw approached the floor, my face twisted in horror -- it wasn't the aroma. Who was this idiot? I asked my frowning companion.

Friedman pranced about, explaining Arab nations like some schlocky TV scientist in a clown suit teaching 4-year-olds about static electricity or carbonation: "I call all these angry men in the street 'the sittin' around guys.'"

From that night on -- when we left well before his conclusion -- I've had trouble thinking of Friedman as anything but a nice suburban racist. The kind of guy who wouldn't be at the lynch mob maybe, but who would editorialize in the Northern papers about how we shouldn't necessarily judge these mobs who may not be doing exactly the right thing but who nevertheless have a vision that maybe approaches something that ultimately needs to get done, so maybe, just maybe, we should give them a chance to complete their work before judging...

Here's a portion of Friedman's latest, from Sadly, No!. (If you're wondering why this is racist, replace "Arabs" with "Jews" or "Blacks." If you're still unsure, stop watching TV):

Special Note: Some commenters think this post is a bit misleading. No, Tom Friedman did not write the following poem, as the first paragraph notes. But the issue is twofold: 1.) The translation comes from a site with a terrible reputation for propagandizing against Arabs and Muslims and 2.) Even if MEMRI's translation is perfect, it's not an excuse for publishing something that is racist. No, not even if the person is of that ethnicity. Not presented as "an honest voice."

[…] Occasionally an honest voice rises, giving you a glimmer of hope that others will stand up. The MEMRI translation Web site (memri.org) [note: see here and here] just posted a poem called "When," from a Saudi author, Wajeha al-Huwaider, that was posted on Arab reform sites like www.aafaq.org.

When you cannot find a single garden in your city, but there is a mosque on every corner -- you know that you are in an Arab country.

When you see people living in the past with all the trappings of modernity -- do not be surprised, you are...