this is the only link i can find to Matt Taibbi's original takedown of Thomas Friedman:
http://delong.typepad.com/...
this Taibbi article helped me to realize that i was not, in fact, insane or addled. the Great Man Friedman really was an ass. Thankyou, Matt! i was not alone!
below the squiggle is my review of friedman's book. i wrote it and posted it on Amazon. it is not necessary to have bought the book from Amazon to review it on Amazon.
friedman makes me do a face-palm every time. he and david brooks represent, to me, most everything that is rotten, fraudulent and pseudo-intellectual in many political ideas and essays. they are foolish rich men purveying bad ideas because they form pretty metaphors and fill up some column inches. anecdotes and metaphors sell your rotten ideas to the unwary every time! Newt Gingrich is also a grand master of this form of shilling for the pseudo-idea.
i encourage you to write your own interviews on Amazon to fight the tide of conservative propaganda. as someone considers buying a book by say, Friedman or D'Souza, a scathing negative review by a liberal may be the only signal available to a potential reader that this book is BS and that there is another side to the story.
this diary may only be useful for the link to the Radio New Zealand interview of Friedman. enjoy it - it is delightful to hear, for once, the Great Man challenged! he is obviously accustomed to much more obsequious interviewers. i culled that link from Glenn Greenwald's Salon blog.
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