Comments on: Thomas Friedman: The Empire’s Useful Idiot: An Exile Classic

By: Al Ductour

Al Ductour — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:08:13 +0000

I came across this post when I was doing a search for “tom friedman idiot.” I keep writing the NY Times asking them to stop having Tom write. I even offered to pay him to stop his garbage, to no avail.

Using your logic, NY Times will keep him around as long as he can write dumb things that make no sense. Now I better understand why he’s around.

It is a shame that so many people actually try to make sense of his dribble and try to quote him. Poor bastards.

By: Tim Lieder

Tim Lieder — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:07:12 +0000

So you are engaging in ad hominem attacks against Thomas Friedman for claiming that globalization is both inevitable and not necessarily evil; yet you use Mao as a counterattack because Mao is so…eloquent? I can see your point since that Cultural Revolution in which loyal Communist party members were shuffled off to death camps on a regular basis is the epitome of awesome.

And Russia didn’t completely ruin its economy with Communism to the point where it practically begged Putin to take over and establish a new totalitarian regime. Is that America’s fault?

By: Ciorba

Ciorba — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:39:08 +0000

Isn’t that cute, Friedman the multimillionaire (net worth 25 mill USD) expects us to believe he ever set foot in a burger joint.
Actually, I do hope that was an attempt at populism. The other possibility (that he’s telling the truth, that our elites truly waste their ill-gotten gains on disgusting, barely edible plebian crap) would be simply intolerable. I’m supposed to feel resentment mixed with envy for the lifestyles of the plutocrats, not pity and disgust.

By: Funonymous

Funonymous — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:40:07 +0000

split post quoting post 20

Speaking for the US and the UK, we tolerate all three of those things just fine, I’m sure the Chinese will have less of a problem with their more group oriented culture.

If you don’t believe me, go try and buy chemistry equipment, or be a model rocket hobbyist, or drive past an intersection without a camera snapping a shot of your plates, or read about all that rendition, or take a look at the names of the people in Nixon’s administration, and W’s, and look at how many serial failures held onto the reigns of power irrespective of who held elected positions.

By: Funonymous

Funonymous — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:35:11 +0000

“we’ll see for how long the middle class that they are starting to create tolerate the last remnants of communism that still exist there, like the prision state, tortures and the eternal leaders…”

By: Fischbyne

Fischbyne — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:00:08 +0000

Friedman is an idiot AND a plagiarist. I saw that tidbit about McDonald’s as the bell weather for armed conflict in Harper’s Index back in the 1990s. “Struck me,” indeed. Friedman doesn’t have the kind of comprehensive grasp of global armed conflict to have something like that “occur” to him.

By: McGuffin

McGuffin — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:36:29 +0000

“One size fits all” means
that it wouldn’t pinch certain groups and squeeze others. A perfectly typical example of what’s wrong with this guy’s writing.
When his metaphors aren’t sloppy and contradictory they are mixed.
Plus he’s a warmonger who routinely advocates the destruction of civilian targets. Not just in Iraq but the Balkans for example. I never got over his “Give war a chance” cutesy catchphrase. I guess I just think him immoral.

By: Nachtmahr

Nachtmahr — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:13:53 +0000

redwinged blackbird

By: dwilmsen

dwilmsen — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:25:03 +0000

Israel tried to bomb Lebanon into the stone age in 2006. Both Israel and Lebanon have the Golden Arches.

By: JakeS

JakeS — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:53:22 +0000

“Well, “the sun never sets on the British Empire” was a pretty good line.”

As is the rejoinder: “That’s because God doesn’t trust an Englishman in the dark.”

@19: To suggest that China has embraced Tommy’s agenda of deregulation and financial capitalism is a stunning display of ignorance about actual Chinese industrial policy, exchange rate policy and financial, fiscal and monetary policy.

@24: China’s *growth* may be a one-off thing, but China is using that growth to construct a serious industrial state at an even faster rate than the US is dismantling theirs. So even if growth were to cease, they would still have an impressive industrial production apparatus.

And heavy industry is power. Raw materials are power. Commercial shipping is power. Energy resources is power. Money, bonds, stocks, debts, mortgages and contracts are just promises. And promises can be broken faster than steel mills.

- Jake

By: jester l

jester l — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:19:45 +0000

Pizza, are the people of Eastern Europe more free in their poverty and lack of economic security. I could cite millions in the world who aren’t better off. Calling India in the 20th Century is a stretch.
Pizza,are you sure the new growth in a handful of countries isn’t just a one-shot thing? There can only be so much off-shoring and overseas investment. How many call centers can you cram into India, a country whose entire education system is geared to H1b visa garnering? Even in China, by far the most successful in the “new” globalization model hosts 55% foreign companies for its exports. Its domestic market is only single digits compared to the U.S. or even Japan, a country with less then ten percent of China’s population.
Globalization has ravaged most of the world’s economy and consumption power. Though profitability has been restored to the world’s largest corporations, this profit will fall in the long run when world demand can’t keep up or falls in relation to productive forces. If the U.S. ceases becoming the country of last import, the whole thing collapses.

By: VladimirM

VladimirM — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:14:32 +0000

Thanks God at last somebody eloquently outlined diagnosis for this retard. Because I couldn’t believe that this symbol of dumb mediocrity never is pronounced what he really is.

By: Destro

Destro — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:36:52 +0000

If the lazy fat ass Americans ever wake up and overthrow the oligarchs that imposed the ‘globalization-Americanization’ empire at their expense I hope they reserve a lamp post to hang Friedman from.

By: Draco

Draco — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:10:58 +0000

13 “Well, “the sun never sets on the British Empire” was a pretty good line.”

It’s easy to understand. It was plagiarized…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_empire_on_which_the_sun_never_sets

By: az

az — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:38:52 +0000

19: who are you trying to fool?

By: Pizza de Oveja

Pizza de Oveja — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:49:02 +0000

It should be noted that China was at the brink of total economic chaos and only started growing economically and did in fact progress from a huge prison state immersed in widespread poverty and hunger, AFTER the death of the glorious Mao, demostratating the uselessness of his methods and his total incompetence in anything other than killing millions of people and destroying his own country. And of course China and the other third world countries like India and so forth have only succeeded economically after throwing the leftist economic system that will never and have never worked, taking full use of the advantages of globalization and the economic methods, laws and systems that were created in the west by the according to you horrible bankers, corrupt politicians and damned businessmen that control the tyrannical societies in the west, in which everyone have rights that those people living in the true paradise couldn’t even fathom a few years ago, like access to a photocopier, interstate travelling, not having your earning confiscated by the state, and chiefly, the right not to be carried out in the night out of your bed and shot. Now it continues to be a huge prison but at least, not only the glorious political elite benefits form the luxuries of it, and we’ll see for how long the middle class that they are starting to create tolerate the last remnants of communism that still exist there, like the prision state, tortures and the eternal leaders…

By: אברהם

אברהם — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:52:12 +0000

Friedman is the Mr Magoo of globalization; he’s totally blind to the thousands of connections and contexts that make his cheerleading all the more buffoonish. For just one example, he doesn’t seem to see that globalization is forging a world that will have no place for his always-triumphant American empire… Just goes to show that our intellectual elite is possibly the worst educated aristocracy in history. On the other hand, no one who’s paying attention needs to have wasted their time reading about real subsumption of capital to see where things are going…

@Comrade Black

Ask Toussaint L’Ouverture about the West’s application of its Enlightened ideals.

By: Expat in BY

Expat in BY — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:50:00 +0000

8. John Douglas

I’ve never been to Yerevan, but I bet they have a McDonalds, just like Baku.

I would guess the McD analogy went out the window long ago, long before the South Ossetia War.

By: Warren Moon

Warren Moon — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:57:49 +0000

man i wish we really were an evil empire. that’d be fucking sweet

By: wengler

wengler — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:51:21 +0000

Friedman has been laying low since his billionaire wife’s mall-building company hit the skids hard.

Have some sympathy for the guy, he might only be a ten-millionaire now.