"Where Birds Don't Fly"--Friedman's latest

Don't worry, Tommy, this tacky testimonial of yours doesn't fly, either!

Tommy, Did Rush give you some of his little blue pills so you could write this crap?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/opinion/21FRIE.html

Note the last sentence--Whoreen Dowd is on vacation (THANK YOU GOD!)

reply

Please include an excerpt.

When pointing us to an article, it is standard DU practice to quote a few paragraphs.

You can use notepad to hold the address of the link while you copy a few paragraphs to your clipboard.

By posting both an excerpt and a link, we can decide if we want to take the time to load another webpage. Some of us have slow connections.

An excerpt also let's us know what you found notable about the article.

this one doesn't even make sense to me, unless someone can explain it to me:

Fuat Ozbekli, a Turkish industrialist, told me: "I was just on a tour to Amman and we stopped our tourist van in front of the U.S. Embassy there. We asked the guide why they need all these tanks around it, and the guy told us that within this American Embassy they have everything they need so they can survive without going outside . . . I felt really sorry for the Americans there."

First, I'm no Turkish industrialist, but if I saw tanks around a U.S. embassy in an Arab country, I wouldn't ask such a stupid question as what are they there for.

Second, the tour guide didn't even answer the question.

Finally, Tom Friedman makes up shit all the time.

My guess, 10 minutes, 15 tops, is what the Puliter prize winner Friedman spent on this crappy column.

So here's Friedman, pulling out laughable anecdotes like the one you cited, which are so OBVIOUSLY made up, and they fire Jayson Blair?

I'm embarassed to say that Friedman is a native Minnesotan (incidentally-- he grew up in the same 'burb as Al Franken and the filmmaking Coen brothers of "Raising Arizona" and "Fargo" fame). He's a lying tub of crap who thinks his sworn duty is to butt-kiss the American imperialists and corporate powers who are hell-bent on imposing this country's will on the rest of the world.

Friedman is a joke. I usually took his columns with a grain of salt, but post-9/11 he's just plain laughable. The problem is that he's considered an "expert" on the Middle East because he's stayed in the top hotels in a number of Arab countries.

Somebody needs to deflate this guy again, and quickly.