December 10, 2003
HOW MANY PULITZERS?:
Breaking and Entering (THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, December 11, 2003, NY Times)
Whenever I think of President Bush's invasion of Iraq, the image that comes to mind is that famous scene in the movie "The Shining" where Jack Nicholson, playing a crazed author, tries to kill his wife, played by Shelley Duvall, who's hiding in the bathroom. As Ms. Duvall cowers behind the locked bathroom door, Mr. Nicholson takes an ax, smashes it through the door, and with a look of cheery madness peers through the splintered wood and announces, "Heeeere's Johnny."That's the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In a region where the combination of oil wealth, culture and the cold war has ossified politics for so long, in a region that has been barricaded from history for so many years, in a region where the U.S. has always been a status quo power, never a revolutionary power — the U.S. just crashed right through the locked door: "Heeeere's Dubya."
Well, sure, what patriotic American doesn't think of his country as an axe-wielding psychopath... Posted by Orrin Judd at December 10, 2003 11:15 PM
Well, the Madman Theory worked pretty well for Nixon, both in getting North Vietnam to agree to serious agreements at the truce table in 1972 and in keeping the Soviets out of the Middle East after the 1973 war, though in this case, some of the U.S.'s potential enemies in Iraq truly are mentally unhinged.
Posted by: John at December 10, 2003 11:59 PMFirst the Al Jazeera-ization of major media organs. Next the Modo-ification of TLF.
(Perhaps, it all should have been expected....)
Still, TLF's parallel is particularly loathsome and inaccurate, and explains absolutely nothing.
But it's cute enough, I guess. Though pitting Saddam Hussein as abused cowering wife requires a level of perverse imagination I didn't believe TLF actually possessed.
He should stick to making predictions about the demise of the intifada....
Posted by: Barry Meislin at December 11, 2003 03:42 AMPerhaps Friedman sees himself that way as well.
Thomas Friedman is, in one sense, a far more annoying columnist than Maureen Dowd (or Frank Rich or Bob Herbert or Paul "Enron" Krugman or Ellen Goodman or Derrick Z. Jackson or Thomas Oliphant or . . .). Dowd (Rich/Herbert/Krugman/Goodman/Jackson/Oliphant) is such an obvious seething moonbat that you know before you even read the column that it's a waste of disk space on the Times' hard drives. 90% of what Friedman writes is sensible, if not downright insightful--and just when you're settling in to getting comfortable with the guy, he goes and says something unbelievably boneheaded like this.
Posted by: Mike Morley at December 11, 2003 12:28 PMI like the image. Works much better in the domestic area, cowering slimey socialists hunted down by tenacious sheriff( who like Charles Bronson is perhaps a little nutty).
Posted by: h-man at December 11, 2003 01:38 PMI still haven't forgiven Friedman for the loathsome extended metaphor/parody of the economy as operating system in Lexus and the Olive Tree. But at least that had some (tedious) consistency and relevance to his thesis...
Posted by: Kirk Parker at December 12, 2003 01:01 AM90%? Over the past three years, that`s being quite charitable.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at December 12, 2003 02:12 AMHere is an absolutely wonderful story about Tom Friedman and his 800 pound ego.
I think the guy is the biggest blowhard in the whole universe. I just vomit every time he turns one of his cute phrases like "no two countries with a McDonalds has ever gone to war with each other". Blah, blah, blah.
Posted by: pchuck at December 12, 2003 10:29 AM