Horsefeathers - NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST: MAUREEN FRIEDMAN

February 05, 2004

NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST: MAUREEN FRIEDMAN

Tom Friedman has apparently tired of his recent effort to enlighten us about the "War of Ideas" he is waging on our behalf. In his latest column, he morphs into the scornful and ignorant, but full of 'attitude', Maureen Dowd, for whom the political is always personal. As all her readers know, Ms. Dowd views the world from the perspective of personality failings and pop-psychodrama. Thus the battles of Afghanistan and Iraq are about the "Bushies" and their personal grievances and Oedipal insecurities. For Dowd, everything wrong with the world is traceable to, guess who? George Bush. Tom Friedman adopts Ms. Dowd's psychobiographical stance, along with her personal brand of oh-so-clever wordplay and expands it to include Ariel Sharon, as well as the usual suspects-Bush and Cheney. Like Dowd, Friedman spins out his fantasies as if they were objectively discernible realities. In his latest column Ms. Friedman outlines his very own conspiracy theory: "...Mr. Sharon has the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under house arrest in his office in Ramallah, and he's had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who's ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates, and by political handlers telling the president not to put any pressure on Israel in an election year — all conspiring to make sure the president does nothing..." Now there's a clever Dowdism--Sharon as the all powerful Jew, manipulating the U.S. govt., imprisoning the President, as he has so harshly done to Arafat and his fellow Palestinian peace seekers. Sharon is thus to blame for the depradations of the Palestinians and their refusal to halt the suicide bombers. Where have we heard these ravings before? All over the Arab media, of course, as well as from the anti-semitic European left. Better go back to the "big ideas", Mr. Friedman. Leave the conspiracy theories and personal barbs to Ms. Dowd. She may not welcome your efforts to muscle in on her niche market.

Email This Entry

Comments

I posted your column on LGF.

Yeah it's Tom Friedman's world, we just all happen to live in it. If anyone should win an award for being consistently wrong, it is Tom Friedman. Yet for some reason he is allowed to psoe as a Middle East expert.

Posted by: Joel at February 5, 2004 10:57 AM

I am truly sorry Horsefeathers can only see the world through the eyes of a psychiatrist who has allowed his views as a pro-Israel Zionist to color his thinking about everything going on all around us. It's unfortunate that you can not objectively see the handwriting on the wall, and can only accept Mr. Friedman's writings when they comport with your own opinions.

I truly feel sorry for anyone who can feel positive about George Bush, a man who has been the most ignorant President in my seven decades of life, and, arguably, one of the worst Presidents in the history of this republic.

I expect to get a great negative reaction from your neo-conservative cronies in the medical profession, who are laughing all the way to the bank, while millions go unemployed in this country, and our children and grandchildren face the record national debt being compiled by the present occupiers of our government.

Posted by: Stuart Namm at February 5, 2004 12:10 PM

Being pro-active is rarely appreciated.

It is a sound business and safety strategy.

..."I guess we wasted our time and our money putting snow tires on our cars--we never got stuck all winter."...

Posted by: Mike Q at February 5, 2004 06:07 PM

Stuart Namm's commentary proves that age does not begat wisdom.

As for Friedman, I think it's the Stockholm Syndrome. He's identifying with his Arab minders.

Posted by: Bill Peschel at February 5, 2004 09:01 PM

Once again---Does anyone know what the hell happened to Thomas Friedman?

He used to be an intelligent man with valuable understandings of the Middle East. From Beirut to Jerusalem was a seminal work.

What happened to him that made his brain stop functioning and turned him into just one more frothing Bush and Sharon hater?

Posted by: Grumpy at February 5, 2004 09:50 PM

What happened to him? Well, perhaps what happens to so many academics and soi disant intellectuals and New York Times employees. They get lonely. One wants to be part of a whole, admired by one's colleagues, not out there in the cold. The need for approval, for a sense of belonging, even love, trumps reason and even conscience too much of the time.

Posted by: Rita Kramer at February 5, 2004 10:29 PM

Can't say anything Friedman's ever penned could be called seminal, but he's certainly become rather ridiculous in the last few years.

In this case you've nailed it -- his "political" commentary is as infantile as Dowd's, which is surprising, even given his unimpressive offerings of late. Is Friedman under the impression that Bush's decisive change of course in his Rose Garden speech reading Arafat out of the process did not reflect his own gut feelings and conclusions? On the contrary -- for many years various presidents had been "surrounded" by many advisers pushing often naive strategies on the Isr-Pal conflict that ignored the realities on the ground and in the leadership of the two sides.

Bush broke decisively and wonderfully from that long pattern of failure. Does Friedman think he was railroaded into that course change by others, and not based on a common sense assessment of the situation and resentment at the mendacity of Arafat in personal, direct communications? Hey Tom, check the archives, I think even your paper covered it at the time.

Substance aside, how can Friedman be so Dowdesque in his cluelessness that he thinks Bush -- on matters of foreign policy and national security, at least, and in particular -- is follower and not leader? You'd think that Bush's display of will and determination in crushing Ba'athist Iraq -- over the desperate resistance of the chattering classes and the Iraqi lobby at the UN -- would have left an impression on him.

If he survives his legal troubles, Sharon might just complete his strategic rout of the Palestinians. This rout will be essentially complete so long as he evacuates the Gaza settlements and finishes the security barrier.

Meanwhile, Friedman oughta reconcile his goofy conspiratorial rosters: oil guys like Cheney are supposed to be shills for the Saudis, not willing enforcers of stern edicts emanating from tough Israeli PMs. At least, last time I checked .....

Posted by: IceCold at February 6, 2004 02:24 AM

All Times bashing aside (for a brief nanno second only, I don't want you to reform or anything), can anyone here identify a daily newspaper in the US which is consistently better than the New York Times?

Perhaps we can learn from the best (whoever that paper is), rather than continually scrutinizing what must be, to Horsefeathers, a dead horse (er, Horsefeathers must like the dead).

Posted by: Frank at February 6, 2004 04:32 PM

I received this email on Friday form the NY Times in which I complained about Friedman's idiotic column.

Dear Mr. @@@@@@@@,

Thank you for your inquiry.

Mr. Friedman has informed me that he will be addressing some concerns about "A Rude Awakening" in his column next Thursday.

Thank you for writing.

Sincerely,
Arthur Bovino
Office of the Public Editor
The New York Times

Posted by: Joel at February 7, 2004 04:21 PM

Frank,
Times bashing? I love their Dining and Home sections. Relax. It's about Friedman, not the Times. He could have written that column for the WSJ and it would be just as absurd.

Posted by: Stephen at February 7, 2004 06:16 PM

Increasingly, I find the NYT disappointing not just for their editorial slant but for the often-poor quality of their writing. The other day there was a business section article about REITs (real estate investor trusts) which I normally would have read with interest, being an investor in this class of companies, but I found it so poorly written that I couldn't even finish it. This seems to be an increasingly common experience..

Posted by: David Foster at February 7, 2004 06:31 PM

Just curious, since no one here ever seems to spend time complaining about any columnists but those at the Times. I'm not saying Dowd is worth defending, but don't you read any other papers?

Posted by: Frank at February 7, 2004 07:15 PM

Frank,
That's the price of being the most powerful newspaper in the world: attention must be paid. Sure I read many other papers, but no other columnist has the clout of Friedman, by virtue of his role at the NYTimes. He can do the most harm by his support of illusory fantasies. Why don't you defend Friedman's position, if you feel the criticism is wrong, rather than hide behind a generalized defense of the Times--which hasn't been attacked.

Posted by: Stephen at February 7, 2004 07:55 PM

Why does your complaint about a Thomas Friedman column equate to Times bashing? Because it gives you an opportunity to say something negative about something you found in the Times and you never seem to give similar scrutiny to other publications, is why. Think of all the columnists at the Washington Post and the LA Times who might invoke your ire: how often do they, really? Not often enough, because 90-95% of your newspaper complaints are about the NY Times. Kristof, Krugman, Dowd, Friedman... Think about it. You add it up, and it amounts to Times bashing.

Posted by: Frank at February 7, 2004 08:20 PM

Frank,
Do you think that saying it's "Times bashing" relieves you of the task of thinking about the specific criticisms of Friedman? When Kristof and Krugman take up residence at the San Diego Bee I probably won't devote much time to their ravings. The Times has a prominent role in our culture and thus draws attention to its writers. Would Jayson Blair and Howell Raines have drawn so much attention if they worked for the Dayton Sun? Probably not.
You do stimulate me to an evaluation of the present day version of the Times: I'd give the Science and Medicine coverage a B, the Dining section an A-; I particularly enjoy Eric Asimov; he's a superb writer who can actually make me taste the foods he describes. the Home section a B, the arts coverage C-, theater reviewing has become P.C. agenda driven. Any play that's not a celebration of gay life or a tragic expression of the pain of gayness is unwelcome. The visual arts coverage is appalling--it's all about the social meaning of the art, never about aesthetic values, book coverage D (far too much P.C. nonsense), Sunday Magazine, D+--the perfect representation of the worst of West Side Liberal elitism. News coverage C-, with special emphasis on the atrocious coverage of military news. This has been in decline since Drew Middleton was military affairs correspondent. The editorial page is as predictable as Pravda. Op-Ed is execrable, thanks to the names you mention. Fortunately we now have the blogosphere so the Times no longer dominates the debate. The paper may even improve as a result of the blogosphere's critical assessments. Meanwhile, I"ll read the Times AND many other souces of information.

Posted by: Stephen at February 7, 2004 08:55 PM

The New York Times has two wacko pundits, Dowd & Krugman. Even the conservative Brooks has sounded disturbingly schmaltzy on occasion lately. Now Friedman leaps into the lofty rigidities of leftist fantasy.

I think it’s way past time for an investigation of the air & water at the NYT offices.

Again & again, a NYT pundit decides what feelings are correct, & proceeds to try to will or manipulate himself/herself into feeling them, & set an example for readers in doing so. Is there a chemical that fosters such weird behavior?

Posted by: ForNow at February 8, 2004 03:02 AM

I've linked to your comments at my website:
http://doubting.baltiblogs.com/archives/000779.html
And I received the same e-mail from Arthur Bovino that Joel received. (Friedman made a factual mistake in the article that I relate in my blog.)
No doubt that Friedman's stance on Thursday will be to insult those who called attention to his conspiracy theory.

Posted by: David Gerstman at February 8, 2004 02:29 PM

Hey Frank-

Why don't you start a blog? - You could write about newspapers that you think other people who have blogs should write about or maybe ideas that you don't like that other people who have blogs write about.

If you decided to allow comments, then your readers could say,---anybody who doesn't like Frank's ideas should visit doctor-horsefeathers.

Posted by: Grumpy at February 10, 2004 08:28 PM

Grumpy, you're such a big tease -- just because I don't use comment software on my blog. DId you have a point?

I'll tell you what: I'll let you buy an ad on my blog for Horsefeathers.

Posted by: Frank at February 11, 2004 08:34 AM

Online casino

Posted by: online casino at August 25, 2004 09:39 AM

Texas Holdem

Posted by: Texas Holdem at August 30, 2004 04:47 AM

Online Degrees

Posted by: Online degrees at August 30, 2004 08:16 AM

mortgage calculator