Bear Flag Blog

I've never been a fan of bestselling pop econ/business/sociologist author Thomas Friedman; since I read The Lexus and the Olive Tree several years ago I rapidly came to the conclusion that he said things that were either obvious or stupid. But he did so in a way that markets very easily to business travelers, and so like Clive Cussler, he carved himself a lucrative "literary" market, selling to salespeople on their way to regional scaffolding conferences.

At any rate, one of the best deconstructions of Friedman's particular ouvre was just written by Matt Taibbi over at the NY Post.

I’ve been unhealthily obsessed with Thomas Friedman for more than a decade now. For most of that time, I just thought he was funny. And admittedly, what I thought was funniest about him was the kind of stuff that only another writer would really care about—in particular his tortured use of the English language....

"The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels."

First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you’re supposed to stop digging when you’re in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol.