Flat N All That: Matt Taibbi Eviscerates Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded"

When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing. Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America's ability to fall for absolutely anything-just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts- along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-stached resident of a positively obscene 114,000 11,400 square foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism. Where does a man who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy inefficient automobiles? Where does a guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a motherfucking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of us about the need for a "Green Revolution"? Well, he'll explain it all to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have the misfortune to be Canadian. 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. Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn't make them up even if you were trying-and when you tried to actually picture the "illustrative" figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors. Remember Friedman's take on Bush's Iraq policy? "It's OK to throw out your steering wheel," he wrote, "as long as you remember you're driving without one." Picture that for a minute. Or how about Friedman's analysis of America's foreign policy outlook last May: 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. Sending a line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests through the front gate. It should never, ever happen. Even better was this gem from one of Friedman's latest columns: "The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it's all too familiar. It's the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: "Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn't we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?" There are many serious questions one could ask about this passage, but the one that leaped out at me was this: In the "title" of that long-running play, is it supposed to be the same person asking all three of those questions? If so, does that person suffer from multiple personality disorder? Because in the first question, he is a neutral/ignorant observer of the Mideast drama; in the second he sympathizes with the Jews; in the third he's a radical Muslim. Moreover, after you blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque, is the surrounding hotel still there? Why would anyone build a mosque in a half-blown-up hotel? Perhaps Friedman should have written the passage like this: "It's the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: "Who owns this hotel? And why did a person suffering from multiple personality disorder build a mosque inside it after blowing up the bar and asking if there was a room for the Jews? Why? Because his editor's been drinking rubbing alcohol!" OK, so maybe all of this is unfair.There are a lot of people out there who think Friedman has not been treated fairly by critics like me, that focusing on his literary struggles is a snobbish, below-the-belt tactic-a cheap shot that belies the strength of his overall "arguments." Who cares, these people say, if Friedman's book The World is Flat should probably have been titled Theif he had wanted the book's title to match its "point" about living in an age of increased globalinterconnectedness? And who cares if it doesn't quite make sense whenFriedman says that Iraq is like a "vase we broke in order to get rid of the rancid water inside?"Who cares that you can just pour waterout of a vase, that only a fucking lunatic breaks a perfectly good vasejust to empty it of water? You're missing the point, folks say, and thepoint is all in Friedman's highly nuanced ideas about world politicsand the economy-if you could just get past his well-meaning attempts toexplain himself, you'd see that, and maybe you'd even learn something. Myinitial answer to that is that Friedman's language choices over theyears have been highly revealing: When a man who thinks you need tobreak a vase to get the water out of it starts arguing that you need toinvade a country in order to change the minds of its people, you mightwant to start paying attention to how his approach to the vase problem worked out.Thomas Friedman is not a president, a pope, a general on thefield of battle or any other kind of man of action. He doesn't actuallydo anything apart from talk about shit in a newspaper. So in my mind it's highly relevant if his manner of speaking is fucked. (http://nypress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/2358737.jpg)But whatever, let's concede the point, forget about the crazy metaphors for a moment, and look at the actual content of Hot, Flat and Crowded. Manypeople have rightly seen this new greenish pseudo-progressive tract asan ideological departure from Friedman's previous works, which were allvirtually identical exercises in bald greed-worship and capitalisttent-pitching. Approach-and-rhetoric wise, however, it's the same oldFriedman, a tireless social scientist whose research methods mainlyinclude lunching, reading road signs, and watching people boardairplanes. Like The World is Flat, a book borne of Friedman's stirring experience of seeing IBM sign in the distance while golfing in Bangalore, Hot,Flat and Crowded isa book whose great insights come when Friedman golfs (on global warmingallowing him more winter golf days:"I will still take advantage ofit-but I no longer think of it as something I got for free"), looks atBurger King signs (upon seeing a "nightmarish neon blur" of KFC, BK and McDonald's signs in Texas, he realizes: "We're on a fool's errand"),and reads bumper stickers (the "Osama Loves your SUV" sticker he readturns into the thesis of his "Fill 'er up with Dictators" chapter). This is Friedman's life: He flies around the world, eats pricey luncheswith other rich people and draws conclusions about the future ofhumanity by looking out his hotel window and counting the Applebee's signs. Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique thatgoes something like this: "I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train,when suddenly I said to myself, 'We need better headlights for ourtri-plane.'" And off he goes.You the reader end up spending so muchtime wondering what Dubai, BP and all those Balinese workers have to dowith the rest of the story that you don't notice that tri-planes don'thave headlights.And by the time you get all that sorted out, yourwell-lit tri-plane is flying from chapter to chapter delivering amillion geo-green pizzas to a million Noahs on a million Arks. And yougive up. There's so much shit flying around the book's atmosphere thatyou don't notice the only action is Friedman talking to himself. In The World is Flat, thekey action scene of the book comes when Friedman experiences his pseudo-epiphany about the Flat world while talking with himself infront of InfoSys CEO Nandan Nilekani. In Hot, Flat and Crowded, the money shot comes when Friedman starts doodling on a napkin over lunch with Moisés Naím, editor of Foreign Policy magazine. The pre-lunching Friedman starts drawing, and the wisdom just comes pouring out: Ilaid out my napkin and drew a graph showing how there seemed to be arough correlation between the price of oil, between 1975 and 2005, andthe pace of freedom in oil-producing states during those same years. Friedmanthen draws his napkin-graph, and much to the pundit's surprise, itturns out that there is almost an exact correlation between high oilprices and "unfreedom"! The graph contains two lines, one showing arising and then descending slope of "freedom," and one showing adescending and then rising course of oil prices. Friedmanplots exactly four points on the graph over the course of those 30years. In 1989, as oil prices are falling, Friedman writes, "BerlinWall Torn Down." In 1993, again as oil prices are low, he writes,"Nigeria Privatizes First Oil Field." 1997, oil prices still low, "IranCalls for Dialogue of Civilizations." Then, finally, 2005, a year ofhigh oil prices: "Iran calls for Israel's destruction."Take a look foryourself: I looked at this and thought: "Gosh, what a neat trick!" ThenI sat down and drew up my own graph, called SIZE OF VALERIEBERTINELLI'S ASS, 1985-2008, vs. HAP- PINESS. It turns out that thereis an almost exact correlation! Note the four points on the graph: 1990: Release of Miller's Crossing 1996-97: Crabs 2001: Ate bad tuna fish sandwich at Times Square Blimpie; felt sick 2008: Barack Obama elected Thatwas so much fun, I drew another one! This one is called AMERICAN PORKBELLY PRICES vs. WHAT MIDGETS THINK ABOUT AUSTRALIA 1972-2002. Orhow about this one, called NUMBER OF ONE- EYED RETARDED FLIES IN THESTATE OF NORTH CAROLINA vs. LIKELIHOOD OF NUCLEAR COM- BAT ON INDIANSUBCONTINENT. Obviously this sounds like a flippant analysis,but that's more or less exactly what Friedman is up to here. If you're going to draw a line that measures the level of "freedom" across theentire world and on that line plot just four randomly-selected pointsin time over the course of 30 years-and one of your top four "freedompoints" in a 30-year period of human history is the privatization of aNigerian oil field-well, what the fuck? What can't you argue, if that'show you're going to make your point? He could have graphed a line inthe opposite direction by replacing Berlin with Tiananmen Square,substituting Iraqi elections for Iran's call for Israel's destruction(incidentally, when in the last half-century or so have Islamicextremists not called for Israel's destruction?), junkingIran's 1997 call for dialogue for the U.S. sanctions against Iran in '95, and so on. It's crazy, a game of Scrabble where the words don'thave to connect on the board, or a mathematician coming up with theequation A B -3X = Swedish girls like chocolate. Gettingto the "ideas" in the book: Its basic premise is that America'sdecades-long habit of gluttonous energy consumption has adverselyaffected humanity because a) while the earth could support America'sindulgence, it can't sustain two billion endlessly-copulating Chineseshould they all choose to live in American-style excess, and b) the exploding global demand for oil artificially subsidizes repressiveMiddle Eastern dictatorships that would otherwise have to rely on taxrevenue (read: listen to their people) in order to survive, and thissubsidy leads to terrorism and a spread of "unfreedom." Regarding the first point, Friedman writes: Becauseif the spread of freedom and free markets is not accompanied by a newapproach to how we produce energy and treat the environment? thenMother Nature and planet earth will impose their own constraints andlimits on our way of life-constraints that will be worse than communism. Threeobservations about this touching and seemingly remarkable development,i.e. onetime unrepentant free-market icon Thomas Friedman suddenlycoming out huge for the environment and against the evils of grossconsumerism: 1.The need for massive investment in green energy is an idea so obviousand inoffensive that even presidential candidates from both partiescould be seen fighting over who's for it more in nationally televiseddebates last fall; 2.I wish I had the balls to first spend six long years madly cheering onan Iraq war that not only reintroduced Sharia law to the streets ofBaghdad, but radicalized the entire Islamic world against Americaninfluence-and then write a book blaming the spread offundamentalist Islam on the ignorant consumers of the middle Americanheartland, who bought too many Hummers and spent too much time shoppingfor iPods in my wife's giganto-malls. 3.To review quickly, the "Long Bomb" Iraq war plan Friedman supported asa means of transforming the Middle East blew up in his and everyoneelse's face; the "Electronic Herd" of highly volatile internationalcapital markets he once touted as an economic cure-all not only didn'tpan out, but led the world into a terrifying chasm of seeminglyirreversible economic catastrophe; his beloved "Golden Straitjacket" ofAmerican-style global development (forced on the world by the "hiddenfist" of American military power) turned out to be the vehicle for thevery energy/ecological crisis Friedman himself warns about in his newbook; and, most humorously, the "Flat World" consumer economicsFriedman marveled at so voluminously turned out to be grounded in suchtotal unreality that even his wife's once-mighty shopping mall empire,General Growth Properties, has lost 99 percent of its value in thisyear alone. So, yes, Friedman is suddenly an environmentalist of sorts. Whatthe fuck else is he going to be? All the other ideas he spent the last ten years humping have been blown to hell. Color me unimpressed that hescrounged one more thing to sell out of the smoldering, discreditedwreck that should be his career; that he had the good sense to quicklyreinvent himself before angry Gods remembered to dash his brains outwith a lightning bolt. But better late than never, I suppose. Or asFriedman might say, "Better two cell phones than a fish in yourzipper." Matt Taibbi's last critique of Thomas Friedman,["Flathead,"](/article-11419-flathead.html) appeared in the April 26, 2005 edition of New York Press. Check out [DAVID REES](http://www.mnftiu.cc/)' comic illustrating the story (and on this week's cover of New York Press) [here](/article-19285-how-green-was-my-mustache.html).