Comments on: Flat N All That: Matt Taibbi Eviscerates Thomas Friedman’s “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”

By: TW

TW — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 10:06:00 +0000

Taleb would be pissing in his pants laughing at this right now. Especially the graphs. That’s a classic. Thanks for this.

By: yaldabaoth1

yaldabaoth1 — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 00:47:00 +0000

Exactly. Took apart the shameless bloviator and the Iraq war demagogue.

By: Spam

Spam — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 20:28:00 +0000

An excellent piece of criticism. Now I’ll not waste much time listening to the audio version I have stored somewhere, wondering why it doesn’t make any sense. I guffawed at your turns of phrase and laughed just as hard at some of your quotes. Friedman would make a ‘great’ speechwriter for some of the Republican yahoos.

By: Peter Theis

Peter Theis — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 06:01:00 +0000

Wonderful, Matt. Brilliant, delightful, and important, as you always are.

I also loved how Kim Hill completely tore Friedman apart and set him back 90 degrees on his heels. Fried-Man a propagandist for the elite.

Been seeing some reports about studies coming out which say the 1% (the “power elite” as C. Wright Mills puts, it or the “ownership class” as Michael Parenti puts it, or the “plutonomy” as CitiBank puts it) are socio and/or psychopaths. Makes perfect sense. Capitalism, a system that has competition as its engine, invites and promotes the most ruthless behavior. In competitions most people lose, and one succeeds to the degree one beats down others.

As Parenti puts it:

“The
problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us:
ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives,
giving little reward and often much punishment — or at least much
handicap — to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work,
love of justice, and a concern for those in need.”

Thus, as Alfie Kohn points out in his amazing book No Contest: The Case Against Competition, we have a recipe for the most ruthless and socio/psychopathic folks will rise to the top.

Don’t know if you’ve written directly this, and if you have please forgive my being unaware of it, but I would love to see you do so — and even to write a book about it.

Peace,

Peter

By: skylights

skylights — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 06:05:00 +0000

I never really paid attention to Friedman, but my smart roommate liked “The Lexus and the Olive Tree,” so I thought Friedman must be pretty smart. Then I saw him on “Charlie Rose” and realized he was shallow and a total intellectual fraud. The end.

By: Marshall Brown

Marshall Brown — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 18:00:00 +0000

That was fantastic! You voiced my contempt in a way I never could. I owe you a dinner

By: Lil

Lil — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:20:00 +0000

Amen! I never understood the Friedman fad…..I have never been able to stay focused on, or complete, any single piece he has written let alone a book. Who the hell made him a middle east “expert” in the fist place?

By: jake3_14

jake3_14 — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 20:46:56 +0000

Reading a Taibbi rant is more impressive than listening to one by Lewis Black. Black can rely on all of his body language cues to thunder at the audience, while Taibbi can rely only on the small part of readers’ minds devoted to rational thought.