June 27, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Best thing I've read all day week month year
Ezra on Thomas Friedman:
It's of course inevitable that Tom Friedman would fall solidly under the spell of a book entitled "How." The man is a human airport nonfiction table -- he can't help himself. Give him a single-word title with an overeager thesis and he's set.
He has captured the man's essence in a single, well crafted sentence. It's like how primitive islanders used to believe that a camera could steal your soul. Ezra Klein: soul stealer!
Okay, don't look at that metaphor too closely.
Here's me on Tom Friedman, a while back.
Posted by Jane Galt at June 27, 2007 9:47 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>Friedman - Overdrive on LSD...he can't help it, things keep morphing into other images even as he speaks. If you like clarity, don't read it.
Ezra did hit a good, concise descriptive.
Taibbi doesn't seem to much like those morphing analogies, and they ARE pretty wearisome. However, maybe he wrote his piece before there was such a thing as Pay TV?
Posted by: falkoyn on June 27, 2007 10:53 AMTaibbi's takedown of "The World Is Flat" is even funnier:
http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
Posted by: Nanonymous on June 27, 2007 11:08 AMI realize that columnists get more autonomy than reporters, but does that mean their submissions go completely unedited? How is it that this well-publicized flaw in Friedman's writing keeps appearing? If I were his editor the first thing my red pen would be circling would be these notorious metaphors.
Posted by: Christina on June 27, 2007 1:48 PMSpeaking of the airport nonfiction table (of which I am a big fan of), why do most non-fiction books these days seem to be titled:
"(blank): the story of some trivial little thing and how it controls the world"
Any book people care to comment?
Posted by: Klug on June 27, 2007 3:30 PMKlug,
"Should Have Been Remaindered: how the airport nonfiction book table came to control the world of thought"
Posted by: Kirk Parker on June 27, 2007 8:46 PMThanks for the link to the Taibbi piece. That is funny stuff. Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan) would label Friedman's schtick "narrative bias". Friedman lays down a narrative that appeals so the 110 IQ crowd, and they eat it up. Dude knows his audience. The challenge here is coming up with a better explanation with wider appeal. Rise to it.
Posted by: Brad Hutchings on June 28, 2007 1:17 AMI used to see blog posts all the time, referring me to something by Friedman, as insightful, definitive, whatever. Then the results of that Lexis/Nexis search showed up, the one where every 3 months Friedman said "The next 3 months will tell the tale in Iraq." But 3 months later, he never said what the tale was. Instead, he said "The next 3 months will tell the tale."
Since then, I don't see blog posts referring me to Friedman any more. Is it just me, or have others noticed that?