A Good Answer

Ok, so one of the great things about blogs is that the blogger can ask a question like, "Why do people have such a strong reaction to Thomas Friedman?" and then you actually get some good answers. Kudos to Oregonian for posting a thoughtful and well worded account of his frustrations with Friedman. I think it deserves front page billing, so here it is in full:

"Back when I was in college, I loved Thomas Friedman. I thought his columns did a wonderful job of explaining a complex world and making it easy to understand. Ten years later, I realize that the simplicity in Friedman's columns is a form of dishonesty. The world really ISN'T as simple as he portrays it and his dreamy musings on peace, prosperity, and international goodwill are often based more on wishful thinking than on any hard assessment of the facts. Go back and read his crap about "the new middle east" to see how it looks in the cold light of hindsight.

In the case of the Iraq war, Friedman bought this administration's nonsense about liberation, peace, and democracy. I'm mad about that because he shouldn't have bought it. Anyone who follows the news - certainly anyone who makes a living following the news - should have been able to see that this administration wouldn't be able to pull it off.

If Bush doesn't give a damn about democracy in Florida, why would he stand up for it in Iraq? But Friedman gave his intellectual cover for the invasion and now he's getting his due share of the blame for the mess we're in.

Globalization is the same story. In his columns and interviews Friedman keeps telling us how he went to a call center in India and saw the employees using Dell computers and drinking bottled water from Coke. His thesis is that outsourcing creates new consumers who, in turn, will buy U.S. products. It's a nice dream, but it's baloney. Those PCs were made in China and the water was bottled right there in India. Money is flowing back to the U.S., but it's only going to executives and shareholders. The call center employees who lost their jobs aren't very likely to have an MBA or a large portfolio, so they're getting screwed by this process. It's a rigged system and Friedman is helping to sell it. No doubt someday he'll apologize."

I still think that Friedman is constrained by his column length, so we shouldn't hold his "simplicity" against him to the degree that many do. Also, while I agree that Friedman tends to see what he wants to see, my answer for that is simple: don't we all. Perhaps as a nationally syndicated columnist in the most important newspaper in the most power country Friedman should be held to a higher standard, but we all do what Friedman does. We all filter out the stuff that doesn't necessarily fit with our previously held conceptions of the world (cognitive dissonance, I think its called in big words). I'm not sure Mr. Friedman is any more guilty of that than anyone else.