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Tom Friedman: STFU already

I'm sick of his windbaggery. Friedman's on The Today Show this morning, literally pontificating about the U.S. and its "addiction to oil"[TM] and the Middle East. Host Matt Lauer lets him go on and on, rambling, rambling, lets him exhaust his hot air without forcing him to make concrete points about oil and democracy and the U.S. role in Middle East politics.

Gah. This *sshole apparently has no clue about his responsibility in relation to the current mess in the Middle East. It's idiots like him who were rah-rah about the Iraq War that encouraged this situation, and now he's making a buck off people who think he still has something relevant and prescient to say.

Just like his book, The World is Flat -- jeepers, wow, globalization! -- Friedman acts as if he discovered this concept. I'm surprised he hasn't tried to trademark that term before the White House gets to it. I can only figure that companies like NBC's corporate owner, General Electric, must be ready to cash in on the green movement and will now spend the bandwidth on promoting the same through useful tools like Friedman. Worse, Friedman onlhy belabors points he made in a previous book on globalization. I think we get the point now, okay? I only have to drive my Japanese-Mexican-American vehicle fueled with Venezuelan gasoline to the grocery store's produce department to buy Chilean grapes and New Zealand apples to get it.

What really frosts my chaps, above and beyond the annoyance of Friedman's general uselessness, is that the man who was truly prescient about the state of energy today and the politics that surround it gets little to no love. He wrote a book on the subject as a Senator, before he became Vice President, discussing our need to free ourselves from oil for the sake our environmental and national security. Forteen years ahead of windbag Friedman, forteen years ahead of the man currently occupying the White House, Al Gore was all over it, calling for a "global Marshall Plan" to head off the ravages to our environment and related political fallout.

This country elected the wrong guy after Bush I.

Don't even bring up the election of 2000.

Do yourself a favor and find a copy of Gore's book -- skip Friedman's hot air.

Comments

Rob said…
And even before Gore, there was a much-maligned prophet in the wind named Jimmy Carter. A quarter century blown, and so little done. Sobering, to say the least.
Rayne Today said…
Both Democrats, and from back-to-back generations, yes? Both Southern Dems.

Seems like there's a meme there we should be using.

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