Gawker
blowhards
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timesanity
Gail Collins Writes The Worst Op-Ed of 2008
Every Thursday and Saturday, I have the same nightmare. When I wake up in the morning to read the Times on those days, the dream is made real...all over the op-ed page. Her name is Gail Collins. Once the paper's editorial page director, she now writes twice a week, and when those days come around, I'd rather listen to Thomas Friedman say "flat" 800 times than read a single word she writes. Today she has topped herself with the most banal column in the history of the op-ed genre. Don't believe me? The close is "Time for a change." Experience the worst: More » -
times op-ed drama
Thomas Friedman Will Never Stop Trying to Outdo Paul Krugman
Ian Parker's New Yorker profile of Thomas Friedman paints the Times op-ed columnist as a driven, hyper-competitive workaholic. But, like, a useful one. The full text of the article can be viewed in The New Yorker's new digital reader, where you can get the full details on Friedman's crazy operation: his manic work habits, his everlasting love of buzzwords, and the hate he holds in his heart for fellow Times columnist Paul Krugman's Nobel win. More » -
things we hate
The Tyranny of Pretend Middle Classness
Hey, here's what we're sick of: middle classness! While some of your elite coastal media obsess over some made-up standard of "authenticity" (Sarah Palin's got it! That's all you need to know!), the new hot trend is "caring about the middle class." This is something Democrats are good at! They used to be good at appealing to the "working class" but now no one is sure how to define "working class," at all really. But we all know how to define the middle-class! It's everyone in America! More » -
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mustache of understanding
Thomas Friedman to Iraq: "Suck On This"
Because of Silicon Valley! Here's Times op-ed columnist, author, brilliant intellectual, and world-flattening champion of morally repulsive market-worship Thomas Friedman answering the quite reasonable question "was the Iraq war worth doing." He says: "I think it was unquestionably worth doing," because in the 90s there was a "terrorism bubble," just like those other bubbles you may have read about in the works of economists with fucking brains. Now America needs to take a big stick and go to every house in Iraq and tell them to suck on it. Seriously, he actually says "suck on this." This is a New York Times columnist and formerly a respected academic. It's insane. This interview is from late 2007, of course, back when all thinking people knew the war was a pointless disaster. It will be at least another six months before we know if Friedman will ever come around. -
gurus
'Wall Street Journal' Ranks the First Five Against the Wall
The Wall Street Journal's "Careers" column today measures the influence of business gurus. Using a complicated metric involving "googling people" and also "looking people up in Nexis," they have determined and ranked the most influential business thinkers in the universe. Number one is some dude named Gary Hamel who writes terrible books your boss probably reads, if you work for an asshole. BUT: the second-most-influential business thinker in the world is Thomas fucking Friedman, which is probably why we're in a recession. He has a new book out this summer! It's called Hot, Flat and Crowded, which is clearly something a made-up cab driver said to him about India. [WSJ] -
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thomas friedman
Sad Press Releases
"Video of the pie throwing incident was posted on YouTube, and received close to 70,000 views in 36 hours, making it one of the most popular videos on the site. Without notice, YouTube abruptly censored the video, removing it from the website. Hundreds of news outlets, blogs, and websites had linked to the video. The Greenwash Guerillas have reposted the clip at: www.GreenwashGuerrillas.org [...]This is the second time Friedman has been hit by a pie. In October 2002, he received a banana pie to his face while promoting his writings on free-market globalization in Boston." -
the world is splat
Thomas Friedman Gets Apology About Pie Thing
A student from Brown University wrote in to "Mr. Gawker," hoping we could convey an apology on his behalf to a Mr. Thomas Friedman, the author and Times columnist whose mustache narrowly escaped sullying in a campus pie-throwing ambush earlier this week. While the student in question did not participate in the pie-flinging or distribution of related leaflets, he is embarrassed, and notes that "actions like these make us seem just plain stupid." Seriously: If you're going to pull a stunt like that, at least practice, so your pie doesn't miss its target. But why couldn't the student just send an email to Thomas Friedman? In a flat world Changed Forever By The Internet, shouldn't a college kid be able to transmit a letter to a newspaper columnist? Apparently not, so we've honored his request and printed his email after the jump. More » -
mustache of understanding
In Which Thomas Friedman is Hit With a Pie
Reliably wrong New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was hit by a pie at Brown yesterday. There's a video! And also a leaflet. The leaflet is transcribed below, because we're sure you all want to know why Thomas Friedman was hit by pies. Oddly it had nothing to do with his mustache or defamation of cab drivers around the world. If a leaflet is not enticement enough, a clip of the pieing is after the jump. More » -
Thomas Friedman Pied
Any Brown students catch Friedman on camera after a green pie was thrown at the New York Times columnist at a lecture, yesterday? Email us. The pie was thrown by an environmentalist protesting the globalization enthusiast's "sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism's conquest of the planet."
