Friedman: Singapore journalists see US right wing with crystal clarity

[BurtWorm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/opinion/14friedman.html?pagewanted=print

Speaking of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition of The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote: "We were shocked at what we saw. Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But the pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions - these were truly out of sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. ... If America becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the world?"

Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives," he wrote, "differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.

"The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... <But> it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up."

[Bob3]

1. Tom can just shut up

he's been one of the prime enablers of this gang of greedy incompetents (he called war in Iraq the war on terror's equivalent of the Normandy invasion in case anyone forgets) so to start saying aw isn't it awful that things aren't working out because * is an incompetent frat boy jerk just reeks of self serving butt coverage.

[BurtWorm]

2. I was more interested in what the Singapore journalists had to say.

Friedman, not so much.

[drdtroit]

4. Agreed!

Tom is and has been one of the biggest apologists for this murderous administration's misadventures and criminal activities throughout the world.
Now he's trying to crawl under the bed and hide from the consequences of his culpability.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. You shot the messenger so you could ignore the message, I suppose.

[Bob3]

9. No not really - while I am interested in foreign views of the US

these days Tom's above it all tisk tisk bloodless writing style drives me absolutely bonkers. He's lecturing while bombs are blowing people to bits in Iraq and they are pulling bodies out of the mud in New Orleans. Where's his outrage? Where's his anguish? nowhere to be seen. His is the bloodless language of the aparachnik. That is not what is needed now.

[gratuitous]

3. Tom, go sail off the edge of the world. Please.

Not only do real journalists in Singapore see the situation in the United States more clearly than you do, they probably write better, too. Friedman is such a toady for whatever the latest neocon brain fart is that he could give us a report on the state of Dick Cheney's colon.

Another piece of prime journalistic real estate going to waste, courtesy of the New York Times.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Janadas Devan makes important distinction between paleo and neo cons.

[K-W]

7. Maybe Tom should intern at a singapore newspaper

he might learn something.

[ewagner]

8. Tom, tom, tom

when are you going to do a "mea culpa" and admit that you gave cover to these pirates?

[lateo]

10. Maybe Tom is suprised that they have insight...

something he lacks...