How Dare He?

[Me.]

Friedman on MTP says Americans held their noses when voting for Gore. Once again he's got the story wrong. Lest we forget, Gore won the election the SC handed to *. When oh when will people stop listening to a guy whose head is certainly up his caboose. May I remind him of his aggressive support of what he now calls a fiasco and he's no longer saying the world is flat. Lucky for him he's married to a billionaire's daughter cause sooner or later it's going to be discovered that's he's a complete poser.

[rurallib]

1. I turn on MTP for two seconds, see that and click it's gone

I take it Timmy had him some libuls today - Friedman and Brooks(?). That'll take care of them libruls for the next couple months. Now they can put McCain on all of January.
It being the season let me offer Friedman greetings: Fuck you, Friedman.

[EFerrari]

2. I vote for sooner. Did you catch the documentary he narrated

on the efficacy of the wall in Palestine? It was nauseating.

Sooner or later, he's going to wind up selling refrigerators on television.

[sam sarrha]

4. this wall...?? !! .. note the stolen olive trees.... LINK>

http://www.mcc.org/gallery/04_09/photo_09.html

[Me.]

10. Selling Refrigerators

Is several steps above him

[Vanje]

3. Meet the Press

The big topics included Hillary , Edwards, Obama, Gore....
Why the hell didnt they include one of these as guest.

Who cares what Newt (adulterous has-been douchebag) Gingrich has to say!

[n2doc]

6. Should be "Meet the Pukes"... n/t

[sam sarrha]

9. Newt resigned in a deal to stay ut of politics for 4 years & they wouldnt charge him with 8 Felonies

for stealing the money from the poor black kids college scholarship charity he founded.

he LOOTed the money to finance a series of Reich Wings lectures he did at a Racist college he sold for a lot of money..

[n2doc]

5. Glenn Greenwald had an excellent essay on phony Tom

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/12/tom-friedman-disease-consumes.html

snip:

Needless to say, the Bush administration did none of the things Friedman insisted were prerequisites for invading Iraq "the right way." And Friedman recognized that fact, and repeatedly pointed it out. Over and over, in the months before the war, Friedman would praise the idea of the war and actively push for the invasion, but then insert into his columns statements like this:

And so I am terribly worried that Mr. Bush has told us the right thing to do, but won't be able to do it right.

But: Despite the Bush administration's failures to take any of the steps necessary to wage the war "the right way," Friedman never once rescinded or even diluted his support for the war. He continued to advocate the invasion and support the administration's push for war -- at one point, in February, even calling for the anti-war French to be removed from the U.N. Security Council and replaced by India, and at another point warning that we must be wary of Saddam's last-ditch attempt to negotiate an alternative to war lest we be tricked into not invading -- even though Friedman knew and said that all the things that needed to be done to avert disaster were not being done by the administration.

Put another way, these are the premises which Friedman, prior to the invasion, expressly embraced:

(1) If the war is done the right way, great benefits can be achieved.
(2) If the war is done the wrong way, unimaginable disasters will result.
(3) The Bush administration is doing this war the wrong way, not the right way, on every level.
(4) Given all of that, I support the waging of this war.

Just ponder that: Tom Friedman supported the invasion of Iraq even though, by his own reasoning, that war was being done the "wrong way" and would thus -- also by his own reasoning -- create nothing but untold damage on every level. And he did so all because there was some imaginary, hypothetical, fantasy way of doing the war that Friedman thought was good, but that he knew isn't what we would get.

To support a war that you know is going to be executed in a destructive manner is as morally monstrous as it gets. The fact that there is some idealized, Platonic way to fight the war doesn't make that any better if you know that that isn't what is going to happen. We learn in adolescence that wanting things that we can't have -- pining for things that aren't real or possible -- is futile and irrational. To apply that adolescent fantasy world to war advocacy is the hallmark of a deeply frivolous and amoral person.

[Me.]

8. Exactly!

Thanks

[nuxvomica]

7. When Russert announced his panel would be Friedman and Brooks

I turned to FTN. I couldn't believe he had two war supporters on and no liberal or even centrist point of view. Granted both have soured on the war a little but not enough to say "Hey, I was wrong so stop listening to me."

It really irks me to hear people downplay Gore's appeal based on the 2000 election. He won the popular vote, including Florida as best as I can figure. How much more appealing a candidate could he have been?

[n2doc]

11. Check out "the daily howler" on this MTP session...

FROM THE ONGOING ANNALS OF RULE BY THE WRONG: On yesterday’s Meet the Press, Tim Russert spoke about Iraq with a two-man panel—David Brooks and Thomas Friedman. What made this panel so intriguing? Each man supported the war from the start! Thus continued the media custom known in these precincts as “rule by the wrong.” If you were right from the start about Iraq, you’re pretty much banned from network discussions. Only those who were wrong can still comment. It’s something like a basketball tourney where only the losers advance.

Tomorrow, we’ll review some coverage of Dennis Kucinich to show the way a pol gets treated if he gets the big things right. Meanwhile, Brooks and Friedman produced magic moments on yesterday’s show. Those moments should be remembered.

With Brooks, the magic moment was a bit of unintentional humor. Late in the session, Russert played tape of Laura Bush and Donald Rumsfeld; each had said, just this week, that there were lots of good things going on in Iraq. Laura Bush even said that the press just won’t tell us. This prompted the following statement:
BROOKS (12/17/06): Get off of it! I mean, we've got a hero in our newspaper, John Burns. Another hero, Dexter Filkins—there's a whole series of heroes over there. They're not biased about this. They want the best for the Iraqi people, they want democracy. Listen to what they're reporting—they're reporting chaos. You have—I don't know what it is, 1.6 million people leaving Iraq. You've got 9000 Iraqis every week who are moving to their Shia homeland, or to their Sunni homeland. This is a country—it's not civil war, it's just disintegration. So the idea that this is some media concoction, you—I said that a year ago, two years ago. But at some point, face reality!
“At some point, face reality,” Brooks suggested, creating a wonderful bit of found humor. But Friedman’s moment was vastly stupider—a deeply stupid, obnoxious moment that helped capture the strangeness of our time.
As always, Friedman used the session to offer a string of the “hey-look-at-me,” homey homilies that have become his tiring trademark. (“Basically, the government of Syria killed the prime minister next door, and wants to get off with a parking ticket!”) He shared the various “rules I had about the Middle East”—without explaining why, for all his rules, he’s been wrong in so many judgments. (“You know, Tim, if I can share with you another rule I had about the Middle East, it was that any general going to the Middle East—or reporter—should have to take a test, and it would consist of one question: Do you believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line? If you answer yes to that question, you can't go to Iraq.”) He offered his trademark Kennedyesque constructions—perfectly fine from a 60s pol, endlessly tiresome coming from Friedman. (“We cannot go on having our first-choice boys and girls dying for Iraqis' second choice.”) And he sounded massively out of touch with political reality. “This is a freak show, OK?” he said, of Syria’s desire for that parking ticket. “There's no other part of the world that's behaving like this.” No other part of the world? “Freak show” is the term Harris and Halperin coined to describe the mess Friedman’s cohort has helped give us! American politics has been a “freak show,” they said. And Friedman has been part of that process.

But Freidman’s low moment came near the end, when his clowning led him to mock two Big Major Dems. Good God! There was Friedman the over-caffeinated, repressed nightclub comic, holding his nose to make his voice sound funny, mocking a major Democrat who was right on Iraq from the start! This was a stupid, low moment, even coming from insufferable Friedman:

FRIEDMAN: I want to pick up on David's point, because I think Obama is such a powerful candidate for—for a couple of reasons. David and I were talking about them earlier. One is that I believe Democrats voted in the last two elections like this, Tim: (holds nose—makes squeaky voice—pretends to pull lever) “Al Gore.” (Holds nose—makes squeaky voice—pretends to pull lever) “John Kerry.” They voted with their nose plugged, basically. Democrats are starved, just as David said, to vote for someone they're excited about.

Really, it’s astounding to watch these inane, bloated fellows, among the most foolish our race has produced. By now, even Friedman has probably heard that Gore was right about the war in Iraq. Before that, he was right about global warming—for decades—and he was “right” about the first Gulf War too. Meanwhile, as has long been clear on the web, many Democrats would be “excited” about voting for Gore, because of his many correct judgments. But even now, in the face of his own endless errors, Friedman feels free to come on TV and mock a man who was right on Iraq. But so it goes in our bizarre pundit culture, where those who were wrong mock those who were right. (For Cynthia Tucker’s version of this strange dance, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/7/06).

more
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh121806.shtml