Our local Quaker college is bringing one of the more awful cheerleaders for one of our more awful wars to back to town.

Do students at Quaker colleges still have silent vigils to support Quaker values?

Because I might join a protest outside a Tom Friedman appearance.

Retroactive irony points for his bubble analogy.

Comments

[bubba]

For all the other reasons Friedman gives to dislike him, you had to pick one of the few where he makes sense.

What an uncanny ability you have to get things wrong! It's almost legendary.

But we are no longer surprised to see it pop its ugly head above ground.

[Bill B.]

The top comment about this video:

***If petulance, fear and moral confusion could be made into a mustache wax, Friedman would have a lifetime supply. What a sick man.***

"Because we could." --That is the takeaway quote to me, and it is the perfect focus showing why the top comment is the top comment.

[Fred Gregory]

Bubba,

Dang if you didn't nail it.

The dumber this man's writings get, the more often he is a guest on Meet the Press .

Everything Tom Friedman Says Is Wrong

Just one example...

"With one exception, every word Tom Friedman writes in his New York Times column today is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’ I hope some real economists will go after him with all the derision he deserves, but let me start the ball rolling.

First, Friedman chooses as his “expert economist” one Adam Davidson, whose vast expertise in macroeconomics comes to him via a B.A. from the University of Chicago, where as part of his general graduation requirement he might have taken an introductory econ course taught by some Milton Friedman (no relation to Tom) acolyte. Friedman describes Davidson as an “author.” This is correct. Adam Davidson writes stuff, which makes him an author. It does not make Davidson an author who knows anything about macroeconomics, and – as actual, credentialed economists like Dean Baker have repeatedly pointed out – Davidson does not understand macroeconomics. Ignorance has not yet stopped Adam Davidson from “authoring” things about economics or talking about economics on the radio. Not long ago the New York Times Magazine published one of Davidson’s unfortunate forays into economic theory. Yves Smith, a financial expert, said of the piece, it “manages the impressive feat of making you stupider than before you read it.”

Enjoy your evening.

[Andrew Brod]

What I recall about Friedman's take on Iraq wasn't just that he was wrong once, but that he kept doubling down on his wrongness. When nearly everyone else saw what a screw-up the war was, in conception and execution, and when formerly hawkish pundits were issuing apologies and reassessments of their earlier support of the war, Friedman kept arguing that the moment of truth was around the corner. It never was.

But his Iraq errors aside, I've never been a fan of Friedman's brand of data-free, anecdote-dependent economics.

[Bill Bush]

Matt Taibbi's takedown of Friedman:
http://nypress.com/flat-n-all-that/