Thomas L. Friedman: Dear Iraqi friends

[Ken White]

For my part, I stay away from pundits now, and use published scholars to research and support any position I support in written work these day. . .

almost certainly far more cynical, I, sadly, do not put too much faith in even published scholars nowadays...

[selil]

Friedman in the Olive Tree and the Lexus identified the super empowered individual long before anybody was paying attention to Usama bin Laden. He hits a home run just often enough to be relevant. Kind of like a grand slugger in baseball. You want home runs the earned run average is going to be abysmal. But every now and then out of the park. Friedman does that fairly well. I've read all of his books and often find egregious factual errors (e.g. Flat earth and discussion of the beginning of the Internet <shudder>). Hot, flat and crowded was similar. Like all writers. Use what you can and don't sweat the rest.

[Bob W.]

I read several of Friedman's books, too, and used them as references in my thesis and some of my other writings; Lexus was a great early popular book on globalization, too.

I feel, like Schmed, that he is in the pandering mode these days, though, ever since he published the global warming book and returned from sabbatical. The Obama election editorial was totally over the top.

We'll see how relevant he remains over the next few years. Columnists are like the newspaper comics, they can far outlast having anything relevant to say, hopefully Friedman does not become the Beetle Bailey of the editorial pages!

Incidentally, I poked a bit of fun at Tom Friedman awhile back in some posts here and here.

Cheers.