Tom Friedman Behind the Curve Again

    By Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 9:33am |

    ...and that's the best thing one could say about Friedman's Sunday NYT article, "A theory of everything".

    Matt Taibbi said it best when he described Friedman's writing as something akin to "turning a Chimpanzee loose in a NORAD control room".

    Personally I had enjoyed Friedman until his book, "The World is Flat." By the time he began writing the book, he was five or ten years behind the curve. Globalization pits workers against each other. Corporations seek the lowest wages.  IT removes once effective geographic barriers to low wage competition. No kidding.

    But the problem with Friedman's article is not just easy-riding on his own "flathead" coat tails . The problem is his juxtaposition of the "tea party" with Arab revolts. God help us if a writer of Friedman's supposed stature is still perpetuating the myth that the "tea party" consists of angry average middle class workers who have been pushed out of the job market because of low wage competition and lack of job skills.  Hyperconnected? Yes? The "tea party" as anything much more than long term Republican party hacks with strong stripes of white supremacy and religious fundamentalism? No!

    Friedman puts Globalization, IT, hyperconnectivity, slow U.S. job growth, Arabs, Chinese students in Iowa, the "tea party" and standard clap trap about the flat earth into a bowl, stirs it and dumps it all onto a sink drain.

    His Summary (condensed):

    The middle class is losing its credit cards, routine work, government jobs and entitlements. These folks are hyper-connected. They protest and challenge authority.
    They turn the government on its ear. All of which takes placed in the context of huge wage losses for people without: global skills, esp. IT; or without an inside track on Wall St. or K street, more or less.

    Conclusion. The uprisings, presumably the "tea party", and the Arab peoples have something in common. Yes, cell phones and Facebook.

    In a piece of weak logic and fuzzy connectivity Friedman talks about middle class anger, revolts, uprisings, turning government on it's head. It's clear he's not talking about Wisconsin. The implication is the tea party is representative of an angry middle class.

    I think Matt Taibbi was generous in his descriptions of Friedman. Friedman has taken the bait of "tea party" as a grass roots movement, swallowed it whole and is on a fish line flopping in the shallow creek waters of insouciant journalism.  That's by way of saying he is behind the curve -- again.

    Comments

    Needed. The actual reference to yesterday's article in the NYT. (With my low computer skills I may be unwittingly proving Friedman's point) 


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 9:41am

    I hope I didn't cut Friedman a break by saying he just "implied" things about the tea party. Here is the kind of absolute B.S. which the media took hook, line and sinker about the con that was the formation of the "tea party".

    Friedman:  "(revolts, etc took place)...while the angry tea party emerges from nowhere and sets American politics on its head"

    The "tea party" didn't emerge from nowhere. It was an ever so brief moment of libertarianism which was immediately taken over by the Republican right wing machine and pitched to the media and the public as "grass roots".

    Friedman really ought to get a pink slip for perpetuating myths about the "tea party".


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 10:04am

    Yes, the Tea Party hardly emerged from nowhere. It's not 'libertarianism' that spawned the TP.  It is composed of hordes of disillusioned Republicans who thought George W. Bush had a direct line to God, and would lead America into some neo-Reagan Promised Land, while smiting evil brown people on the way. That fantasy became impossible for even the most delusional right winger to still embrace, as the Iraq War went bad in 2005-2006. Then they got mad as hell, but couldn't take it out on Dubya because he was their guy, they enthusiastically voted for him twice.

    As the Bush 'ownership society' finally collapsed in 2008 they went into shock.  They lost the election to Obama.  They soon dismissed Bush as a liberal. It is fundamental to them to believe that liberals are evil and 'real' Republicans are pure as blue sky. When Bush was gone, and he is totally gone if you haven't noticed, they sought a 'new breed of conservative' to magically undo all the damage Bush had done.

    Of course the Tea Party is just the same bankrupt, out of ideas, old breed, who just want to regain power.  They are further to the right, as damaging to the nation, and crazier than ever.


    by NCD on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:28pm

    Thanks. Part of the shock I think was Obama himself. My take is that Palin had so whipped up this right wing element that there blood continued to boil after the election. I can't prove it but these folks were most likely on 2008 mailing lists (email?, facebook?) and I think they were more than primed to shout, holler and go to rallies. Fiscal conservatism, I think, was intentional cover. 


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 1:40pm

    Reference

    http://nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/Friedman-a-theory-of-everyt...


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 10:53am

    The funny thing is, I don't think most Tea Partiers would like being compared to the Arab Spring either...


    by Verified Atheist on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 10:58am

    That is funny and true.

    And not the least of which is that those Arabs believe in Sharia Law and want to bring it over here.


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 11:36am

    Friedman creates jobs!

    Sales of anti-nauseous medicines--both over the counter and Rx--quadruple every single time his face appears on the tellie.

    What a prophet!

    I was just viewing one of his lectures the other day:


    by Richard Day on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 11:00am

    HA! thanks.
    Professor Flathead.


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 11:21am

    It would be more interesting to compare the Tea Partiers to the London rioters: both groups feel suddenly left out by the economy and thus aggrieved, they figure to shake things up and take what they want.


    by Donal on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 11:06am

    Thanks. I think that's a blog. Why do the tea partiers feel "left" out?

    Obviously Friedman omitted the London rioters. Probably because his article is so out of touch. But hey, the Rioters are hyper-connected, so by definition Friedman should have thrown them into his bowl.


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 11:28am

    Donal, additional thoughts on your comment. I agree with you that the partiers want to shake things up and take what they want, part of which is absolute control of the Republican party.

    I'm not nit picking your other statement, but it goes to the heart of what I feel is the misconception of the "tea party" and what I think is Friedman's error. It could be that tea partiers' foundational belief is that they are left out of the economy, say, for the reasons Freidman states, I don't know. But for the sake of discussion: I think that tea partiers operative motivations do not have as much to do with being left out by the economy as much as wanting a new social order, esp in line with religious views, and especially as it pertains to returning to a white and mythical Mayberry.  Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there is foundational fear of being left out of the economy which is driving the whole movement.   


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 2:02pm

    OK, to clarify, feeling "left out" is different for each group. The rioters were always left out, but they had the dole or whatever to get by. The Egyptians had enough food to get by. The Tea Party were just next door to being wealthy. With a variety of bad financial news, all groups, except the truly rich, have had to adjust downwards.


    by Donal on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 2:19pm

    Thanks, I see the commonality.


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 2:37pm

    The Bush backing TParty was denied what Karl Rove and the GOP machine promised them. A permanent Republican majority!

    A heaven sent 71% vertiginous gain (or more) in their portfolios, cheap gas for their SUV's, a booming economy and the end of the Democratic Party.

    What they got was a stinkin' war that cost trillions, put Iranian Mullahs in charge of Iraq (which few of them can even find on a map), tens of thousands of troop casualties, a crashed economy and a black man as President.


    by NCD on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 8:27pm

    My criticism of Friedman is not to say he doesn't state some truths, such as lack of traditional jobs, importance of computer skills, and so forth. It's the linking of these facts to anger and the rise of the tea party I take issue with. I'll throw my grand kids into the mix here.

    Grand kids. College degrees. Menial jobs. Most good jobs in medical field or computers--not their majors. Liberal Arts, maybe should have been Chinese language. Yes they are in an accessibility squeeze. But tea party? No.

    Because:
    They are not white supremacists.

    They are not Christian fundamentalists.

    They are young.

    They pay their credit cards, not ruin their own credit ratings by not doing so.

    They don't wear tea bags.

    They don't march or protest.

    They are not on Sarah Palin's mailing list left over from her 2008 rallies.

    They think Michele Bachmann might be some kind of hand bag logo.

    They are not angry, they just want some job opportunities.

    They are paying off huge student loans thanks to right wing Republicans' maintenance of mega banks who ripped students off with outrageous fees and interest.

    Yes, they are hyper-connected. So what. They are not part of any uprising.

     


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 11:19am

    I think that Friedman's correct that there are parallels between the Arab uprisings, European riots, and American tea parties but that he and others misunderstand the role of new technologies in a subtle but important way. Friedman writes:

    This globalization/I.T. revolution is also “super-empowering” individuals, enabling them to challenge hierarchies and traditional authority figures — from business to science to government.

    He adds, "...citizens have more access to media to organize, protest and challenge authority."

    The new technologies are more than simply organizational tools, however. They are also sources of information, and it is the explosion of new information sources that has challenging the old authorities.

    Think about the printing press. In the early days, people did not use it to organize protests against the Church. They used it to present new ideas that challenged Church doctrine, from the Protestantism to the heliocentric theory. Martin Luther's ideas were not all the original. He cribbed them from other heretics of the previous century. But Luther had something they didn't: the printing press. And very rapidly, the availability of alternative ideas undermined the historic authority of the Church.

    Something very similar happened in the Middle East. The availability of social media as well as new satellite media sources like Al Jazeera undermined the authority of the dictators. There were suddenly alternatives to the state-controlled media.

    And the same thing has happened in a different but parallel way in the U.S. Our news media used to be dominated by an oligarchy of authoritative news sources: ABC, NBC, CBS, and various mainstream magazines and newspapers. Radio deregulation opened up alternative conservative news programs in the late 1980s, which popularized the notion that the mainstream news sources were "liberal"--not to be trusted, not reliable authorities. A decade later, Fox News continued the trend, followed by the blogosphere and then social media. The result: a precipitous collapse of trust in the authority of the old media oligarchs.

    The Tea Parties were launched by a jackass ranting on a cable news show. Ten years ago that show didn't exist. Had it existed, the rant would not have propagated across the country on blogs, twitter, facebook, and youtube, which didn't exist either. And had conservatives not been conditioned by a decade or more of challenges to the Republicans establishment and traditional news sources, they would not have been so prepared to enthusiastically respond to the call.


    by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:46pm

    Genghis is correct ... but it also took rises in food prices and a self-immolation to spark the Arab Spring, and it also took austerity and a questionable shooting to spark the London riots, and it also took a decline in the middle class and a credit debacle to spark the Tea Party - news of which was quickly spread by those new information sources.


    by Donal on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 1:12pm

    Thanks, Genghis. You make an extremely important distinction which is subtle and logically posited --and I hope is read by someone at the NYT 


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 1:29pm

    Excellent point, Genghis. Especially the printing press metaphor. Like today's social media, it expanded both access to information and freedom of expression. Luther used it to challenge the existing orthodoxy, but was horrified to realize it could be used to challenge all orthodoxy -- even the very idea of orthodoxy.

    So he lent his voice to the bloody suppression of the revolting peasants. That's the stage the Republican establishment is reaching with its own Frankenstein monster. The Tea Party, which claims to represent basic Republican principles, actually threatens the party's hold on power. Unfortunately, there are no noble armies handy to crush the heretics.


    by acanuck on Wed, 08/17/2011 - 2:39pm

    Thanks. I actually proposed it to my agent for a book, but she preferred my other ideas. Not sure why.


    by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 08/17/2011 - 6:15pm

    We viewed the introductory physiology course as learning the technique of drawing arrows between angonist, receptor and physiologic event. Arrows were drawn to connect intermediate steps as well. You continued to draw the arrows until you described a basic process like how to"thin" the blood to prevent blood clots from forming. The arrows were very calming in that they made things simple and easy to understand.

    All the other physiology courses were about the myriad number of times the arrows did not fully explain why a given event occurred. The courses required actual thought and reminded you of the vast number of questions in physiology that remained unanswered. Blocking certain agonists and receptors did not produce the expected effect. You were also amazed that blocking some clotting processes did not result in exsanguination. Simplistic views rarely work in the real world.

    Friedman is still at the basic arrow drawing stage of why events occur.

     


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 2:48pm

    Friedman is still at the basic arrow drawing stage of why events occur.

    Not to sound too arrogant, but in this sense Friedman is man of the people.

    In a perfect world kids would graduate with a thorough understanding of complex systems and complex adaptive systems.  They would know what "sensitive dependence upon initial conditions" means, and how feedback loops impact things from the environment to poverty.


    by Elusive Trope on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 3:34pm

    The best education is realizing that if something sounds too simple, you're probably missing the big picture. This posture doesn't have to keep you from taking action in any given situation, but reminds you to keep your guard up.


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 3:45pm

    Great comments. And exsanguination--I hope to never see one. But come to think about it, as metaphor I think Friedman's article bled out before hitting print.


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 3:59pm

    How'd I miss this? Kickbutt takedown!


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 08/17/2011 - 6:04pm

    The Dagblog editorial attack team is on the case.


    by Oxy Mora on Wed, 08/17/2011 - 6:58pm

    As a wrap, I refer to another NYT article, Aug, 16, "Crashing the Tea Party", by Campbell and Putnam, conveniently referenced in the "IN THE NEWS section, upper Right hand corner.

    The authors describe in detail the composition and beliefs of "tea party" supporters. Does Freidman do nothing but browse through his own book "The Flat Earth" hoping therein to find some insight about what's going on in the world? He should read his own newspaper, not his useless tome.

    The authors Campbell and Putnam, who oddly enough base their conclusions on original research ,expose the "tea party" for what it is. They debunk the the myth that the "tea party" was then, or now, representative of the broad middle class and that it "sprung from nowhere".

    In my opinion exposing the "tea party" for what it is and what it believes, and then tying those truths around the necks of Republican candidates is at the heart of the 2012 election. I recommend the article.


    by Oxy Mora on Thu, 08/18/2011 - 9:45am

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