One of the Funniest Things Ever Written

Posted on 01/17/2009 at 1:06 pm by Bob Cesca

Matt Taibbi has turned ripping on Thomas Friedman into an art form. And this passage from his review of Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded, is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read:

Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique that goes something like this: “I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train, when suddenly I said to myself, ‘We need better headlights for our tri-plane.’” And off he goes.You the reader end up spending so much time wondering what Dubai, BP and all those Balinese workers have to do with the rest of the story that you don’t notice that tri-planes don’t have headlights.And by the time you get all that sorted out, your well-lit tri-plane is flying from chapter to chapter delivering a million geo-green pizzas to a million Noahs on a million Arks. And you give up. There’s so much shit flying around the book’s atmosphere that you don’t notice the only action is Friedman talking to himself.

Holy hell that’s genius.

h/t Chez

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  • bibimimi

    How can Friedman be this lame and superficial and still get published? Is he just really wealthy and bored/boring? Watch him interviewed; he throws ‘basically’ in where it isn’t needed about 6 or 7 times in the course of a segment. He’s got the floor, dammit, back off! Raise the threat level to ‘bloviate’!

  • Kansasdem

    I have a nomination for ass-hat of the millennium:http://news.yahoo.com/s/weeklystandard/20090117/cm_weeklystandard/theonlythingwehavetofearQuoting Fred Barnes:”Presidents with strong nerves are decisive. They don’t balk at unpopular decisions. They are willing to make people angry. President Bush had strong nerves. President Clinton, who passed up a chance to eliminate Osama bin Laden, did not. Obama is a people pleaser, a trait not normally associated with nerves of steel.”Sort of makes me want to bang my head into the wall repeatedly!

  • EL Mystico

    I have to say, I’m the tiniest bit gay for Matt Taibbi’s writing. Even when I occasionally disagree with him, he’s always good to read. When I read his column calling Pastor Hagee a ‘beachball-shaped apocalypse merchant’ I lost my shit.

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    Taibbi is world class. His last book is a perfect 10.

  • EL Mystico

    OMG those graphs are amazing. What do midgets think of Australia?

  • http://www.osborneink.com Matt Osborne

    Reading his last couple of books, I’ve come to the conclusion that Friedman started taking LSD while playing Civilization. There’s no other explanation for the frenetic, masturbatory style of his paragraphs on bullet trains and laptop computers and their roles in globalization. He seems to be imitating James Burke’s Connections show, but he lacks any of Burke’s scholarship. It’s a far cry from the days when he wrote From Beirut to Jerusalem, still required reading for anyone studying the Middle East and a studied criticism of Israeli policy.To my dismay, it’s also infected his columns. Just nine years ago he wrote one of the most cogent and foresighted op-eds it has ever been my pleasure to read: Parallel Universe still resides on my bulletin board, yellowing with age. His analysis of the 2000 election cycle as a silly exercise in the politics of distraction when enormous challenges lay in our immediate future, and his prediction that the 2008 elections would be the very opposite, has stood the test of time. Back then I read Friedman religiously; now I read his columns occasionally and always get the impression that he’s taken a mescaline-fueled detour into gonzo journalism.

  • Leigh

    Matt, have I told you lately that I love you?

  • Leigh

    Oh, and I agree with you. I also meant to tell you that was a nice piece of writing you posted last night too.(Sheesh. I think I need a nap already).

  • LameDuckHunting

    I have been a fan of Matt Taibbi for years. He helped to keep me (reasonably) sane during the Bush misadministration. I’ve even got my wife and sons reading him. I hope you managed to catch him on Rachel last night.Be sure to check out his current piece in Rolling Stone in which he imagines a final interview with Bush. As usual, it is hilarious, perceptive and waaaaaaaaaaay over the line.Keep up the great work, Matt.Also recommended are his two compilations of Rolling Stone reportage “Smells Like Dead Elephants” and “Spanking The Donkey” in addition to “The Great Derangement,” which Travis previously mentioned.

  • Mike H.

    Matt,Found the Op-Ed. Money quote:”My gut tells me that by 2008 we will look back at the Clinton years as a fool’s paradise — the quiet interlude after the cold war and before all the forces unleashed by e-commerce, the biotech revolution, the information revolution and global integration reached their critical mass and ushered in a period of radically new political choices and issues in U.S. and global politics.”

  • GItheScholar

    Matt Taibbi is my lord and savior. Testing?

  • 24hourjack

    matt taiibi is the epitome of what a true journalist oughtta be.there isnt a single journalist working today who even comes close.he has a track record of calling out frauds on their fraudulence regardless of party affiliation,yet refrains from playing the moral equivalency game.he has no discernable agenda and that is what we are sorely lacking in the media,mainstream or otherwise.