New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | August 23, 2005

Looks like Matt Welch won't be making the rotation of experts who provide pithy soundbites and wacky metaphors for the New York Times op-ed page, now that he's dubbed overrated columnist Thomas Friedman a "self-caricaturing hack."

Comments

|8.23.05 @ 2:50PM|#

the uncanny moustache bit was one of the best nypress covers ever.

i didn't have an opinion on friedman until i saw him on charlie rose; dear god!

|8.23.05 @ 3:03PM|#

While there is surely a need for "niches and nooks and distributed expertise," there's also a need for contextual analysis that spans the niches and nooks. While it's easy to take shots at Friedman's metaphors, they make his work vivid and accessible, and he has done a great service in reminding a (largely left-of-center) audience that trade isn't a bad thing and that America isn't invariably wrong in its various conflicts with illiberal Third World dictators and militant Islamists.

Aren't there far more appealing targets for critical attention on the NYT editorial roster? If the charge is glib linguistic gymnastics coupled with vapid analysis, I'd nominate Maureen Dowd.

Matt Welch|8.23.05 @ 3:08PM|#

Jack -- Those metaphors, when used on countries & regions of which he knows little, may "make his work vivid and accessible," but they also help make it wrong. As for MoDo, she may indeed be worthy of more scorn, but I don't think she has any real influence, least not on stuff I care about.

|8.23.05 @ 3:29PM|#

I'll see your Friedman and raise you a Krugman.

|8.23.05 @ 3:35PM|#

ouch. doug's playing hardball.

|8.23.05 @ 3:38PM|#

there's also a need for contextual analysis that spans the niches and nooks.

Sure, as long as its competent. But that's the rub, no?

|8.23.05 @ 3:42PM|#

Plainly today is take-down-overrated-hacks day at Reason. Though I submit Friedman is both more overrated and much, much more of a hack than Hitchens. At least Hitch believes his audience can reason above the fourth-grade level.

|8.23.05 @ 5:26PM|#

Thanks to Matt Welch for this excellent article.

There is good reason to choose Mr. Friedman as a target among the other columnists at NYT: everyone knows that Dowd is as childish as she is vapid; Krugman is a straightforward political hack. No one really talks about these two (or Herbert et. al.) as though what they say is somehow profound.

But Thomas is feted as an intellectual (a thinker!) even though his columns are those of a semi-literate sixth grader; he has raised oversimplification to a high art, which means that he gets paid a lot of money to do in public what real sixth graders are failed for doing on term papers.

|8.23.05 @ 5:28PM|#

Couldn't look at the "moustache of understanding" gag without thinking of Ron Burgundy..."You stay classy, New York!"

|8.23.05 @ 7:34PM|#

The Moustache Of Understanding: great name for a rock band!

|8.23.05 @ 7:42PM|#

Granted, being vivid doesn't help if you're wrong; but is Friedman wrong? I don't think the case has been made -- certainly not here -- that he's generally a "hack." I can't undertake to defend the guy's every utterance, but the standard for admission to the land of genuine hackdom has to be a pretty demanding one. It's fine to point to a number of Mandelbaum quotes (as if their infirmities were obvious, which is not always the case), and observe that Friedman likes vivid metaphors, but what I've read here is thin on specific examples of wrongness or incompetence.

I don't always agree with Friedman, but even if his suggestion of a basis in ethnic politics for NATO expansion is subject to fair criticism, was his overall opposition to NATO expansion off the mark? I think so, but I recall hearing quite a few libertarian voices against NATO expansion at the time. Didn't Cato oppose NATO expansion?

Similarly, while the "flat world" metaphor is vulnerable to parody, the book in question makes a basically libertarian argument for a more open world and against barriers to the movement of people and information and capital. Given that there will inevitably be establishment-center-left pundits in our society, these are exactly the sorts of arguments I wish they would focus on making.

|8.24.05 @ 12:46PM|#

Jack,

My problem with Friedman isn't that he's always wrong. I often agree with his conclusions; it's just that he seems to think they're so incredibly profound. Expanded trade makes people richer! He comes across to me as a bright college sophomore intoxicated with a few ideas that are centuries old and well-explored, writing to his kid sister. Every now and then he makes a solid point in an insightful way, but not very damn often.

|8.24.05 @ 2:33PM|#

My problem with Friedman isn't that he's always wrong. I often agree with his conclusions; it's just that he seems to think they're so incredibly profound. Expanded trade makes people richer! He comes across to me as a bright college sophomore intoxicated with a few ideas that are centuries old and well-explored, writing to his kid sister. Every now and then he makes a solid point in an insightful way, but not very damn often.

Yes he does have a tendency to come off that way, and yet he's still at the head of the current class of NY Times op-ed columnists (Dowd, Herbert, Krugman). Would anybody bother reading and discussing anything this group had to say if they didn't have the imprimatur of the Times? I will say that Krugman was excellent writing on economics for Slate and if he went back to that I'd happily read his stuff, but otherwise...it's a pretty sad situation at the Times.