This Week in the Mercury
Monday, March 9, 2009
News "Get Off Facebook, And Into Someone's Face..."
Posted by Matt Davis on Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 4:38 PM
That was the advice of three-time Pulitzer winning New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, who spoke to a packed gym of 1500 people at Portland State University earlier today. Friedman, who was at PSU to plug his new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, spent much of his hour-long lecture focusing on the need for America to lead the charge in developing cheap, readily-available renewable energy.
FRIEDMAN: SHORTER THAN YOUR AVERAGE PULITZER WINNER...
Friedman focused his talk on pragmatic advice for global capitalists. "You've got to play hard ball," he said. "Too often, the green community thought that virtue would play out. But you want to have a virgin birth for the environmental movement? You may be waiting a long time. You've got to get the big players to do the right things for the wrong reasons," he said.
Friedman actually studied Arabic (coughCIAcoughcough) at PSU for a summer in 1972. "I had my first girlfriend here," he said, before launching into his talk.
Friedman believes that America needs to give tax incentives to green business, and encourage the country's creative entrepreneurs to invent breakthrough technology that can solve the world's increasing climate change and overcrowding problems. But his optimistic faith in a holy grail: That somewhere, renewable energy exists, and exists in perpetuity, doesn't have everyone convinced. I couldn't help being struck by the protest awaiting Friedman when I walked in...it made me think, "this guy's a little too close to the CEO's of General Electric and General Motors to be sincere about any 'green revolution'."
PROTESTERS: WERE ANGRY ABOUT FRIEDMAN'S FAITH IN THE FREE MARKET...
Then again, I'm not sure how close any of those protesters are ever going to get to the people with the power to shape government policy on climate change. Meanwhile Friedman probably has the Obama administration on speed dial. So: Pick your poison.
I watched the talk with Mercury freelancer Andrew Tonry. We agreed that Friedman is pretty good with the soundbites: "I call it global weirding, not global warming," for example. But Tonry and I were also a little skeptical..."if I had an endless budget and could go anywhere I chose, I could probably write some pretty fucking good columns, too," said Tonry. "But then again, I wouldn't have championed the Iraq war." Burrrrn.
What did Friedman think of Portland's business climate, as far as sustainability goes?
"I've only been in town 18 hours, and it usually takes me 36 hours to assess the business climate of a place," he responded, with a joke to duck the question. "But I was met at the airport by two guys with a really cool Zipcar. That was really impressive. It beats the usual Towncar."
By the end of the talk I was left with the impression of a man who has smart-sounding, catchy things to say about global trends. "The first law of petropolitics is that at $25 a barrel for oil, the Holocaust is never a myth," he said—pointing out that "the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation." The green movement has been seen as "liberal, tree-hugging, sissy, unpatriotic, and vaguely European," Friedman said. "When green is the new red, white, and blue."
But above all, it's obvious: The man is marketing smart thinking to the masses, and to do so, you've got to be willing to be a little bit of an asshole. Thomas Friedman is indeed a little bit of an asshole, but just the same, I'll probably read his book, or at least, pretend to have read it, and he probably knows it.
Ah, to be shaping the zeitgeist...without even a thought for the major league soccer. Some dream.
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After the bit about being able to write my own columns with an endless budget I added: "That's more my hubris than a critique." Because all and all I do think Thom's on the right track. That Iraq thing though, Jesus...
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Anyway... Ugh. Friedman. Never has one person been so good at repackaging tired old ideas into insane metaphors and non-sequiturs. Were it not for the wealthy real estate family he married into, he'd probably be a sports reporter in Terre Haute. No offense to sports reporters or Terre Haute...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsfGu9muD0Y
I think it's fair to say that America simply wouldn't be where it is today without the free market policies championed by Tom Friedman.
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Ah yes, and if anyone would be an expert on that, it'd certainly be you.
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The guy lives off his wife's portfolio (which admittedly is a fraction of what it once was), travels the world on the respective dimes of the NY Times and his publisher, and is thus eminently qualified in his mind to dissect the intersection of local trends and macroeconomics via non-existent conversations with imaginary cab drivers that exist in the shadows of his own narcissism.
He famously claimed on Charlie Rose's PBS gabfest shortly after the Iraq invasion that sometimes you gotta fuck shit up for fuck-shit-up's sake ("Suck. On. This." - that's a direct quote).
His only rejoinder in response to what we should do post-Iraq (remember, he was one of those "smart-sounding, catchy" pundits from the "left" who marketed "smart thinking to the masses" in the form of a massively stupid invasion of a sovereign nation) was to plead for another 6 months and the sudden appearance of unicorns. He did this for 4 years, and was such a warped, broken record of a running joke that the term "Friedman Unit" (aka the "F.U.") has become synonmous for a duration of 6 months of abject douchebaggery. You can look it up and everything.
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so yes. absolutely. total douchebag.
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