The first paragraph of Friedman today is epic:
I was traveling via Los Angeles International Airport — LAX — last week. Walking through its faded, cramped domestic terminal, I got the feeling of a place that once thought of itself as modern but has had one too many face-lifts and simply can’t hide the wrinkles anymore. In some ways, LAX is us. We are the United States of Deferred Maintenance. China is the People’s Republic of Deferred Gratification. They save, invest and build. We spend, borrow and patch.
From Taibbi’s classic take down of The World is Flat:
On an ideological level, Friedman’s new book is the worst, most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit. If its literary peculiarities could somehow be removed from the equation, The World Is Flat would appear as no more than an unusually long pamphlet replete with the kind of plug-filled, free-trader leg-humping that passes for thought in this country. It is a tale of a man who walks 10 feet in front of his house armed with a late-model Blackberry and comes back home five minutes later to gush to his wife that hospitals now use the internet to outsource the reading of CAT scans. Man flies on planes, observes the wonders of capitalism, says we’re not in Kansas anymore. (He actually says we’re not in Kansas anymore.) That’s the whole plot right there. If the underlying message is all that interests you, read no further, because that’s all there is.
I’d say Taibbi has him dead to rights.
someguy
Despite the fact he’s an odious rich fatcat, Friedman’s column is right enough. China is kicking our ass in every way; our people are dumber and less educated than the burgeoning Chinese middle class, our infrastructure is fraying and falling apart, and our political class is maybe the worst ever. He’s obviously wrong about how we need tax breaks for corporations, that’s just corporatist bullshit. But he’s right about us getting our asses kicked, and about how we’re due for the mother of all ass-kicking. Decades of Republican backasswardness have doomed us to this.
dr. bloor
Sure, but I’ll bet Taibbi’s house isn’t nearly as nice as Tommy’s.
trollhattan
If the Free Market(TM) wished LAX to be spiffy and shiny and not a sprawling yet cramped shitbox then it would be so. The marketplace has already spoken. QED and all that rot.
jibeaux
Comparing a country to the Los Angeles airport is probably pretty dumb, I don’t know, haven’t been there, but I think Friedman’s point is well-taken, if banal. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our government’s dysfunctional, and we don’t do anything much in the way of big or visionary. China is actually getting some stuff accomplished. Of course, they can do that primarily because they aren’t saddled with any pesky “democracy”, so mixed bag and all that.
liberal
Best parody of Friedman ever: The Datsun and the Shoe Tree
slag
I’m not going to click the link because I don’t care enough. But I will say that these sentences, taken together, don’t make a ton of logical sense.
Lev
Considering that Friedman’s commentary on the Middle East is often indistinguishable from that of Marty Peretz, I’m curious why anyone would take anything he writes seriously.
geg6
Taibbi always has great things to say about the Mustache. I’m sure if I mosey over to True/Slant in the next day or two, he’ll have something epic to say about Friedman’s latest.
That said, I’ve decided to use the Mustache’s method while pondering the world I live in and I have decided that the Mustache symbolizes the GOP’s and Bible Spice’s Real America for me: stupid, self-important, lacking in any sort of sincere empathy, and tacky as a pornstache.
Sue
Well of course China is kicking our ass; they’ve got all the best ideas. We should see that reversed when the Republicans come back into power and get that prison-labor thing up and running.
I’m interested to see how they adapt the forced abortion requirement. Did I say forced? Sorry, strongly encouraged.
liberal
@someguy:
Obviously the Rethuglicans are much worse than the Democrats, but ISTM that the latter were quite happy to conspire in shipping our entire industrial base abroad.
Redshirt
Mussolini made the trains run on time too.
Fergus Wooster
@slag:
They never do. That’s Friedman’s gift. From Taibbi (italics Friedman):
Dork
Thomas Friedman is a dead-ringer to the guy who plays the newsman Tom in Family Guy.
Fergus Wooster
@Dork: Exactly!
-Point of mustache!
-The Chair recognizes your mustache. . .
Mako
@someguy:
Wow, you nailed that. I’ll bet you spent a lot of time in China. It is exactly like you say, a glowing beacon of wonderfulness kicking our ass in every way. Why Bejing’s air quality index alone beats the chopsticks off anything this country has to offer. Best thing about China? No YouTube.
Fergus Wooster
@Redshirt:
Especially when they were pulling cattle cars eastward. . .
Bill E Pilgrim
This is the part that I felt like sending to Matt Taibbi when I saw this article (two days ago, I thought? What do I know, in total time zone discord, always).
Yes. Businesses tend to invest with fictional families. Or any families. Or maybe they like to invest in sitcoms. In which case, didn’t someone finance the Flintstones?
No, okay it’s a metaphor. We’re the Flintstones, and China is the Jetsons. And businesses stand for er, businesses, which invest in families…
Nope. Can’t make it work. You never can, with him, you go nuts trying to.
someguy
Fixed.
China may suck, but so far, they’re only a regional hegemon. That gives them a moral leg up on us. Never mind they own enough of our national debt to sell us to Greece – heavily discounted – if they want. Truth hurts, don’t it?
flukebucket
@liberal:
Thank you. Thank you so very much.
mr. whipple
Why does The Mustache hate America? Would a Chinese newspaper pay a gazillion bucks for his insightful insightiness?
Quiddity
Give Friedman a break. This time his column was not based on a conversation with a taxi driver. So what if he merely repeats the words of a Titan of Industry in order to further the interests of corporate America. It’s his job. As he states in that column:
See? Public service.
None of you appreciate the Mustache of Understanding. For shame!
Bill E Pilgrim
@Fergus Wooster: The best line was the next one though IMO:
“…he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius.”
And this is a close second:
“Moreover, Friedman’s book is the first I have encountered, anywhere, in which the reader needs a calculator to figure the value of the author’s metaphors.”
By the time you get to the ubersteroid four-thousand-point antlers part I dare anyone to not be laughing out loud.
nancydarling
I have flown in and out of LAX at least ten times in the last 4 years (December is the most recent). I don’t know what terminal he was in, but all the ones I used didn’t seem so bad.
I have had layovers in Denver, Houston, Dallas and Chicago. They seemed ok too. JFK, Heathrow, and La Guardia, not so much.
Pangloss
@liberal: Awesome. Simply awesome.
Justin
I wonder if Friedman’s ever visited China’s airports? I have; they’re nothing special.
No one wants to admit it, but China’s economy is in danger of overheating and falling into a severe recession.
Read – http://mpettis.com/
I’ve spent a little time in China and, other than the oppressive government, I really liked it. The Chinese are actually pretty cool people. More relaxed than Americans. But China’s biggest problem is China. They have a huge population that needs jobs and food. They have an economy based on building skyscrapers that no one lives in and creating trains that no one rides. They rely too heavily on exports. Their currency is artificially pegged to the US dollar. This can’t last forever.
America needs to stop worrying about China. And needs to start just trying to be a better country. And in my opinion that means drastically reducing our foreign presence around the world. And instead, focus that time and money on the US of A. But I’m rambling…
/rant over.
nancydarling
Also, Albuquerque International is beautiful. Civic investment in public art is evident all over Albuquerque.
Violet
@liberal:
That is awesome. Brilliant takedown.
Friedman is right that our older airports, such as LAX, have had many reconfigurations and at some point it’s hard to do another one and really make it work.
If one were to extrapolate from the LAX observation, it’s probably best to stick with the infrastructure. And ours is generally old. And that’s a problem. Remember the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed a few years ago? It’s not the only bit of important infrastructure in need of being fixed or replaced. Bridges, roads, water systems – they’re all old and need attention.
China has come a long way in a short time and they’ve got brand new infrastructure at the moment. How well that’s built, I have no idea. But it sure looks modern to the casual observer.
Awktalk
holy crap, i haven’t laughed that hard in days. Never knew Taibbi wrote that.
bemused
I always picture Friedman writing this dreck, leaning back in his chair, stroking his mustache & saying, “Damn, I’m good”.
Jay B.
@Mako:
I’m with you. The same general “why China is kicking our asses” shit was “Japan” before and “Germany” before that. The problem is in the premise and, after that, the facts.
First, it doesn’t really matter. China is advancing economically. And..? Is American primacy that good or important? England was long ago supplanted by the U.S. and they have a better quality of life now than when they were a far flung Empire.
Second, the Chinese are showing us a neat-o facade and there surely is a TON of growth — but then you realize that 700 million people live in abject poverty. You think that’s going to what, disappear? China isn’t even close to reconciling it’s urban problems, never mind its rural. We see trains and infrastructure — thing I would love to have, for sure — but we don’t see the vast, the unimaginably vast problems China is facing. You want to talk about social engineering? The one-child program has yet to really manifest itself and already you’re seeing intractable problems — an imbalance of males — and the roots of Very Big Issues because of it.
Finally, China is “Deferred Gratification”? No fucking way. The Chinese who have money are gratifying themselves at an unbelievable rate. Jesus. They’re selling out mediocre cognac at $3600 a pop just because it’s a status symbol. And they’re BLASTING through resources, despite their pitching of the Green projects they are installing.
People who look to China as a model for anything but a far more oppressiveutterly shallow consumerist state isn’t taking a good look at the picture.
Fergus Wooster
@Bill E Pilgrim: I could read that takedown everyday.
I also like the earlier one, about the Wildebeast of Understanding and the Mongoose of Discontent. And Taibbi’s confession that when he had a drug problem, he used to call the NYT offices impersonating Friedman, cursing about someone being in his parking spot.
GregB
Plus the Chinese do fabulous Olympics floor shows sans giant inflatable beavers.
tommo
I didn’t see it in any comments, LAX is beginning a $1.5 billion upgrade.
Frideman’s entire thesis, shot to crap.
John Arbuthnot Fisher
Can’t Thomas Friedman and David Brooks just make out already so we don’t have to hear any more ridiculous lamentations on The Deeper Meaning of a Failing America as experienced by rich white men in dilapidated airport terminals or the backseats of taxis?
PeakVT
They save, invest and build. We spend, borrow and patch.
Maybe if we had a few less malls to buy Chinese-made stuff in, we’d be better off. Just sayin’.
Anne Laurie
@Jay B.:
To be fair, I think “a far more oppressive utterly shallow consumerist state” is a pretty NICE godsdamned picture when you, like Tom Friedman, are the trophy spouse of the heir to the biggest shopping-mall developer in the country.
As always, Shorter Friedman: “I was personally inconvenienced recently in a public setting because my banana-Republican masters have spent the last forty years wasting and looting this great nation’s patrimony in pursuit of shallow short-term gratification for themselves. Therefore, it is now time to punish the bottom nine-tenths of the income pyramid once more, an event whose start I shall celebrate by punching a hippy.”
vanya
Hey – Scranton-Wilkes Barre has a spanking refurbished new airport and the terminal is so shiny you could eat off the floor. So in Friedman land Scranton,PA is clearly kicking LA’s ass.
Loneoak
Just the fact that the mini-healine over at NYT.com was “Friedman: Words from the Wise” was enough warning to know not to read this column or else I would want to punch something. Anything or anyone that Mustache believes is “wise” has to be both venal and entirely lacking in insight.
JenJen
Friedman: America’s Greatest Airport Blogger.
Jay B.
@Anne Laurie:
True enough. Although that’s a sad commentary on what a billion dollars can by in trophy spouses these days.
maus
Oh god damnit Friedman, what is this with the racist exotification of the Chinese? They’re subject to the same idiocies as us, there’s no stereotypical “wise asian” nature that makes that statement true. Die in a fire.
maus
Which is why he’ll forever be a bestselling author, and why corporations will pay him to say insipid inspirationalities, he “sounds like he knows what he’s talking about” to people (somehow) even dumber than him.
burnspbesq
@someguy:
“He’s obviously wrong about how we need tax breaks for corporations”
Been to Ireland or Singapore lately?
Scooter Magruder
I just have to de-lurk for a moment to say that you people are the hilariousest commentators ever. For this, I thank the Mustache.
celticdragonchick
@maus:
WTF??!!
I think you push the definition of racist beyond tolerable limits. If you propose that all cultures have the same “idiocies” or idiosyncratic behaviors and mores, than I would be interested in seeing your field work on the subject.
WereBear
Why is it always about who is on top? Why does there always have to a country on top? What is this obsession with the size of things and how much it surges and… oh…
Never mind.
georgia pig
I wish Tom Friedman would move to China.
ksmiami
Because anything we try to do to better our society in the current environment is a liberal socialist conspiracy – But I do think we could present it in a let’s beat ’em way and reunite the Americans… it is sad, but we always do better when we think our enemies are beating us.
Mark S.
The point of the column is to argue for corporate tax breaks:
There may be an argument that we could structure our tax code more intelligently to spur economic development, but I’m pretty sure our tax code is friendlier to corporations than most other places in the world.
Midnight Marauder
@someguy:
The good people in Sub-Sahara Africa would disagree with that “regional hegemon” assessment.
Nylund
I’d like to note that with interest rates near zero and with such high unemployment, RIGHT NOW is an absolutely perfect time for the US to borrow money to put people to work to rebuild and improve in all the ways that Friedman wishes he would. Admittedly, I haven’t followed his take on fiscal responsibilty, but I would not be surprised if his advice is to NOT SPEND anything right now.
This is the contradiction of pundits like this. “Hey look at all this cool stuff other countries spent money to build! You know what we should do to emulate that? NOT spend money!”
Just look at this quote:
Save AND build! No wonder they’re teh awesome! They apparently don’t even have to spend any money to build anything.
Also:
I will take any excuse to plug the hilarious essay,
Thomas Friedman Clogged my Toilet
DonkeyKong
Wait, isnt one of us a special needs baby that needs to stop digging three holes, or get more shovels. And who’s sucking on what and is it flat or a bubble?
I miss just one of his column’s or a Charlie Rose appearance and I’m just totally lost.
Mike in NC
If only Friedman had stopped by the Applebee’s located inside LAX. It has a salad bar to die for !
Roger Moore
@Violet:
Given how quickly much of it was built, there’s good reason to suspect its quality. It doesn’t help that a lot of the construction is being overseen by a horribly corrupt Communist party. The massive damage to public schools during the Sichuan earthquake is a good hint about how careful China is being.
Nylund
Is this in reference to the fact that Thomas is married to a ridiculously rich mall heiress to General Growth Properties? A company that owns over 200 malls in over 45 states? Does he not realize his family’s vast wealth comes from pressuring Americans to waste their money buying cheap crap from China?
Mark S.
Ha! Drum isn’t too impressed by Friedman’s fellating skills either:
I think the NY Times would benefit with some diversity on its opinion page. Try having a few non-millionaires, for example.
Alex Milstein
Cramped faded domestic terminal?
Which one was it? At LAX virtually every domestic flyer – or groups of two or three – has its own terminal.
And what does he mean by cramped and faded? It’s easy to throw words around without offering details. It’s an airport. One flies out of it and one flies into it. It’s not a country club, Tom.
gbear
Compared to his wife’s house, almost everything is cramped and faded.
PeakVT
@Nylund: Yes, yes, and I suspect that Friedman is cursed (or blessed, perhaps) with an inability to experience cognitive dissonance.
Big Ernie
I have a shoe that won’t stay tied and it represents, for me, an age-old conundrum: I need fucking velcro shoes!
Mike G
Friedman is the only douchebag in the world who could look at a miserable third world slum and exclaim, “Ooh! A Marlboro billboard! Isn’t globalization wonderful?”
Mike G
What sucks big-time about LAX is the dingy, low-ceilinged prison-like basement reception hall for arriving international passengers and the prison-guard demeanor of shaved-head, gun-toting customs and immigration staff. I’ve crossed a lot of borders and arriving in the US is one of the nastiest experiences around. And that’s for a white male US citizen of conventional appearance; I can’t imagine how foreigners get treated. It seems to reinforce some of the worst Bush-era stereotypes about the US – “Welcome to America, we’re arrogant assholes.”
petorado
You know, nothing helps pay for the infrastructure and education investments that the Mustache wants for keeping this nation competitive like tax cuts. If we’ve learned nothing from the Reagan and Bush tax cut sackings of the Treasury it’s that tax cuts not only pay for themselves, they leave plenty of money left over to boost spending for bridges, airports, higher education, and other the other niceties that big, multinational companies look for as the float about the world looking for tax havens in which to do business.
If Tom pressed Mr. Otellini even more, he would have discovered that not only does this nation owe him and his multi-national company tax cuts and incentives to do business here, but LAX should build a sweet lounge for his class of travelers so they don’t have to look at the dated decor that the riff-raff get to wallow in.