Clive Crook spends a couple thousand words noting that K-Thug has been right about everything, but then gets a major sad because Krugman is shrill and tired of dealing with idiots.
We seriously need to bring back the guillotine. I’d give anything to spit in Crook’s gimlet at the Russian Tea House Room.
JDM
I’m surprised he didn’t get on Krugman’s case about blowing up that car.
Gin & Tonic
It’s Russian Tea Room, not House. Puh-leeze.
JeremyH
I see that Crook has succumbed to acute Broderitis. Count me unsurprised.
Just Some Fuckhead
Shorter Crook: It’s Krugman’s fault I keep choking on his massive and delicious cock.
PsiFighter37
Yeah, I read that column at work. “Yes, he’s right about everything, but he doesn’t say it in the same soothing tone as…”
As who? If you are right on virtually every point, you almost have an obligation to rub it in everyone else’s face all the time, repeatedly. He’s not a fucking politician; he’s not there to soothe anyone’s fee-fees.
It’s the kind of column that David Brooks would write if a) he could ever own up to the fact that his worldview sucks, but b) he had to find SOMETHING wrong to write about so he didn’t feel like his world had disintegrated before his eyes.
raven
@PsiFighter37: That’s the first time I’ve seen a post by you where you didn’t babble about booze. You OK?
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: He is drunk on Bobo. He is not okay.
PsiFighter37
@raven: It’s been a long time since that’s happened. Perhaps you are ignoring 55-60% of my comments here as a result…
beltane
No need for guillotines. The thing that would work best for these overgrown WATBs is some old-fashioned discipline with a paddle or belt. I would never recommend this for children, but when it comes to our public thinkers I am definitely of a “spare the rod, spoil the pundit” mindset.
Aimai
My grandmother used to take me to thevrussian tea room…30 years ago. Now *that* was glamour.
schrodinger's cat
Did anyone read MoU this morning? I had this reaction.
Hill Dweller
Krugman’s response to Crook’s whining: Not Everything Is Political
Chris
Bullshit. Krugman isn’t attacking these people because they have a “different vision of how big a role the government should play.” He’s attacking them because they’re deliberately lying about the consequences of their vision (and his).
If you want to say “the government should impose austerity measures because [insert Randian philosophical screed about How The World Ought To Be here],” knock yourself out. If you want to say “the government should impose austerity measures because they will end the recession,” that is a demonstrable fucking lie, and there’s no reason Krugman should call it anything else.
People are entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts, something conservatives and wishy-washy both-sides-do-it professional moderates alike refuse to understand.
beltane
@schrodinger’s cat:
I have read this eight times now, and I still have no clue as to what he is trying to say. Friedman is starting to make less sense than Sarah Palin.
Howard Beale IV
Ya mean LIke this?
MattR
@Hill Dweller: This pretty much sums it up.
Chris
@Hill Dweller:
Damn. I see Krugthulu himself beat me to it.
mdblanche
@schrodinger’s cat: You read MoU willingly? Do you also enjoy hitting yourself over the head with a hammer?
Kay
Best post title ever :)
schrodinger's cat
@beltane: It is not English, it is MoU speak, like lolspeak but not as funny.
schrodinger's cat
@mdblanche: I did not read beyond the first paragraph, that was punishment enough. I like to check NYT columns just to know what the VSPs are thinking.
Gex
It always baffles me. The right is fueled by machismo. They talk tough about crime and international politics. Mock liberals for being effeminate.
But if someone is sarcastic about them they completely fall apart with hurt feelings. Krugman noted that the facts aren’t politics. But even if it is politics, politics is a contact sport.
Sorry about your fee-fees. But your policies get people fucking killed so suck it up you hothouse flowers.
Anne Laurie
@schrodinger’s cat: Friedman “means” exactly what’s he’s meant since the Bush Bubble burst and his wife’s daddy’s megafortune deflated by about 90%: We’re all screwed, and should expect to live hard and die at the whim of our corporate overlords:
It’s dressed up with a fckload of MBA-friendly babblespeak, because Friedman’s been reciting babblespeak so long that it’s the only language his mustache can understand (also, now more than ever, he needs those corporate speaking fees!) but he’s the forlorn priest of a fallen liturgy — the world is not flat, and we are all trudging uphill to the salt mines with neither olive trees nor Lexuses to reward us.
rikyrah
stop the whining, Clive.
your side doesn’t have shyt for facts on their side.
schrodinger's cat
@Anne Laurie: Forget MoU, but isn’t that orange kitteh full of win and awesome?
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
And not as meaningful, either.
PeakVT
@beltane: I don’t know what what Mr. Flatearth is saying either. But here’s one of many good responses to the column.
Chris
@Gex:
It makes perfect sense if you assume that they’re insecure little shits for whom the machismo is just a posturing attempt to compensate for their own perceived shortcomings.
NonyNony
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m fairly certain that if you train a probabilistic language model on nothing but the Business section of the Times, a Freshman sociology textbook, and the technology section of any paper you’d choose to select, you would get a model that would generate that sentence.
Which suggests that perhaps Tom Friedman has replaced himself with an android.
Imagine the nightmarish dystopian future produced when the Tom Friedman android achieves sentience and becomes Skynet…
Baud
I want to believe in gravity, but, damn, that Newton is an asswipe.
Kay
@NonyNony:
I read it this morning and it really made me laugh. It’s a new low. I hope he gets worse and worse.
Morzer
@Anne Laurie:
Don’t you actually trudge downhill to salt mines? I mean, that Miss Bianca movie sure seemed to be set underground, and since movies are now a valid source of economic data…
Chris
@Anne Laurie:
God, I hate that guy. All these guys.
Morzer
@Gex:
It always amuses me to see the bigots whining for tolerance when their whole intellectual raison d’etre is based on.. why yes, intolerance.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer: Tolerate my Intolerance!
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat:
See http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/
NonyNony
@PeakVT:
Gawd that is a thing of beauty from Felix Salmon. I ‘specially like his response to this part of the Mustache’s random sentence walk
This, in fact, is how I feel about most of the Mustache’s columns. He’s both morally bankrupt AND completely incoherent.
Omnes Omnibus
@NonyNony:
I am so stealing that.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
If I were Friedman, I’d be scared too.
NonyNony
@liberal:
That is a thing of beauty.
The only problem with it is that those columns, randomly generated though they are, seem to be more comprehensible than a Friedman column.
J.W. Hamner
I’m definitely on the tote-bagger side of “reasonable discourse” compared to you and DougJ, but this is clearly a ridiculous argument by Crook. Krugman says that he knows people are going to claim it’s really him whose being political but then cites his track record in his defense. Crook addresses this point by accusing Krugman of lacking self awareness of his own political motivations while noting that Krugman has been right about everything. Frustrating to say the least.
Morzer
@Baud:
David Brooks is heading for the railroad station with a grip full of small gold bars as we speak.
Amir Khalid
The Friedman column is basically The World Is Flat-era drivel, just more densely packed. It’s gone stale after all these tears, although I wasn’t aware it was so stale a random text generator could duplicate it.
He should have developed some new drivel by now. Then at least people could say, “Thomas Friedman is not your father’s Moustache of Understanding.”
Mike in NC
They hired Clive Fucking Crook because Megan McShithead was no longer available.
NotMax
@Aimai
Their blinis were to die for,
Scamp Dog
@liberal: I opened that in a new tab, kept reading some other stuff, and forgot about it. When I finally got to that tab, it took me a few paragraphs to realize that it wasn’t actually Friedman, but that column generator that I was reading. Hilarious and scary at the same time…
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
It isn’t really a random sentence generator. It’s more of a Thomas Friedman Mad-Libs page. This becomes obvious if you generate a bunch. Eventually, you’ll get a repeat column with the major players replaced by a new list. Of course that appears to be how the “original” does it, so it’s not a bad model.
PeakVT
@Mike in NC: The Atlantic featured both for a while.
johnny aquitard
How does someone with the name of Crook get any where? Least of all when that person is a pundit.
hamletta
@johnny aquitard: Because his ancestors were shepherds?
Joel
Crook, truth in advertising.
Lurking Canadian
@Baud: He’s been peddling this “no security”, ” everyone’s an entrepreneur” bullshit for twenty years, and NOW he finds it scary? Dude, it was terrifying when I was an undergraduate.
Lawrence
Hit the Davos summit with a daisy cutter.