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This is terrific. Especially if you share Matt Taibbi's opinion that Friedman's writing is a bloviated mess of half-baked ideas and nonsensical metaphors.

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/04/23/tom-friedman-stri...

However, I am surprised by the several posters here who feel this is a great approximation and yet also that Friedman is a great author. I am curious how a predictably impenetrable and meandering style is worth reading.

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Sure, except that Taibbi's writing is /also/ so predictable that he practically <expletive> <amusing metaphor> Goldman Sachs.

See what I did there? :)

I feel you, I don't love Taibbi at all, but at the same time, he's not on the NYT's most e-mailed articles list every week. You can escape Taibbi, whereas Friedman is like Sauron's eye, gazing into your soul no matter where you try and hide.

Another Taibbi contra Friedman classic:

http://rolocroz.com/junk/friedman.html

Sure, it's catnip, but we all deserve catnip sometime. Living life without catnip is like a trout driving a car without a steering wheel, which leads you to a oval world pretty quickly.

contra or contre?

I believe contra is Latin, contre francais?

thank you, this is the one I vaguely recalled existed, vs the link the one I posted. I remember reading this with a sigh of relief with the reassurance that I wasn't, in fact, crazy.

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