New York Times Death Spiral Watch (Tom Friedman Edition)
It's plummeting fast something awful...
Abu Muqawama watches the approaching wreck:
abu muqawama: Future TV: Did Tom Friedman really just describe Future TV as "progressive"? Really? Progressive in, uh, what way? Because it has the word "future" in its name?
Abu Muqawama thought Hizbollah shutting the station down was just as cowardly and thuggish as anyone, but let's be honest -- Future TV and al-Mustaqbal newspaper are sectarian propaganda organs for March 14th and the Hariri family.
Friedman then went on to say that Hizbollah shut down Future TV so that its "propaganda machine could dominate the airwaves." Are you kidding me? Is that the way it works in Lebanon, Tom? Have you been back since 1984? There are only two news stations there now, huh? Did LBC fold up shop and emigrate to France? And are al-Arabiyya and al-Jazeera unavailable?
Stupid stuff like this in the first four paragraphs of a newspaper column is enough to make Abu Muqawama quit reading. So if Friedman said anything smart in the rest of the column, let us know.
Update: Charlie, here. For those of you who enjoy shooting Friedman fish in a barrel (always great sport), be sure to check out this classic review of The World is Flat.
His [Friedman's] description of the early 90s:
The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever been--but the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned.
How the f--- do you open a window in a fallen wall? More to the point, why would you open a window in a fallen wall? Or did the walls somehow fall in such a way that they left the windows floating in place to be opened?
Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God?
