From a profile of Thomas Friedman in November 10th's New Yorker (subscription required):
Friedman can at times sound confounded by his Iraq-war critics, some of whom, scornful of his ability to always to see at least a glimmer of future hope, began referring in 2006 to a "
Friedman Unit": a period of six months, starting at the present, during which events in Iraq would prove decisive. In his dressing room at the Letterman show, he said, "My first column in Iraq was 'Hold Your Applause.' It's not like I've been sitting there on Fox News, saying it's all going great. I've basically been a critic since Day One." Indeed, in April, 2003, the journalist Andrew Sullivan, who was at the time largely supportive of the Bush Administration, criticized Friedman, saying, "You have to ask yourselves what it would take to get Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd to say anything,
anything, positive about this administration and the military force they have just wielded so expertly."
Tom Friedman's self-concept as Iraq war critic validated by Andrew Sullivan circa Spring, 2003: The piece largely consists of such uncritical analysis. Friedman disclaims responsibility for anything that happens because his intentions are good:
Should Friedman have foreseen that the war would be waged incompetently? "To that extent, yes, I really screwed up," he said. "Because you can't believe in the war and not believe in the people who carried it out." ... Friedman seemed to see himself in two roles, as a reporter and as an actor in the policy process: "I was walking a really fine line between saying, 'This is not working, O.K., and you guys need to change and we need more troops,' and not wanting to say, 'It's all your fault.' I was part of the discussion, part of the idea - where my ideas stopped and theirs started, I don't know. I felt responsible and I felt terrible about what was happening. I feel responsible. But I don't feel sorry for believing that we need to find a way to collaborate with people to give birth to a different politics in that part of the world."
Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, millions displaced, and U.S. national security has been irreparably harmed. Friedman feels responsible, but he's not sorry. How can anyone take this man seriously?
Can we purge these people who supported the war like Friedman and Kristol rather than provide them with a bigger stage? They have no credibility.
Posted by: Smiling Dog | November 08, 2008 at 03:19 PM
Purge them? I know Obama was the change candidate, but I don't remember him promising American gulags.
Posted by: Mithras | November 08, 2008 at 03:24 PM
I doubt sending them to American gulags (Gitmo, and the super-secret black sites) is particularly what he has in mind... but taking away their playground positions on prominent TV and news papers would be a good start... and that can be accomplished in reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine wrt the public airwaves... there should also be a public push to breakup the media conglomerates and let in some fresh air...
Posted by: sukabi | November 08, 2008 at 03:37 PM
Collaborate: you keep using that word but I don't think it means what you think it means.
"But I don't feel sorry for believing that we need to find a way to collaborate with people to give birth to a different politics in that part of the world."
Pre-emptive war = the new "finding a way to collaborate." Does this guy ever listen to himself?
Posted by: hoi polloi | November 08, 2008 at 04:01 PM
Mr. Friedman has become an insufferable immoral idiot, and should be disregarded until RIP.
Posted by: SteinL | November 08, 2008 at 04:37 PM
that can be accomplished in reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine wrt the public airwaves
Unnecessary, unwieldy, and impossible to implement in today's media environment, not to mention a complete bastardization of the concept of free speech. Of course, the first one's the key, since I'm enough of a hypocrite that I'd probably support the damn thing if I thought it would help.
Plus--and granted, this isn't a substantive critique--just say "Fairness Doctrine" out loud. The name itself is an impotent whine.
Posted by: gil mann | November 08, 2008 at 05:21 PM
gil mann, how is giving an opposing viewpoint an infringement on free speech?
What is being broadcast now, and for the last decade or so, is not representative of even a tiny bit of how the American People feel / think about things in their "real lives"... what we are being "fed" is what one side of the political class in Washington DC and the corporate powers want us to believe / think.
There is no substance or context to any of the "news reportage" that slips the airwaves, it's purely propaganda designed to keep people from thinking too long or too hard about what's going on.
Posted by: sukabi | November 08, 2008 at 05:57 PM
how is giving an opposing viewpoint an infringement on free speech?
I demand that sukabi be balanced out by a commenter who thinks I totally nailed it!
Look, nobody kept liberals from seizing on the power of radio. We sat back and bitched while the right took over a medium. They won their dominance. I'm too lazy to go find out what exactly the FD's original intent was, but when people talk about reinstituting it, what they're saying is, "hey, Rush holds too much sway!" Well, so what? It's not his fault Randi Rhodes and Thom Hartmann are fucking unlistenable. And I'm a huge "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" fan, so it's not like I'm a hard guy to entertain.
You're not wrong about the big picture issues (I think you're misattributing intent, but that might just be shorthand on your part); information-as-commodity is inherently problematic, and I'd be curious to see what would come of an FCC that did its job instead of acting as an enforcer for the conglomerates. I'm not sure giving the left equal time to opine on the sea of irrelevant bullshit we're swimming in would help all that much.
I'm against the FD on principle, but that aside, haven't you noticed how horribly unfair the internet is to conservatism? Why would we give the right a tool to use against us just as we're ascendant? Let 'em have drive-time. We can afford to be generous, seeing as how we own the future.
p.s. I left out the part about how even with the deck stacked against us, we've been kicking fascist ass for two years straight. There might be Republicans reading and I don't want to rub it in.
Posted by: gil mann | November 08, 2008 at 07:33 PM
Fairness Doctrine is unnecessary. Some sort of recourse to being named in a show would be nice, i.e. if Rush wants to bash William Ayers he has the right to submit a statement or something. Newspapers do this for articles, they ask the subjects of articles to comment on stories. Some sort of equivalent to that practice for new forms of media would be helpful. I'm not sure how it would work though.
Posted by: david | November 08, 2008 at 09:04 PM
Fairness Doctrine is unnecessary. Some sort of recourse to being named in a show would be nice, i.e. if Rush wants to bash William Ayers he has the right to submit a statement or something. Newspapers do this for articles, they ask the subjects of articles to comment on stories. Some sort of equivalent to that practice for new forms of media would be helpful. I'm not sure how it would work though.
Posted by: david | November 08, 2008 at 09:22 PM
I actually remember the Fairness Doctrine at work on television stations: They would introduce Topic A, and then you had two opposing points of view (but only two!). It was dumb. Anyway, it was only desirable when the only game in town was radio and TV. It's not anymore, obviously.
Why does the Fairness Doctrine keep coming up? I never even thought about it until right-wingers brought up paranoid fantasies of them being silenced, and then lo and behold a real liberal pops up and demands that conservatives be silenced. Weird.
Posted by: Mithras | November 08, 2008 at 10:20 PM
So I can just broadcast my show over the airwaves on the same frequency and time during Limbaugh's show? Freedom of speech right?
No? The FCC won't let me? Why are they trampling on my and your freedom of speech?
That's one reason why we need the Fairness Doctrine. Unlike the Internet, radio spectrum is a limited commodity that is managed by the FCC for the public interest. Not the Right's interest, or the Left.
Posted by: Fair and Balanced | November 09, 2008 at 09:31 AM
*yawn* DNFTFT, people.
Can we go back to talking about what a douche Tom Friedman is?
Posted by: Mithras | November 09, 2008 at 09:42 AM
Dude, c'mon, a troll is a specific thing, not just the odd man out on a comment thread. I actually think this is a worthwhile discussion, even if I don't know what it has to do with Friedman. Now that we've got a president-elect who's not looking to crack the Seventh Seal, it's probably a good time to debate the finer points.
Can we go back to talking about what a douche Tom Friedman is?
And concede vaginal proximity to that unctuous jerk? Nothin' doin'.
Posted by: gil mann | November 10, 2008 at 02:42 PM
a troll is a specific thing, not just the odd man out on a comment thread. I actually think this is a worthwhile discussion
I think this comment thread is an example of why the Fairness Doctrine is no longer needed. More people will probably read Atrios's post (128k hits/day) than read the original New Yorker article (circulation of about 1 million). Not that the Fairness Doctrine applies to nonbroadcast media, which is also the point. It doesn't apply to cable or satellite at all.
Also, I don't know who Fair and Balanced is, and I am wary of all this stuff coming from the rightwingers about how the left is going to suppress conservative speech.
Posted by: Mithras | November 10, 2008 at 05:42 PM