I should stop reading the columnists in the New York Times. After David Brooks' nonsensical column about the media, God and tsunamis, I promised myself I'd stop taking these morons seriously. But now Tom Friedman's gone and pissed me off again.
He's writing a column basically making fun of Europe for not loving that adorable George W. Bush. Sure, he pretends to write a fair column about the lack of popularity of our President throughout the so-called Old World (alert the media!) He even gets in a few cracks at the administration before all is said and done
But check out this quote:
The logic of the Europeans' position is that they should now be anti-American, not just anti-Bush, but most Europeans don't seem to want to go there. They know America is more complex. So there is a vague hope in the air that when Mr. Bush visits Europe next month, he'll come bearing an olive branch that will enable both sides to at least pretend to hold this loveless marriage together for the sake of the kids.
What's the implication here? That Europeans are fickle, and if our President goes over there and makes nice, they'll run back to him with open arms, returning his sweet embrace? The European community has every reason to be upset with this administration. We started a war without sufficient cause and lied about it. We pulled out of international treaties that had taken decades to set up, and most of these treaties fall apart without our support (as we're the largest post-industrial economy in the world by a massive amount). We're right now in Congress defending our right to torture people we suspect of being terrorists.
Why shouldn't Europeans have the right to hate America? Shouldn't their consideration of us as a people depend in some way on how we behave? Right now, I hate Americans. Not the ideals that we stand for as a nation, and not the individual people that I know and love and live amongst. I don't hate my community. But I hate the way Americans behave socially and politically (especially politically). And I'm one of us. Who the hell is Friedman to chide Europeans for their distaste for the President, or recommend how he can make them like him better. He should do the right thing for once in his fucking life, that would probably help his case.
And then, there's this abysmal, insulting, horribly destructive final section:
Funnily enough, the one country on this side of the ocean that would have elected Mr. Bush is not in Europe, but the Middle East: it's Iran, where many young people apparently hunger for Mr. Bush to remove their despotic leaders, the way he did in Iraq.
An Oxford student who had just returned from research in Iran told me that young Iranians were "loving anything their government hates," such as Mr. Bush, "and hating anything their government loves." Tehran is festooned in "Down With America" graffiti, the student said, but when he tried to take pictures of it, the Iranian students he was with urged him not to. They said it was just put there by their government and was not how most Iranians felt.
Iran, he said, is the ultimate "red state." Go figure.
Funnily enough, this is not funny at all. A nation of people so desperate for liberation from their vile, repressive theocratic government that they would welcome the chaos of invasion and civil war is not an amusing bon mot to be tossed out for shits and giggles in a political commentary.
Why doesn't Friedman treat this more seriously? What's with his flip "they hate anything the government likes" angle. Is he genuinely reducing the political opinions of an entire nation of people as mere contrariness?
And then, calling Iran a "red state," saying they "support Mr. Bush." It's damaging, it's damaging to the discourse. Because simple-minded people will read this and believe this fool. And then, in a few years, when G. W. wants to invade Iran, and says "the people there want America to invade," they'll think, "Oh, yeah, that's right...I read it in the New York Times."
Just like what happened the last time around, to that other country that's right fucking next to Iran and is spelled almost exactly the same.
Okay, I'm going to stop talking about this now before I have a massive coronary.
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