Let's all make fun of Tom Friedman!

But count me out. Hasn’t it become a little too easy? Is it really satisfying anymore? After several paragraphs of mocking “the Magic 8 Ball of cliche generation”, Jonah Goldberg [subscription required] observes,

Attacking Friedman’s writing style is something of a bipartisan pastime. The gold standard of the genre is Matt Taibbi’s 2005 New York Press disembowelment, “Flathead.” Describing his mounting dread at the prospect of reading and reviewing The World Is Flat, Taibbi writes: “Thomas Friedman in possession of 500 pages of ruminations on the metaphorical theme of flatness would be a very dangerous thing indeed. It would be like letting a chimpanzee loose in the NORAD control room; even the best-case scenario is an image that could keep you awake well into your 50s.”

FYI, this blog is no fan of Matt Taibbi. Which, actually, is the point I’m trying to make. No matter where you are on the political spectrum (even in the exact center), something Tom Friedman has written will strike you as so laughably ignorant that you feel compelled to mock him.

Of course, since I favor obstructing a consensus of any kind, let me put in a few good words for Friedman regardless of what everyone else thinks. When I was in grad school in the UK, I was at a dinner for around 30 or so students where Friedman was the guest of honor. During the after dinner Q&A, some of the guests demanded an explanation for the relentless abuse of the Palestinians at the hands of Israel and its American patrons. Unfazed, Friedman made the case for why real threats to Israeli security necessitated many of the policies that its critics consider inexcusable.

If you want to be popular with the global elite, defending Israel is probably the worst thing you can do. So good for Tom Friedman.