Bring Me The Mustache

of Thomas Loren Friedman

More of The Mustache of Understanding's now-daily Centrist bilge, cut up and arranged randomly for my amusement out the the long, wide brown streak he left in the New York Time yesterday:

"TO Barack Obama, John Boehner, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi and Eric Cantor, I just have two words of advice: Herbert Hoover."

TO Tom Friedman I have two words of advice: Mike Royko. And two more words: Pete Hamill. And two more words: H.L. Mencken. These names are not meant as prods to goad you into improving your craft. That is not possible: your profession is obviously "billionaire dilettante tripe-slinger" and you already tower over it. Rather it is to remind you for whom the bell tolls. The "history" you try to invoke to scold Barack Obama for not being ever more of a plowhorse for your incredibly stupid ideas is, in fact, bearing down on you as well.

Future generation will hold up the unreadable turds you extrude once a week next to an average column by Rokyo or Hamill or just any averagely-competent beat reporter for virtually any midsized paper in America and wonder if you were even members of the same species.

Your fate is sealed, Mr. Friedman.

All I know is this: If either of you had been a real leader truly committed to a Grand Bargain — which you both know is what we need — you wouldn’t have just walked away from your negotiations. You would have taken the issue to the country and not let up until the other guy came back to the table.

No, Tom: you don't even know that. You don't actually "know" anything. Instead, in an effort to avoid telling the truth so naked and strenuous that it should have been an even in the original Olympic games, you make funny little word noises about a fantasy government in an America that exists only in your imagination.

Then, for reasons that passeth all understanding, the Sulzberger family prints in America's newspaper of record. Week after week. Year after year.

All I know is, there is a mysterious and fiercely guarded secret reason why staggeringly inept hacks like Tom Friedman and David Brooks and Ross Douthat continue to have greater job security doing crappier work in the public eye work than just about any other distinctly identifiable group in America.

"Instead you both mumbled publicly about a Grand Bargain and how you were prepared for it but the other guy folded — and then retreated to your bases. Boehner went back to his base, arguing that more tax cuts can get us out of this, and Obama moved back to his base, with his focus on taxing millionaires. (In my next life, I want to be a member of the “base” — any base. They seem to have so much more fun and influence.)"

Fuck. You.

You are a member of the most important base of all: billionaires.

You play golf with the President of the United States.

So, again, in case I was in any way unclear...

Fuck. You.

"President Obama says that he tried to strike a Grand Bargain with Mr. Boehner on taxes and spending but that the speaker of the House backed off... Boehner says it was the president who undercut the deal..."

See, one of those things you can actually check out and find out which person was telling the truth.

You know, like one of those "newspaper reporters"

Because the truth would undercut his bullshit, Tom Friedman cannot be bothered to do the work of a newspaper reporter.

Which is weird because the The New York Times -- which employs the odious and cliche-freighted Mr. Friedman at great expense to its coffers and its reputation -- advertises itself as a "newspaper".

"[Mr. Obama] is going to be held most responsible by history for what happens and therefore he needs to take the lead in getting the leaders of both parties back to the Grand Bargaining table."

Of course the first draft of that "history" is written by people like Thomas Loren Friedman, which makes one wonder why he is so dead-set on using every public venue he can lay his hands on to tell these amazing lies.

Lies that everyone knows are lies.

Have you noticed, Tom, that every time you write one of these awful awful columns, the reek of your dishonesty transmogrifies you into the story?

Every single time.