Pacific Views

Friedman Baiting

I got nothin'. I'm planning a daytrip for tomorrow because the unaccustomed heat around these parts has baked my brain, making it useless for all else besides wandering around exhibits (I'm not sure what kind of exhibits, but somebody else had better have figured out what I'm going to be looking at tomorrow and have affixed a helpful label,) and possibly looking at waterfalls.

So head over to read the Poor Man's explanation of why he's joined the ranks of the shrill. His reasoning involves a denunciation of Tim Russert, always good clean fun, and the following thought-provoking question: "Have you ever sat around thinking about what kind of silly shit you would do if you had a billion dollars?"

And definitely, enjoy this poem about Thomas Friedman which was left as a gift to the world by a Phoenician on the Poor Man's comment boards, and which I am therefore going to reproduce shamelessly:

Turning and turning in the parking lot
The driver cannot steer the Lexus;
The Left falls apart; the Centre cannot hold;
Mere Rightism is loosed upon the wheel,
The brain-dimmed metaphor is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of intelligence is drowned;
The best lack all publication, while the worst
Are full of verbose columnisity.

Surely some deadline is at hand;
Surely the Great Comparison is at hand.
The Great Comparison! Hardly are those words thought
When a vast surge out of my gall and stomach
Troubles my gorge: somewhere on a computer screen,
A piece with a hollow body and the head of a dodo,
A jeremiad blank and witless as the moon,
Is plonking its slow phrases, while all about it
Reel shadows of the reality-based community.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of hard-won reason
Are vexed to nightmare by inane business-babble,
And what rough screed, its hour come round at last,
Witters towards Washington to be read?

Now THAT is funny every time.

Posted by natasha at May 29, 2005 01:09 AM | Humor | Technorati links |