Bone In The Fan

Captain Obvious writes another book built on a stupid metaphor.

Thomas L. Friedman just sucks.  We’ll start there.  Oh, and here too: since I have in the past written reviews of things I haven’t seen or read (like my virtual review of the Sex And The City movie) I ought to tell you up front that I have NOT read Hot, Flat and Crowded and have absolutely no intention of doing so.  I’m also quite sure that it’s entirely unnecessary.  I’ll get to why in a moment.

But first, back to what I was saying before, which is that Thomas L. Friedman sucks.  I know this because I did read as much of his last book “The World is Flat” as I could stomach (which was about five pages.)  I also saw him speak a couple of years ago.  Don’t do that.  He’s bad enough in small doses on television, but hearing him regurgitate the bad metaphors and boring anecdotes on which he’s built an fanbase of sycophantic Barnes & Nobel browsers and editorial page writers was enough to cause me to consider the consequences of thrusting my Pilot V5 pen into my left eye.  Thomas L. Friedman is exactly the sort of huckster I hate most: taking what is immediately apparent to anyone that thinks about it for a minute, recasting it in a metaphor that makes an audience feel smart for understanding it, then serving it up with a “gosh, isn’t this brilliant of me” verve to the bottom-feeders that hang starry-eyed on every word.  People that can leave the event (or finish the book) feeling like they’ve gotten smarter and sporting one more conversation starter for the next cocktail party they find themselves feeling inadequate at: “Hey, have you read the new Friedman? He says the world is FLAT!”

One of these things is flat. It's not the world. I've provided additional visual clues if you have trouble with the process of elimination.

That book, which other NY Times columnists bravely called “brilliant,” seems to have built on a statement made to him by the CEO of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani, while Thomas L. Friedman was in Bangalore.  During a conversation about doing business globally, Nilekani used the phrase “the playing field is being leveled.”   Thomas L. Friedman relates how he couldn’t get it out of his mind and stewed on it until he decided that what Nilekani was actually saying is that world is flat.  He delivers this experience in the book as if he’s realized that Nilekani has purposely passed on a piece of very secret, very powerful information:

I kept chewing on that phrase: “The playing field is being leveled.”

What Nandan is saying, I thought, is that the playing field is being flattened… Flattened? Flattened? My God, he’s telling me the world is flat!

Eureka!  A premise for a book to be sold to lazy, wanna-be intellectuals.  I think I could hear the pop of his boner from here.  The next time Friedman wants a concept for a book, I suggest he save the airfare to India and just sit in on a marketing meeting in a SOHO loft: there’s no shortage of silly idiomatic expressions and metaphors being bandied about at one of those.  But wait!  My advice isn’t necessary (stupid Brad.)  Thomas L. Friedman doesn’t need new metaphors.  He’s actually able to recycle his shitty ones, which he’s done with his new book “The World is Hot, Flat, and Crowded.”  I hope I’m not ruining it for you if I tell you that in this one we learn (ohmigod!) that that the world isn’t just flat, it’s hot and crowded too!

His work here is done, for now. But fear not, citizen! Whenever and wherever there's a need for bad metaphors and books about things you should be able to figure out yourself, Captain Obvious will be there.

Let’s hear it in his words though:

The world also has a problem: It is getting hot, flat, and crowded. That is, global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable….

I am convinced that the best way for America to solve its big problem - the best way for America to get its “groove” back - is for us to take the lead in solving the world’s big problem.

Heady shit, right?  And it goes on for 448 pages.  O.K., so the world’s hot (global warming) and crowded (global fucking.)  And?  And then Friedman drops this bomb: the next big global industry is ET.  Not E.T., with the finger, and the bike, and Elliot, and the Reeses Pieces product placement.  Thomas L. Friedman’s ET is Energy Technology.  As in wind, solar, etc.  That’s it.  That’s the book.  The world is hot, flat, crowded and there’s a big opportunity in energy technology (I refuse to support his attempt to get another meme attributed to him, especially one as stupid as “ET”).  The rest you can probably figure out on your own.  Only Thomas L. Friedman can take an idea that could almost fill a four page pamphlet and expand it into a 448 page book.  Do I even need to explain why it’s entirely unnecessary to read the fucking thing now?

Anyway, he’s shilling it all over the television so reading it is doubly unnecessary.  I’ve seen him on Maher (who is skilled: he conducted the entire interview with his lips on Friedman’s ass,) I’ve seen him on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and if I see him again I’ll take it as a sign of the apocalypse.

If you’re still with me, you might be asking yourself: “Why are you being such a pissy bitch about it, Brad?” So let me say this about that:  The crap in Thomas L. Friedman’s book, the tripe he spouts on television (did you know that you can fit “ET” into an answer to any question?  I didn’t.) is exactly the sort of pseudo-intellectual poo that passes for intelligent conversation these days and that makes me fucking nuts.  You wonder why people have stopped thinking for themselves?  Maybe because verbose gasbags like Thomas L. Friedman will do all their thinking for them, no matter what the subject.  Thomas L. Friedman’s books remind me of shitty self-help books: all the obvious answers for why mommy didn’t like you without having to figure them out for yourself.

By the way, maybe mommy didn’t like you because you did shit like read bad self-help books.

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So many choices for President.  So few good ones.

There will be 14 candidates for President on the ballot in Florida. In addition to Obama and McCain, we can choose from the following:

• Gene Amondson: Prohibition Party.  Now I, for one, had no idea that this party even existed.  Didn’t we learn our lesson a few decades ago about this?  Their candidate is a landscape painter.
• Chuck Baldwin: Constitution Party.  I don’t know much about him except that he used to be pretty wired into the Republican party.  And I’m too lazy to look into it.
• Bob Barr: Libertarian Party.  A turncoat, a fraud, or someone who has seen the light, depending on how you look at it.  I’m a Libertarian, but Barr was a monumental social conservative for a long time.  His running mate is a douche.
• James Harris: Socialist Workers Party. Oh please.
• Charles Jay: Boston Tea Party.  Another libertarian party, and a play on words too!  Also a pain in the ass to find on the web, due to their name.  Fully 500 members. Their site is here, if you’re interested.
• Alan Keyes: American Independent Party. Line one of their website: “We Acknowledge the Creator’s Gracious Gifts.” And so on….
• Gloria La Riva: Party of Socialism and Liberation. Because if there’s one thing history has told us, it’s that socialism leads to liberation.  Morons. Their site is now enhanced with 30% more Che!
• Cynthia McKinney: Green Party.  Yawn.  I’ve done my green rants.  Boring.
• Brian Moore: Socialist Party.  As opposed to the Socialist Workers Party and the Party of Socialism and Liberation.
• Ralph Nader: Ecology Party.  You already know how I feel about this stupidhead.
• Thomas Robert Stevens: Objectivist Party.  These guys built their entire party around the writings of Ayn Rand.  What next, the Lion Witch and Wardrobe Pary?
• Gary Nettles (qualified as write-in).  Who cares?

My point being, well, nothing really.  Except that apaprently anyone can get on the ballot here, which actually isn’t such a bad thing (I wonder if they’ll let me nominate my colon.)  As for me, I’m still in the undecided column (I believe it’s too late to get my colon on the ballot) though leaning (again)  towards voting Libertarian.

Look, I want to like Obama, I really do.   He’s a likeable guy.  I think he genuinely cares about doing the right thing.  He’s smart.  I like his ideas about pork (the money kind, not the pig kind - I don’t know how he feels about bacon.) And he might just shake things up in a good way.  And maybe, just maybe the Dems won’t completely fuck everything up in four years.

I don't care how you feel about the guy, this photo looks like a Sears photo gallery shot from 1972. Or like someting you'd find in my high scool year book, taken when we all went to the "No Nukes" concert at Battery Park in 1981. Awful. Even so, he's just so damn LIKEABLE. Plus, his daughter Sasha (in his lap) is WAY cute.

But then I think about his windfall profit tax idea, and his “save jobs from being shipped overseas” rhetoric, and his pro-Mexico/US-wall position, his failure to stand up and say something truthful about the economy right now while encouraging the $700 billion package, and Joe Biden’s creepy metamorphosis into Carrottop, and I think “well, maybe they can.”  Fuck things up I mean.

Not that there aren’t plenty of good things about him too.  But you can figure those things out for yourself.  Try starting with his website.

And while I’m not a huge fan of Barr’s and I actively dislike Root (that’d be Wayne Allyn Root, Barr’s running mate who, as Doug Stanhope points out, spells his middle name like he’s in an 80’s hair band), they aren’t going to win.  So I’m back to thinking that a vote for the Libertarian party is the only way to be heard at all when I say that the government has it’s head up its own ass.  Really far, too.  Like, inhumanly far.

In the end it’s a moot point.  Neither candidate will listen to libertarian ideas, Obama will probably win, and that’ll be that.  But I will say that I’m open to being completely wrong about his policies.  I really hope that he’s everything that the Starbucks baristas, trustafarians and leftist women everywhere believe he will be, by which I mean I hope he makes useful, meaningful changes in Washington, gets our servicemen out of Iraq, starts to restore our International Street Cred (ISC) and gets people interested in the political process again.

If we can just keep him away from gun legislation, protectionist trade policies, windfall profit taxes and the complete socialization of banks and corporations this might not be so bad.  I’m not holding my breath though.

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No, I’m not talking about Sarah Palin (I think she’s only 42 anyway.)

It’s me you silly geese.  Many of you know that I work with Joanna at her awesome body product company Product Body, but I’m looking to bring home more bacon. 

Many of you also know what I’ve done, or what I’m good at (and what I’m not,) so I won’t post a frigging resume.  Suffice it to say that I’ve been successful bootstrapping and running businesses, and project management, copywriting, brand and/or internet consulting, and anything where I get to run stuff and boss people around is in my wheelhouse.  And by the way, Product Body is not being abandoned, so those of you that are big fans need not panic.

I just think it’s time for a change for me - plus we need more income around here.  I do have one other project I’m working on (pitching a new television show,) but I have no idea if that is going to work out - so I’m looking around for something new for act III.  Relocation is absolutely on the table (if anyone has a cool job in Tokyo, sign me up right now - domo arigato is the extent of my Japanese however.)  I’m open to pretty much anything but selling my sweet Irish/German ass, but would really love to sink my teeth into some regular writing.

So if you need someone, or knows someone who needs someone, or knows someone who’s cousin knows this guy that heard about this chick that has a friend who’s company needs someone….let me know.

You can find out a modicum more about me at one of my otro website Brad C Schmidt - there’s a link there back here (so you can go in circles all day,) as well as links to my business and Product Body.

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