Posts tagged by al

Tom Friedman loves outsourcing.  You can tell because he managed to outsource 85% of his column today.  But unfortunately, that leaves room for 15% Tom Friedman originals:

Now there is only a high-wage, high-skilled job.

Is it irony if the literal meaning of the words is falsified by the very existence of the person who’s writing them down?  I better go email an Ivy League professor and ask them.  

Ross Douthat is willing to (passive-aggressively) concede defeat in this skirmish of the culture wars, but he would like liberals to stop being so mean to the Catholic Church, please:

Such honesty would make social liberals more magnanimous in what looks increasingly like victory, and less likely to hound and harass religious institutions that still want to elevate and defend the older marital ideal.

It’s true that many people associate the words ‘Catholic Church’ and ‘victims,’ but probably not for the reason Ross Douthat is suggesting.  This is sort of like the equivalent of a bully taking your lunch money every single goddamn day, and then you finally graduate and get a job and someone suggests you “magnanimously” take the bully out for drinks once a week, your treat.  I suppose what I’m saying is, if you are gay and planning a wedding reception, do make it open bar, but don’t invite Ross Douthat.

This week, David Brooks went all the way to an impressive store in Midwood to be impressed by the fact that there are such things as vegan cheese puffs and household products designed to obviate the need for any kind of work whatsoever.  David Brooks probably bought a Coke at a gas station in Connecticut once and now whenever he wants a Coke he drives to Connecticut and buys it at that gas station, because apparently David Brooks does not notice that these things are EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME.  Like birth control snarfing twenty-something Wiccans, or Orthodox Jewish babies.  But this line, I think, has to win the prize for Oblivious Statement of the Week*:

For the people who shop at Pomegranate, the collective covenant with God is the primary reality and obedience to the laws is the primary obligation. They go shopping like the rest of us, but their shopping is minutely governed by an external moral order.

David, you horse-gobbling psychopath.  Have you never even BEEN inside a Whole Foods?  

*Don’t worry, Tom, we’ll be accepting entries through Sunday.

David Brooks did not take his Ritalin this week.  But that’s okay, because David Brooks would not want to be an American-style learner, you guys.  American students tease nerds and grow up to be Kevin Spacey’s character in ‘House of Cards’.  Chinese students staple their hair to the ceiling to hold up their heads while they study and grow up to be awesome board game players brutal cybermercantilists.  Navigating this dilemma obviously requires forming something that might be called by a name that even a six year-old Canadian child would have a hard time taking seriously, and telling the meanies that “If you join our friendship circle and abide by our norms, the benefits will be overwhelming, but if you stay outside, the costs will be devastating.”  Which is true because I saw this exact strategy used to great effect on like every episode of Gossip Girl.

SUDB has been going through some personal issues (cough detoxing from tobacco cough DAMN YOU DATA).  Turns out 87% of our sense of humor was composed entirely of nicotine (the other 13% was carbon monoxide, OBVIOUSLY).  But fear not, we’re rebuilding (Tom Friedman knows a guy in Micronesia and we are outsourcing the reconstruction of our wit and oh my god you guys the CLOUD) and we will be back soon, very soon.   If I’d just listened to David Brooks and my gut, I swear to god you guys, I’d have spent the last two weeks banging out caustic takedowns in a cloud of sweet, toxic, stimulating death.

David Brooks thinks we, as a nation, need to think more about the future.  Unless you’re old, in which case, definitely don’t think about the future, because we’re about to gut your medicare and social security and retirement benefits to pay for the youngs.  Bring on the corporate tax breaks and environmentally destructive oil pipelines! 

Paul Krugman thinks Tom Friedman is too close to conventional wisdom (warning: video will play and people near you will hear the words “Tom Friedman”).  Far be it from me to disagree with PK, but wherever Tom Friedman is, I am pretty sure it’s miles and miles from any kind of wisdom.

You guys, I really hoped this was going to be a column about Star Trek.  I did.  Because David Brooks getting mixed up in philosophy and data is a little like a five year-old getting mixed up in pixie sticks and a pack of Marlboro reds.  All you get in the end is a big fucking mess, and possibly, tears.  

For the next year, David Brooks is going to tackle the tenets of data-ism.  Untruths like:

… data is a transparent and reliable lens that allows us to filter out emotionalism and ideology; that data will help us do remarkable things — like foretell the future.

Blah blah blah blah quantitative analyses blah blah sample sizes p-values blah.  Let’s be honest: what we really want to know is, if you were a Beatle, which Beatle would you be?

We think of John Lennon as the most intellectual of the Beatles, but, in fact, Paul McCartney’s lyrics had more flexible and diverse structures and George Harrison’s were more cognitively complex.

So: Ringo, then?  

Read this column and you need never eat red meat again— that’s how much irony it contains.  

“What do I mean by the Great Inflection? I mean something very big happened in the last decade.”

Beyonce had a baby?  First African-American president?  Whatever could it be?

In 2004, I wrote a book, called “The World Is Flat,” about how the world was getting digitally connected so more people could compete, connect and collaborate from anywhere.

Oh.  That.  Don’t remind me.  But please, by all means, do go on to use the word ‘hyperconnectivity’ a whole bunch of times before saying something that will reveal a stunning lack of self-awareness:

That means the old average is over. Everyone who wants a job now must demonstrate how they can add value better than the new alternatives.

Well, almost everyone, apparently.  Unless… Oh, were you not finished?

How to adapt? It will require more individual initiative. We know that it will be vital to have more of the “right” education than less, that you will need to develop skills that are complementary to technology rather than ones that can be easily replaced by it and that we need everyone to be innovating new products and services to employ the people who are being liberated from routine work by automation and software.

Hahahaha, “liberated”.  Quick, someone, FREE TOM FRIEDMAN!

You know the old saying, if something is broken because it is fundamentally flawed at the level of its most basic assumptions, don’t fix it, just build another version of that thing?  Yeah, neither did I until I read today’s column.  But we learn so much!  

Like, did you know that there are already moderates dudes within the Republican party, urging reform?  People like Bobby Jindal, who want to exorcise the stupidity from our political discourse!  People like Bill Kristol, the Dr. Frankenstein of the conservative movement!  People like Charles Murray!  Like Paul Ryan!  (N.B. not included on this list would be David Brooks of last week, presumably.)  This is actually a really smart way to make the Republican party seem moderate: build a second, even more extreme Republican party and then just stand to the left of it.

But David Brooks recognizes the most pressing question: now that the guys in suits have done the heavy lifting, “Who’s going to build a second G.O.P.?”  

I don’t know, but I’m guessing they won’t be union.