The Imperial Messenger Thomas Friedman at Work

He has written five books, three of which have won thePulitizer Prize. He is said by many to be a principled observer ofinternational events and an even-handed analyst of American policy.But B#xC3;#xA9;len Fern#xC3;#xA1;ndez#xE2;#xAC;"s acerbic close reading of Friedman#xE2;#xAC;"s voluminousoeuvre reveals instead a ham-fisted apologist for US military excessesand neoliberal corporate policies#xE2;#xAC;#x1D;as well as a risibly bad writer. Fern#xC3;#xA1;ndez carefully reviews the Friedman corpus, and herdocumentation of Friedman#xE2;#xAC;"s sloppy mistakes, inconsistencies, willfulignoring of contradictory evidence, and sheer illogic is both appallingand amusing. Written with a light touch entirely lacking in Friedman#xE2;#xAC;"sown prose, Fern#xC3;#xA1;ndez#xE2;#xAC;"s dissection is engrossing, but also quite serious.To take one example, Friedman#xE2;#xAC;"s recycling of outdated Orientalistnotions about Arab #xE2;#xAC;Sbackwardness#xE2;#xAC; and fabrications of pro-Israelitruths convey a dangerously distorted picture of one of his areas of self-proclaimedexpertise. In Fern#xC3;#xA1;ndez#xE2;#xAC;"s analysis, Friedman emerges as both exceptionallydreadful and symptomatic of the laziness of the mainstream media ofour times. About the series: Counterblasts is a new Verso series that aims to revive the tradition of polemical writinginaugurated by Puritan and leveller pamphleteers in the seventeenth century, when in the wordsof one of them, Gerard Winstanley, the old world was #xE2;#xAC;Srunning up like parchment in the fire.#xE2;#xAC;From 1640 to 1663, a leading bookseller and publisher, George Thomason, recorded that hiscollection alone contained over twenty thousand pamphlets. such polemics reappeared bothbefore and during the French, Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions of the last century.In a period of conformity where politicians, media barons and their ideologicalhirelings rarely challenge the basis of existing society, it#xE2;#xAC;"s time to revive the tradition.Verso#xE2;#xAC;"s Counterblasts will challenge the apologists of Empire and Capital.

Belén Fernández is an editor and feature writer at Pulse Media. Her articles also have appeared on Al-Jazeera, Al-Akhbar English, CounterPunch, Palestine Chronicle, Palestine Think Tank, Rebelión, Tlaxcala, Electronic Intifada, Upside Down World, the London Review of Books blog and Venezuelanalysis.com, among others. She earned her bachelor’s degree with a concentration in political science from Columbia University in New York City.