A demonstration to protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Gaza City, Saturday, Dec. 9, 2017. Picture by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Sipa USA/PA Images. All rights reserved. Whatever was left of “star-columnist-and-best-selling-author” Tom Friedman’s credibility as a serious reporter was most likely lost in his November 23 NY Times’ infamous op-ed, where he described crown prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) as the Middle East’s “most significant” liberal reformer, and the true reincarnation of the ‘Arab Spring’ after a long ‘Arab winter’. “At last”, as the title says, a new Middle Eastern savior has been born, and Friedman ambitions to be his messenger.
Despite his three Pulitzer Prizes (for his already distant work of the 1980s and 1990s), Friedman is probably the most overrated international reporter in the western world. His best-selling books are essentially lame platitudes and easy popularizations of trends that have been at work for decades (globalization, etc.) and were far better explained by countless, more substantial intellectuals and analysts before him. They often seem to be far more about Mr. Friedman himself, and usually read as much as exercises in narcissistic self-aggrandizement as the enlightening explanations of the world destined to educate us, the masses, that he wants them to be.
Besides his self-complacency, analytical sloppiness, intellectual laziness, frequently glaring ignorance or misunderstanding of the topics he writes about , crude “Washington Consensus” ideological conformism, cheap and easy optimism, and repetitive, formulaic, predictable stance on trends he aspires to reveal to us though he often seems to be behind the times and the last one to discover, in childish awe, things everyone had been writing about for years if not decades, Friedman sounds like an egotistic, pompous megalomaniac.
