Airmiles must win
Salon, the American website for people who can't quite believe that Salon is still going, is having a competition for the 30 biggest hacks in American journalism. You know who my counter is on. Remember people, this is the sort of thing we're talking about:
For me, the most frightening news in The Times on Sunday was not about North Korea’s stepping up its nuclear program, but an article about how American kids are stepping up their use of digital devices: “Allison Miller, 14, sends and receives 27,000 texts in a month, her fingers clicking at a blistering pace [.... fade out]
[....fade in] We used to have a receptionist at our office. She was replaced by a micro-chip. We got voice mail TWAT! [....fade out]
[... fade in]We need teachers and principals who are paid better for better performance, but also valued for their long hours and dedication to students and learning. We need better parents ready to hold their kids to higher standards of academic achievement. We need better students who come to school ready to learn, not to text.[... fade out]. (emphasis, word "twat" and exclamation mark added).
The really annoying thing is that you know it's odds even that in six month's time he'll be writing the column about how the fuddyduddies of the education system need to get with the program and teach our kids about the reality of modern technology - we need students who come to school ready to text, like they do in Asia! Maybe he's already done that one, I'm damned if I'm checking.
Seriously, this man has got to win. Thomas Friedman has been wrong about every major issue of the last fifteen years (with a partial exception for climate change, but even then he tied it to a ridiculous "geo-green" thesis). Not only wrong, but monstrously, disastrously, embarrassingly wrong. Vote for him. Vote early and vote often. I am pretty sure that you are not actually able to vote on the Salon thing, but vote anyway. Buttonhole any social acquaintances you have who might work for Salon and tell them that Friedman Must Win. If he is not declared number one on the "Hack 30", the award loses all possible credibility.
Update: On the other hand. But no. This is a marathon not a sprint. Friedman. Must be.
Update GAAHHHHHHhhh
I'd have taken Airmiles on an each way and been fully satisfied with a place.
ReplyDeleteReally, the field includes Broder, Goldberg, Huntington, and Richard Cohen, the guy who literally said that he felt less safe because he couldn't be sure people were being tortured.
It's like most years in the Premier League. You know the top 4 are going to be Manchester United/Chelsea/Arsenal and one of Spurs, Liverpool, Villa, Manchester City and Everton. Just not in which order and which other.
"It’s O.K. to throw out your steering wheel as long as you remember you’re driving without one," said Friedman, as an analogy for which catastrophic military blunder?
ReplyDeleteI like to think that not coming quite top in this poll will actually add insult to injury. "You're the worst writer I've ever read" is actually oddly more heartening than "You're a terrible writer", in my experience,
ReplyDeleteFriedman's kind of the Man U though, no? The world's hack. There are probably tribesmen in Malaysia who've heard of him.
ReplyDeleteHe probably deserves a special award for his prose style though.
There are probably tribesmen in Malaysia who've heard of him.
ReplyDeleteAnd have been quoted in one of his columns agreeing with him.
"As I struggled to extract the jungle leech from my urethra, my Sarawak Ranger guide said something remarkable about globalisation. Here we were in the depths of the impenetrable swamp forest that was once Chin Peng's last stronghold, and you could find a tiresome, useless rich gobshite writing a thinly sourced newspaper column!"
Peretz: Aldo Moro, who was prime minister five times, was kidnapped while in office...
ReplyDeleteAre TNR writers not allowed to use wikipedia?
Mind you, my invocation of Richard Cohen was bang on the money. If there was any money.
ReplyDeleteMoro was kidnapped on his way to open Parliament, in his role* as president of the Christian Democrats. So not far off. Too far for print, admittedly.
ReplyDelete*I'm looking for a different word here but it's gone. Office? Standing? Function? Auspices?
position?
ReplyDeletecapacity?
ReplyDeleteCapacity, that's the fella. Damn senior moments.
ReplyDeleteSo who are our equivalent, the biggest hacks in British journalism? And which nation has the biggest hacks?
ReplyDeleteFrom the link in the original post, Peretz shows how it's done:
ReplyDeleteNo such frisson is abreast during the crisis ...
The fact that David Brooks justifiably ranks only 30th on Salon's list should serve as ample proof that the U.S. is No. 1 in World Hackery.
Yes, Friedman is bad, in the drag-you-down-through-the-gates-of-Hell-and-into-Satan's-anus sense, but Cohen is worse.
ReplyDeleteIf it comes to that, Salon is only third on the list of web-only periodicals that I think of when I think of Salon. Slate is of course first, and second place is defiantly vacant.
ReplyDeletewho are our equivalent, the biggest hacks in British journalism?
ReplyDeleteThat's tricky, because the Salon hackathon really focused on bullshit centrists and lazy ideologues, and Fleet Street doesn't really find a home for them. Mad Mel has burrowed her way to the Mail, but that's clearly where she belongs. Peter Hitchens is mostly awful, but isn't a hack.
Toynbee? Fisk, when he's in his increasingly-common pontification mode? Nick Cohen?
I'd have to tip Niall Ferguson, though, just for a long, long history of shameless, opportunistic bandwagon-jumping and bullshit.