The sad case of Tom Friedman

How the Pied Piper of Globalization lost the plot... and his reputation

Back in 1987, when Tom Friedman was the Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times, he wrote a wonderful article titled “The Focus on Israel.”

“Why,” he asked, “is Israel so often the focus of news?” Why does Israel house one of the largest foreign press corps in the world, with roughly 350 news organizations permanently represented in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv? Why aren’t there as many journalists in, say, Addis Ababa? Or Buenos Aires? Or Wellington, New Zealand?

Friedman offered a variety of possible answers, but here’s the one that stuck with me:

And this:

Put another way: The Abrahamic narrative, writ large, has helped shape Western and Islamic civilizations. Jews, Christians, and Muslims — more than four billion people — carry with them a story of one man who, four thousand years ago, had a vision that the way things are is not the way they have to be; that human history might have a point and a purpose; and that hope is not a delusion or a mirage.

It was a radical idea at the time. It still is.

“HEY! HEY, ABE!! Drop the knife and let your son go! … My G*d, man. Didn’t you get the memo? Child sacrifice is no more. We’re done with that barbarity. We’re moving on to bigger and better things…”

Now, set aside Abraham and his 4,000,000,000 spiritual descendants for a minute, and let’s return to the story of Tom Friedman.

Mr. Foreign Affairs

In 1994, after Jerusalem and after his stint as a White House correspondent, Friedman became a New York Times op-ed columnist focusing on foreign affairs. With the entire world as his new beat, Friedman needed a “super story” of his own — some narrative lens to help him develop his analysis and opinions into a coherent body of work.

His master narrative couldn’t be the Biblical super story, of course. That would be considered far too narrow or parochial or simple-minded because serious people don’t take the Bible seriously (or so I hear). Friedman could have picked another super story — Marxism, say, which is a narrative about class struggle. Or Freud (the unconscious). Or Darwin (natural selection). Or Buddhism (why we suffer). Or Greek mythology. Or The Matrix. Or any number of other storylines that attempt to explain why the world looks the way it does. There were plenty of choices… and Friedman picked Globalization.

Globalization tells the story of how local and national economies are becoming integrated into a unified global market. For Friedman, it was a story with many advantages.

First, it’s a relatively new phenomenon. Modern. Cutting-edge. Happenin’.

Second, it’s based on economics, a social science grounded in mathematics. And you can’t argue with hard numbers, facts, and objective reality… can you?

Third, it’s a story that keeps evolving, so there would always be something new to say.

And fourth, the story could be applied anywhere — China, Russia, Africa, Latin America, you name it.

Globalization provided the universal journalistic solvent that would enable Friedman to reduce almost anything into an 850-word op-ed column. Into TV punditry. Into well-paid speaking gigs. And into books. Lots of books.

“Tom Friedman, Thought Leader”

But what happens when history doesn’t behave? When people don’t follow the script you’ve been writing two times a week for decades? When the European Union’s member states begin to rebel against this supposedly inevitable economic integration? When nationalism makes a comeback, and the world isn’t as flat as you once imagined? When all your “smart takes” aren’t very smart after all? When you’re painfully wrong, over and over and over again?

You go looking for a new story.

Or maybe, just maybe, you revisit an old, familiar story that’s in desperate need of a new chapter.