Tom Friedman's remarkably fat head does not harbor a fat intellect.

Remarkably fatheaded pundit, Thomas L. Friedman, is a quintessential case of how in America, self-promotion trumps intellect and talent.  Friedman is the premier op-ed columnist for the New York Times (one of the plumest jobs in journalism) and as a result a famous talking head, widely and undeservedly admired.  Friedman gained his initial bit of fame with a Pulitzer Prize for reporting from the Middle East and a poor and remarkably overrated book called "From Beirut to Jerusalem".  A Jew, Friedman distinguished himself by hopping on the anti-Israel bandwagon early, during the 1982 Lebanon War, when Israel bashing really came into fashion.  If you read between the lines in "From Beirut to Jerusalem" what you clearly find is a man who as youth took a trip to an Israeli kibbutz and never forgave the Israelis for not recognizing him as the great man he clearly believed himself to be.  He then largely built a career on bashing Israel (when it was particularly popular to do) and expounding on world events in a sophomoric and thoroughly banal fashion.  This won him all his awards and acclaim. 

If you don't believe me read Daniel Pipes blog which recounts nearly a dozen false predictions about Iraq from the amazingly smug and confused Friedman.  Basically, Friedman repeatedly has predicted that "the next six months" will be critical to the outcome in Iraq.  He's been doing it for nearly three years.  This is the kind of lame, commonplace, unincisive blather that has made Friedman famous. 

Evidently, a lot of people like Friedman because they say that they can understand him.  Which is like saying that you like to listen to a dumb and pendantic teacher, because he is generally easy to understand, goes slowly and carefully, with a bits of obvious juvenile humor thrown in.  This unfortunately doesn't say a lot for the American audience, and Friedman is not complaining.  He just keeps the banality coming.