Tom Friedman thinks Egypt is a tiger

Friedman likes to pretend he is Marco Polo, 

with similar levels of cultural understanding

Thomas Friedman has become a living punchline. Everyone who knows anything about world politics views his surface skimming and anecdotes (which for some reason are always tom Friedman clones) as shameful. What is even worse is that he is still a weekly contributor to the New York Times.

This week, he bring his centrist, third way crap to Egypt.

First lets start with the premise, that Egypt is going to fall apart in the near future. What makes these protests different than those that brought down Mubarak  Or the ones earlier this fall? Last I checked Egypt is still on a bumpy twisting road toward democracy. There are much to find fault with in Friedman's prose, but the worst thing about his writing is that he writes four sentences when one will do. In the first three paragraphs there are two basic ideas; that Egypt is cracking up and that the protests are driven by fears of dictatorship not religion. To both of which we can safely reply, No Shit Sherlock! It takes Friedman 250 words to say two things, he doesn't even expand on them, just to state the idea. However, it isnt until the fifth paragraph that the essay goes off the rails

Whenever anyone asked me what I saw in Tahrir Square during that original revolution, I told them I saw a tiger that had been living in a 5-by-8 cage for 60 years get released. And there are three things I can tell you about the tiger: 1) Tiger is never going back in that cage; 2) Do not try to ride tiger for your own narrow purposes or party because this tiger only serves Egypt as a whole; 3) Tiger only eats beef. He has been fed every dog food lie in the Arabic language for 60 years, so don’t try doing it again.

Do any of you associate tigers with Egypt? Of Course Not! There are no tigers in Egypt and no one associates them with Egypt. Also none of these statements enlighten about the situation in Egypt in any way. His metaphor is so strained that by point three he needs to write an sentence explaining what the hell he means. We are then treated to a Friedman Anecdote (tm).

Ahmed Hassan, 26, is one of the original Tahrir rebels. He comes from the poor Shubra el-Kheima neighborhood, where his mother sold vegetables. I think he spoke for many of his generation when he told me the other day

At least hes not a taxi driver. Friedman concludes with this nugget of wisdom,

It will be saved only if the opposition here respects that the Muslim Brotherhood won the election fairly — and resists its excesses not with boycotts (or dreams of a coup) but with better ideas that win the public to the opposition’s side. And it will be saved only if Morsi respects that elections are not winner-take-all, especially in a society that is still defining its new identity, and stops grabbing authority and starts earning it. Otherwise, it will be all fall down.

In other words, everyone needs to calm down and work toward democracy. So generic it shames white bread.  What was the point of reading this article again?