Thomas L Friedman: "Boy is my butt sore"

New blogger on the blog and member of the State Department's Republican underground, "New Sisyphus", just fisked the same Friedman column that I worked over a few days ago. Friedman, who writes a column for the New York Times (motto: All the news that fits their spin) did a column that New Sisyphus couldn't resider either: News Flash: NY Times, Columnist Dislike President Bush, Despair For Future of U.S.-E.U. Relations. Here's a taste:

As a liberal bellwether, Friedman represents the ultimate in conventional wisdom (the good ol' CW). The CW is hopelessly naive about Palestinian intentions; Friedman is hopelessly naive about Palestinian intentions. The CW is that any foreign policy challenge or setback is due to some American failure; Friedman is pretty sure that any foreign policy challenge or setback is obviously due to some American failure. The CW is that Democratic policy provisions are always altruistically motivated and self-evidently good; Friedman thinks that.....well, you get the idea.

Yesterday's Friedman column, "An American in Paris," is an exemplar of the genre. Chock full of cliches, lame metaphors and tired thinking--the kind one would expect from a political science professor at Evergreen State College--it was just crying our for a Fisking.

So, without further ado, please follow us to Friedmanland, were everything is always America's fault, Saudi princes have bona fide peace plans and if only Likud would retire from politics the Middle East would be an oasis of peace, science and industry!

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In Friedmanland, France is Europe and Europe is France (plus perhaps Germany, but only if the Christian Democrats/CSU aren't in power). Never mind that the President enjoys solid support in Iraq from half of Europe in the form of actual boots on the ground (United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Moldova, Norway, Bulgaria, Albania, Slovakia, Macedonia, and until terrorism-stained elections the better half of Spain). Nope, so long as enlightened opinion in the Quai D'Orsay says non, then Europe is against us! Certainly no one Tommy talks to is pro-Bush. I mean, he is a journalist after all.

Now go read his entire post, he had me cracking up.