The Mail

You Flow, Girl

I've spent the last year or so trying to eat right and think positively. Reading Judy McGuire has been a key to my success, as sometimes it's very important for your psychic balance to inhale chocolate and give people the Evil Eye ("The Cruelest Months," 4/27). Like she does every week with SWMs, McGuire calls Spring on its bullshit with insight. Perhaps New York Press should come out with its own line of Date Girl t-shirts, like, "Back Off, I'm Ovulating."

Linda Mackenzie, Manhattan

Had to write in and say I adored Judy McGuire's piece, especially the cover illustration, featuring the "aren't-I-sexy?" thong triplets. No words, not even Judy's, could have put it much better.

Jessco Roberts, Brooklyn

That Was His Stunt Double

Re: "Hammers and Nails" (4/27): Was that Russ Smith who had the balls to refer to another writer's column as "nerdy gloating"? Has Smith ever written something that couldn't be described as such? At least this week we didn't get a play-by-play of his kid's Little League game. And not of the action on the field, which can almost be forgiven, and would certainly be more interesting than the in-depth color commentary he offers with a sneering sense of superiority when engaging in conversations with other parents on the sidelines. No doubt his boys don't even counter when confronted with the ol' "My dad can beat up your dad" bit on the ball field. No, but my dad will condescendingly snicker behind your dad's back. Nerdy gloating-what a laugh.

Robert Livingston, Manhattan

Starry-Eyed Reader

After dropping Christopher Caldwell and losing Tony Millionaire (among others), I thought for sure the slow-motion bloodletting at the Press was over. Then I noticed the sudden disappearance of veteran Press astrologist Caeriel. Whoever made this idiotic decision, it's nice to see you've so quickly come back to your senses. She (?) still gives the best make-believe advice in town.

Leila Walsh, Manhattan

Friedman Spillover, Act I

Utterly righteous and hilarious barstool demolition of Thomas Friedman by Matt Taibbi. However, what does it say about the state of our culture that Thomas Friedman, the gasbag tool of wired globalizers, is 1) this month delivering multiple commencement addresses at several megabucks colleges, including the corporate mobbed-up mill I got paper from, and 2) is considered left by the national campus Republican advance guard, yet is also a prophet for fascist Christian fundamentalist study groups?

Martin White, Salem, NY

I have been reading your take on Señor Friedman for a long time now, and at the very least it gets me smiling instead of wanting to spit nails at that man's incompetent prose. How is it that he has a position that allows him to spew such crap? Especially now that I've moved back to Lebanon, reading his tired, borderline racist (okay, full-on racist) analogies for Arabs and Muslims (vague references to Islam as a cancer that hasn't metastasized; Arabs as poor schmucks waiting for the flatulent wind of American-inspired democracy to rouse them from their stupor, etc. ad puking infinitum), it is more than I can bear to a) even get through the execrable International Herald Tribune when fearing that b) there might be a Friedman op-ed waiting for me.

Can we start some kind of campaign to match his salary, and pay him not to write? It could even get U.N. funding or something, since it would be a gesture of goodwill toward all humanity.

Daniel Drennan, Beirut, Lebanon

I confess I have a deep dislike of Thomas Friedman, the brutally arrogant corporate blah-blah boy for big capital. I so wish you had hired someone who could have dismantled his thought poo in a semi-intelligent manner, rather than the childish whine and nit-picking prattle of Taibbi. Taibbi comes across like William Safire's rimboy, all his synapses short-circuited by poor metaphors. In his quest to take down Friedman, all he achieved was a short-circuit of his own critique.

Clifford Bowman, Brooklyn

Thank you for making me laugh until I cried. I saw Friedman on Jon Stewart recently and couldn't help but notice how immensely impressed and delighted he was with his own "insight" as to the new flat world. Certainly, he can feel very well congratulated without the approval of the rest of us.

Madeleine Campbell, Portland, OR

Here are my 15 "flat" reactions to Taibbi's review, no "flattening" reason given: 1) I enjoyed it. 2) In one quick read, I can't summarize what Taibbi is talking about, being so caught up with his biting sarcasms and beautiful ironies. 3) Friedman is talking nonsense or he's making a meal out of what everybody already knows, and what he has already said in his first bestseller (The Lexus and the Olive Tree). It's not Globalization 3.0, it's Lexus & Olive Tree 1.3. 4) Taibbi hates Friedman, or is envious of his success, being so caught up in his own feeding frenzy. 5) Taibbi is a radical liberal, Friedman is right-of-right conservative masquerading as center-of-center analyst. 6) Taibbi decided from the outset to tear Friedman apart, and proceeded to do so with more style than substance. So flowery, I forgot the flower. 7) Management consultants talk like Friedman all the time. Guru Tom Peters makes millions talking like that. 8) Reading Friedman is like listening to an orchestra playing remixed Mantovani music. Reading Taibbi is like being at a rock concert. Now I'd better watch my metaphors.

C. K. Wong, Singapore

I will try to word this message simply, because apparently the columnist takes more issue with writing style than with content.

I accept Mr. Taibbi's contention that Mr. Friedman's metaphors are oftentimes hokey and over the top. However, I believe it makes the concepts more digestable for the average reader.

My main concern is that your columnist lambastes Mr. Friedman's style while neglecting to address the weight of the issues he raises throughout his book. By dissecting and fixating on the differences between using the word "flat" and "level," Taibbi distracts from the overall message that Americans on American soil are becoming less competitive as a whole when compared to India, China and Eastern Europe.

Whether it's in a single, clean, bullet-pointed statement or 473 pages of text, the more avenues used to disseminate this very important message, the better.

Bertram Chan, ManhattanRe: "The Mail," (4/27): In his letter criticizing Matt Taibbi's review of the Thomas Friedman book, Zachary Stern writes, "...the distance on a flat world and globe are the same, because you can't travel through the center of the earth. Duh!"

That all depends. Picture this, Zachary: On our global earth your Sunday morning walk from Zabar's to Central Park is just a few blocks eastward. In a flat world there has to be, somewhere, an end or edge beyond which you can't pass. If, for example, that edge runs down Central Park West you would have to walk in the other direction (westward) to get to the park, a distance of about 25,000 miles. Duh!

Jack Herschlag, Upper Montclair, NJ

Argh! As soon as I emailed that I realized what a fool I am. Matt is right that if one were to travel from California to Japan it be quicker on a globe ("The Mail," 4/27). Alas, I concede defeat on this point. However, Friedman's metaphor (and it is imperfect) is not about the distance traveled on a plane, but rather the ability to see your competitors (given there are no mountains or skyscrapers) without the curvature of the Earth impeding your view. Either way, the review never critiqued the substance of the book, just the presentation so it still sucked.

Zachary Stern, Manhattan

Oh, sweet Jesus! Somebody make Matt Taibbi stop! Damn. That was perhaps the finest, most accurate, most honest book review I have ever read ("Flathead," 4/20). If only the rest of the intelligentsia and think-tank wonk-heads could be so clearheaded in their reading of Friedman. Thanks to Cursor.org for the link to the article. Your magazine is now bookmarked on my PC.

Andrew Cannon, Salt Lake City, UT

Excellent article on Friedman ("Flathead," 4/20)! So uplifting to see someone calling that douche bag on his crap. I can't even decide on my favorite phrase (probably "plug-filled, free-trader leg-humping that passes for thought in this country"). You really made my day!

Spiky Marks, Chicago

I don't believe I have ever read a book review so wonderful as this one ("Flathead," 4/20). Mr. Taibbi has an uncanny view of how mediocrity is celebrated in America these days.

NAME WITHHELD, Manhattan

Matt Taibbi's article about Tom Friedman's new book smacks more of professional jealousy ("Flathead," 4/20). He wishes he'd written it (and was raking in the dough) but couldn't pull it off.

Craig Swenson, Portland, OR

Ode To A?Oh, Screw It

On first looking into Friedman's "Flathead" (4/20):

Much have I travell'd in a chartered jet

And munched betimes upon a Cinnabon;

Upon my iPod listened to Don Juan

Which I downloaded from the wireless 'Net.

I did not understand the 'Nineties lore

Of Windows systems and of Pizza Hut,

How one was opened and the other shut,

Till I heard Friedman speak in metaphor.

Then felt I like a steroid in a vein:

Jose Canseco on a level field,

Whose random thoughts of glory and of pain

Were like an ice-cream sundae all congealed.

The moral is, when put by words in train,

That which does not exist can't be revealed.

-NAME WITHHELD, Queens

Thanks for ridiculing the obnoxious, unbearable Thomas Friedman on the cover of New York Press ("Flathead," 4/20). Public ridicule is the only possible way to maybe chip away at the ridiculous, undeserved stature and influence of that supremely smug and self-satisfied creep.

Friedman is always utterly predictable in that he's a cheerleader for whatever ideological fad of the moment suits the interests of the corporate oligarchy that rules America (and uses American power as its personal instrument). Thus for example he constantly lectures us on how "globalization" and "free trade" are the best of all possible worlds. This Dr. Pangloss thinks he's clever for coming up with silly, intellectually middle-brow gimmicks, like "the world is flat," to sell the programs of our masters to the credulous types who view the New York Times as the Voice of Authority.

By the way, Friedman got his start at the CIA before coming to the Times. The Village Voice ran an article exposing him a few years back.Ê When they asked Friedman and the then-editor-supremo of the Times (Max Frankel if memory serves) about it, they refused to confirm or deny it.In other words, they confirmed it, since if it wasn't true, they would have said so.

The significance of which is that Friedman is an ambitious apparatchik on the make, a political hustler, a climber with the power structure who's clawed his way to a privileged perch among the nomenklatura of American ideologues and propagandists by the service he renders to his masters.Ê Which is the disservice he imposes on ordinary people who need to understand the world clearly, without illusions.

Jason Zenith, Manhattan