Was That Thomas Friedman Or Thomas Shadwell?

So far, I'd have to say that Teresa Nielsen-Hayden has the most forward-looking take on Friedman's new book, The World Is Flat. Rather than debating the book's over-simplified argument or excoriating the book's foully mixed metaphors, Teresa reflects that the book's sheer lameness has inspired its reviewers into producing some really fun writing.

(Am I an evil person if I admit to having chortled all the way through Matt Taibbi's hit piece on Friedman's style?)

Teresa's commenters move the discussion into the mock-heroic. I'm impressed. I particularly like Jonathan Vos Post's contribution:

Friedmandias

I met a traveller from the New York Times
Who said: ‘Two vast and Lexus legs of stone
Stand in Bangalore. Near their paradigms
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And open Windows, and sneer of the Berlin Wall,
Tell that its sculptor often ate at Pizza Hut
Which yet survive, stamped on this Lilliput,
T.I. that mocked them as ephemeral.
And on the plinth by this Michelangelo—
“My name is Friedmandias, king of the IPO:
Look on my prose, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing coherent stays. Round the decay
Of that steroidal wreck, boundless and bare
The level playing fields stretch far away.’