The Skeptic الشكاك

186 Write Your Own Thomas Friedman Column

Reviving this from two years ago because it recently came up in conversation and because it’s still funny. Originally from The New York Observer.

Write your own Thomas Friedman column!

1. Choose your title to intrigue the reader through its internal conflict
a. War and Peas
b. Osama, Boulevardier
c. Big Problems, Little Women
2. Include a dateline from a remote location, preferably dangerous, unmistakably Muslim:

a. Mecca, Saudi Arabia
b. Islamabad, Pakistan
c. Mohammedville, Trinidad
3. Begin your first paragraph with a grandiose sentence and end with a terse, startlingly unexpected contradiction:

a. The future of civilization depends upon open communication between Yasir Arafat and Ariel Sharon. If the two don?t speak to each other, the world edges closer to the precipice of total war. If, on the other hand, they manage to engage in open conversation and resolve their differences, Israelis could soon be celebrating Seders in Saudi Arabia. But for now, the two men can?t speak. Why? You can?t make a collect call from Bethlehem.

4. Use the next few paragraphs to further define the contradiction stated above, peppered with little questions making it look like you?re having a conversation with the reader. Feel free to use the first person:

a. My first thought was to ask: Why no collect calls from Bethlehem? It?s easy to call collect from Bosnia, Kosovo, even Uzbekistan. Am I sure? Of course I?m sure. I was in each of those places just a few weeks ago, making collect calls all over the world. No problem. So why can?t Arafat call collect from Bethlehem?

5. Remember: Thomas Friedman is the Carrie Bradshaw of current events. Think Sex and the City, write “Sects and Tikriti”:

a. How can Islam get to its future, if its past is its present?

b. Later that day I got to thinking about global civilizational warfare. There are wars that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that take you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant clash of all is the one you have with your own civilization. And if you can find a civilization to love the you that you love, well, that?s just fabulous.

c. Maybe Arabs and Israelis aren?t from different planets, as pop culture would have us believe. Maybe we live a lot closer to each other. Perhaps, dare I even say it, in the same ZIP code.

6. Name-drop heavily, particularly describing intimate situations involving hard-to-reach people:

a. The Jacuzzi was nearly full when Ayman al-Zawahiri, former surgeon and now Al Qaeda?s head of operations, slid in.

b. It was Thomas Pynchon on the phone. “Tommy,” he said, probably aware we share that name ?.

c. Despite the bumpy flight, I felt comfortable in the hands of a pilot as experienced as Amelia Earhart.

7. Include unknowns from hostile places who have come to espouse rational Western thought and culture:

a. I visited Mohammed bin Faisal Al-Hijazi, former top aide to Ayatollah Khomeini, now a reformer and graduate of the Wharton Business School.

b. Last year Nura bin Saleh Al-Fulani worked in Gaza sewing C4 plastic explosives into suicide bombers? vests. I caught up with Nura last week in Paw Paw, Mich., where she sews activity patches on the uniforms of Cub Scout Pack 34.

8. Make use of homey anecdotes about your daughters, Natalie and Orly, enrolled in Eastern Middle School, Silver Spring, Md.:

a. My daughter Natalie, a student at Eastern Middle School, a public school in Silver Spring, Md., asked me at breakfast: “Daddy, if my school has students who are Muslims and Jews and Christians and Buddhists all working together, why can?t the rest of the world be that way?” There was something in the innocence of her question that made me stop and think: Maybe she has a point.

9. Quote a little-known Middle East authority at least once in every column:

a. Stephen P. Cohen
b. Stephen P. Cohen
c. Stephen P. Cohen

10. Conclude your column with a suggestion referring back to the opening contradiction, but with an ironic twist. Make sure the suggestion you proffer sounds plausible, but in fact has no chance of happening:

a. Driving into Bethlehem in the back of a pickup, I wonder: What if Yasir Arafat and Ariel Sharon sit down and play a game of poker? And what if the stakes are these: If Sharon wins, the Intifada is over. If Arafat wins, Palestine gains statehood. One game of no-limit Texas hold ?em, and the Middle East crisis is resolved. Just like that. Yasir and Ariel, deal ?em out.

Also this version, from McSweeny’s:

C R E A T E Y O U R O W N
T H O M A S F R I E D M A N
O P – E D C O L U M N :

DISORDER AND DREAMS IN [COUNTRY IN THE NEWS]

BY MICHAEL WARD

Last week’s events in [country in the news] were truly historic, although we may not know for years or even decades what their final meaning is. What’s important, however, is that we focus on what these events mean [on the ground/in the street/to the citizens themselves]. The [media/current administration] seems too caught up in [worrying about/dissecting/spinning] the macro-level situation to pay attention to the important effects on daily life. Just call it missing the [desert for the sand/fields for the wheat/battle for the bullets].

When thinking about the recent turmoil, it’s important to remember three things: One, people don’t behave like [computer programs/billiard balls/migratory birds], so attempts to treat them as such inevitably look foolish. [Computer programs/Billiard balls/Migratory birds] never suddenly [blow themselves up/shift their course in order to fit with a predetermined set of beliefs/set up a black market for Western DVDs]. Two, [country in question] has spent decades [as a dictatorship closed to the world/being batted back and forth between colonial powers/torn by civil war and ethnic hatred], so a mindset of peace and stability will seem foreign and strange. And three, [hope/freedom/capitalism] is an extraordinarily powerful idea.

When I was in [country in question] last [week/month/August], I was amazed by the [people’s basic desire for a stable life/level of Westernization for such a closed society/variety of the local cuisine], and that tells me two things. It tells me that the citizens of [country in question] have no shortage of [courage/potential entrepreneurs/root vegetables], and that is a good beginning to grow from. Second, it tells me that people in [country in question] are just like people anywhere else on this great globe of ours.

So what should we do about the chaos in [country in question]? Well, it’s easier to start with what we should not do. We should not [ignore the problem and pretend it will go away/lob a handful of cruise missiles and hope that some explosions will snap [country in question]’s leaders to attention/let seemingly endless frustrations cause the people of [country in question] to doubt their chance at progress]. Beyond that, we need to be careful to nurture [the seeds of democratic ideals/the fragile foundations of peace/these first inklings of a moderate, modern society]. The opportunity is there, but I worry that the path to [peace/stability/moderation] is so [narrow/poorly marked/strewn with obstacles] that [country in question] will have to move down it very slowly.

Speaking with a local farmer on the last day of my recent visit, I asked him if there was any message that he wanted me to carry back home with me. He pondered for a second, and then smiled and said, “[Short phrase in indigenous language],” which is a local saying that means roughly, “[Every branch of the tree casts its own shadow/That tea is sweetest whose herbs have dried longest/A child knows his parents before the parents know their child].”

I don’t know what [country in question] will be like a few years from now, but I do know that it will [probably look very different from the country we see now/remain true to its cultural heritage], even if it [remains true to its basic cultural heritage/looks very different from the country we see now]. I know this because, through all the disorder, the people still haven’t lost sight of their dreams.

2 Comments »

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1. Hilarious! Can’t believe I missed that one. The Sex and the City framework is perfect.

   Stephen Cohen is a South Asia expert at Brookings!

   Comment by SP — July 19, 2006 #

2. […] the spirit of Thomas Friedman, let me begin with a question that contains a terse, startlingly unexpected contradiction: What do […]

   Pingback by The Skeptic ?????? » Obama on the Nile (and just West of it) — June 12, 2008 #

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