Thomas Friedman makes Donald Rumsfeld his bitch

Who's yer daddy?
via Andrew Sullivan and Matthew Yglesias, the two easiest-to-remember URLs in the blogosphere [How does a nice Jewish boy end up with a name like Yglesias (Spanish for "church") anyway?]

I'm not the biggest fan of Thomas Friedman, but I respect what he tries to do in his writing, which is to make the complexities of international politics palatable to a lay audience through analogy and humor. I don't dispute his knowledge of international politics, even though his conclusions often differ from mine. What I have a problem with is his prose style. "The Lexus and the Olive Tree?" "The Lexus and the Olive Tree?" You earn a regular paycheck from the New York Times and that's the best analogy you can come up with? At his absolute nadir, the New York Times actually published the words: "I was in a trendy Tel Aviv sandwich shop the other day and my young Israeli waitress had a fun little tattoo on her shoulder. Message to Hamas: You may think these suicide bombers will drive Israelis to leave. But they're just digging in, and clinging to normality. The Jews are getting tattoos."

That said, it's pretty fun to see someone grab hold of that stick up Rumsfeld's ass and give it a good sharp twist.