Friedman's The World Is Flat knocked flat

I don't know why, but I like it when a Brit reviewer kicks the stuffing out of the latest American piffle. You won't find an American reviewer dropping turds on Thomas Friedman like this. After all, Friedman is a COLUMNIST for the NY TIMES, which means he must automatically be a Major Exhibit in the Pundit Hall of Fame.

Sample quote from the review: "In her introduction to Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Zadie Smith says of Alden Pyle, the American of the title: 'His worldly innocence is a kind of fundamentalism.' She goes on: 'Reading the novel again reinforced my fear of all the Pyles around the world. They do not mean to hurt us, but they do.' Greene has Pyle travelling with books such as The Role of the West and The Challenge to Democracy. A modern-day Greene could substitute the works of the real-life Thomas Friedman - a contemporary quiet American. Like Pyle, Friedman is 'impregnably armed by his good intentions and his ignorance'. In The World Is Flat, Friedman has produced an epyllion to the glories of globalisation with only three flaws: the writing style is prolix, the author is monumentally self-obsessed, and its content has the depth of a puddle."

And that's just for openers. If you love snark (and who doesn't?), check what remains of Friedman's chewed-up and spat-out bones here.