Fidel Castro took to the Internet last week to call the Republican primary process “the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”
Thomas L. Friedman, the Bedrock of the New York Times op-ed page, thought this was such a startlingly insightful observation that he opened this week’s drooling paean to globalization with it:
When Marxists are complaining that your party’s candidates are disconnected from today’s global realities, it’s generally not a good sign.
Aside from the minor detail that Marxists have been complaining about the disconnect between pro-market political parties and “global reality” since the original Marxist sat in the Reading Room of the British Library riffing on the internal contradictions of capitalism, I was struck by Mr. Friedman’s sparkling way with words. I’m not a credentialed Professor of Prose Style at Columbia School of Journalism or anything, but, for the “it’s generally not a good sign ”/ “you know you’ve got a problem ” cliche to work, doesn’t the bit before it have to be something unexpected or unwanted? “When Fidel Castro’s hailing the GOP platform as just the ticket, it’s generally not a good sign.” That sort of thing.
Instead, Friedman goes on to peddle his usual globalist soft-core erotica, none of which Castro would support and none of which his enslaved people have any access to.
Oh, well. When right-wing loons are complaining that your opening paragraph is entirely disconnected from the rest of the column, presumably Thomas L. Friedman takes that as a good sign.