A fun and useless hobby of mine is collecting really, really awful Tom Friedman metaphors and similes. The one in his column today is an instant classic, a masterpiece of Friedmanesque confusion and inanity:
Indeed, today’s global economy has become like a monster truck with the gas pedal stuck, and we’ve lost the key — so no one can stop it from wiping out more and more of the natural world, no matter what the global plan.
O.K., I’m no expert on monster trucks, but how do you lose the key while driving? Doesn’t it have to be in the ignition? And don’t monster trucks have brakes, or did we lose those, too? And where is the driver — can’t he steer the monster truck away from the rainforests and the spotted owls? Does Tom Friedman have an editor?