This highly entertaining piece lists the top ten wankers of the past decade in the field of punditry. It's a crowded field, and the competition was stiff (if you will pardon the expression). It's the product of the blogger Atrios, who plies his trade at Eschaton. He's a blessing among bloggers. Short-winded as well as smart on economics and politics.
I know you're wondering who bears the laurels for Top Wanker of the Decade. I shall not keep you in suspense. It's Tom Friedman of the New York Times. I stopped reading him years ago because I figured out he was full of crap. But he's still there and still churning out his nonsense.
Source of quote: here.Friedman possesses all of the qualities that make a pundit truly wankerific. He fetishizes a false "centrism" which is basically whatever Tom Friedman likes, imagining the Friedman agenda is both incredibly popular in the country and lacking any support from our current politicians, when in fact the opposite is usually true. Washington worships at the altar of the agenda of false centrism, and people often hate it. Problems abroad, even ones which really have nothing to do with us, should be solved by war, and problems at home should be solved by increasing the suffering of poor and middle class people. Even though one political party is pretty much implementing, or trying to implement, 99.999999% of the Friedman agenda, what we really need is a third party catering precisely to this silent majority of Friedmanites.
Truly great wankers possess a kind of glib narcissism, the belief that everything is about them while simultaneously disavowing any responsibility for anything. The important thing about an issue is whether it proves Tom Friedman fucking right, but if it doesn't we can just move on to the next big thing that will prove Tom Friedman fucking right. If you advocate for wars that go a bit bad, well, it's not your fault. If only Tom Friedman had been in charge everything would have been great.
Such wankers are impervious to criticism because they're always doing battle with straw critics. They never remember what they said last week, and assume you won't either.
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