Friedman Jumps the (Pink) Shark

Sometimes it really is hard to tell the difference between a Thomas Friedman column and the parody that spews forth from the Thomas Friedman op-ed column generator.  Today is one of those days.

Oh, wait—that’s exactly the lede I wrote here back in March, about a typical Friedman thumb-sucker about Michael Sandel’s “colorful sneakers.”

Yesterday Friedman treated his readers to his deep thoughts about Syria and . . . pink hair.  No word about whether the dude had matching sneakers; perhaps Friedman and Sandel have cornered the market on those.  Anyway, this column requires some special commentary.

I was at a conference in Bern, Switzerland, last week and struggling with my column.

We sympathize Tom; we struggle with your column every day, too.

To clear my head, I went for a walk along the Aare River, on Schifflaube Street. Along the way, I found a small grocery shop and stopped to buy some nectarines. As I went to pay, I was looking down, fishing for my Swiss francs, and when I looked up at the cashier, I was taken aback: He had pink hair. A huge shock of neon pink hair — very Euro-punk from the ’90s. While he was ringing me up, a young woman walked by, and he blew her a kiss through the window — not a care in the world.

Yeah, well, it helps to live in a country that’s really just a bank with a police force that even Hitler didn’t think was worth invading.  Though nice of that flat world of yours to make nectarines available in the Alps.

Observing all this joie de vivre, I thought to myself: “Wow, wouldn’t it be nice to be a Swiss? Maybe even to sport some pink hair?”

Go for it Tom.

Though I can’t say for sure, I got the feeling that the man with pink hair was not agonizing over the proper use of force against Bashar al-Assad. Not his fault; his is a tiny country.

See comment above.

Barack Obama once had black hair. But his is gray now, not pink. That’s also the tax you pay for thinking about the Middle East too much: It leads to either gray hair or no hair, but not pink hair.

I mean, I’m starting to wonder whether this isn’t some kind of audition letter for The Daily Show.  I think Jon Stewart’s job is safe.

It doesn’t get any better after this, but ends with the predictable line that if things continue the way they are, Obama will go bald.  Better than the naked truth of Friedman’s bottomless mediocrity.

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