In case you didn't get enough of Tom Friedman yesterday . . .

Following up on my post yesterday concerning Tom Friedman [having read (more like overdosed on) that many Tom Friedman columns over the last 48 hours, I haven't even come close yet to expunging all Friedmanish toxicity from my system], there are two items highly worth reading:

(1) This analysis by Chris Floyd of Friedman's latest, truly heinous column on Iraq (which Floyd re-prints at the bottom of his post); and,

(2) This 2005 review of Freidman's best-best-selling book, The World is Flat, by Matt Taibbi, one of the nation's most superb political writers (I've previously highly recommended Taibbi's Rolling Stone cover story on the depraved state of the U.S. Congress, and also recommend with equal enthusiasm his quite hilarious and insightful election night "diary," which chronicles how cable news programs "reported" on the midterm election results).

When it comes to assessing (and repairing) the deeply dysfunctional state of our political process, pundits like Tom Friedman play as significant a role as anything else in enabling and propping it all up. There are many reasons for the (rapidly) growing popularity and influence of the blogosphere, but the craven, mindless and worthless political pundits and "analysts" who dominate our media's political dialogue is, in my view, the principal cause.