Now, His Wallet Is Flat

Maybe he was moonlighting, to pick up some extra bucks, to throw a big bash for the sixth anniversary of "Suck On This! Day".

Thomas "My Head If Flat" Friedman, self-propelled star NYT columnist, got whacked, by his own papers Ethics rules, forking back a $75,000 speaking fee, he had forked over to him last week

James Rainey, of the LA Times has the scoop;

I was dogging the New York Times and star columnist Thomas Friedman last week for lack of transparency after it was revealed that Friedman received $75,000 for speaking to a Northern California air quality district.

Friedman ended up giving the money back to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District because the newspaper's ethics guidelines prohibit journalists from taking speaking payments from anything other than nonprofits and educational institutions. That means fees from government agencies are verboten.

Friedman wouldn't talk, so I didn't get to ask him if he would be willing to disclose the payments from his other appearances. I'm told the "World Is Flat" author gets paid for roughly one speaking engagement a month. If he received his standard $75,000 fee for each, that would be $900,000 in outside income a year.

Lord know, he could use the extra bucks.

Not bad scratch, considering his track record, he the proud creator of "The Friedman Unit".

We'll have to wait and see if Bill Keller releases info on the delayed, and pending, 2008 audit, or, perhaps, who leaks it.

Oughta be pretty interesting ...


Bonus Thomas "My Head If Flat" Friedman Riffs

Thomas Freidman, Clearly, Is Eating Lead-Painted Toys From His Flat World Economy!

Happy 5th Anniversary of "Suck On This" Day!

Happy 5th Anniversary of "Suck On This" Day!

We would be remiss today, if we didn't let the bubbly flow ...

Raise one up to one of our favorite, flat-headed pundits.

Yes, the title honoree of the "Friedman Unit", Thomas Friedman, celebrates today his bold foreign policy observation, as to our illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Or, as Atrios puts it;

Five years, or 10 F.U.s, ago today, America's leading foreign affairs public intellectual explained the Iraq war to us.

From Think Progress;

FRIEDMAN: You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society. You think this bubble fantasy, we’re just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this, ok. That Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That’s the real truth.

Jane Hamsher, over on Firedoglake, writes of future "Suck On This Days";

Folks of Middle Eastern descent will still be pissed that Americans thought it was acceptable to invade their country on false pretenses, slaughter their people and continue to revere a pundit who thought "Suck on this" was an appropriate expression of America's foreign policy.

Thomas Friedman Sums Up the Iraq War: "Suck. On. This."



What made Sammy run was shoes ...

What makes The Friedman Unit man tick? ... Who knows, although The Garlic did have one possible inkling;

"Thomas Freidman, Clearly, Is Eating Lead-Painted Toys From His Flat World Economy!"

Anyway ...

Happy Suck On This Day!


Bonus Friedman Suck On This Day Links

Charlie Rose: May 30, 2003

Barry Crimmins: Time's up for Thomas L. Freepass

David Rees: Thomas Friedman "Suck-on-this" Anniversary Celebratory Book Excerpt!