What's A "Friedman Unit" of Intellect?

(Sculptor: Tom Friedman; Subject: Thomas Friedman?)

We know a temporal "Friedman Unit" is always "the next six months," after which the course of any given war will become clearer, an 'exit strategy' will be announced, and changes will begin. Really. No, REALLY!

Now David Sirota has undertaken the mind-numbing task of assaying the composition of the intellectual "Friedman Unit," and he's truly humbled by the task:

Tom Friedman may be the single stupidest figure in American public life, and certainly is the supidest writer with such a large platform. I don't mean that he's wrong on everything (although he is substantively wrong on a lot of things) - I mean that he's actually an extremely dim bulb in that he displays a stunning lack of basic cognitive function. Specifically, he shows almost zero ability to realize that the arguments made by Tom Friedman often undermine the arguments made by Tom Friedman.
. . .
(H)ere you have the same pundit who helped water down the "Buy America" provisions in the stimulus bill now complaining that the stimulus bill is being used to buy products from other countries. Likewise, this same pundit continues to aggressively support "free" trade policies that encourage the outsourcing he now decries - the policies that he admits he doesn't even bother to read.

Clearly, Friedman also doesn't bother to read his own columns - or perhaps he does and doesn't care that he contradicts himself all the time. Frankly, I've come to believe it's neither. I've come to believe that he's just an extraordinarily stupid person - a 12-year-old mind trapped in a pudgy, 50-something body. Only this isn't the movie Big - Friedman is respected as a Great Thinker worthy of advising the President of the United States.

Maybe that says all you need to know about the American Idiocracy.

Sirota's last reference was to the admission from "thePrez" that he had wasted several hours ploughing through read one of Friedman's books on his recent vacation.

Which one, at least in the case of Obama, at least believes--even while profoundly wishing it weren't true.