the short blog posts are good for starting arguments

I worry sometimes that the New York Times’ Tom Friedman is blowing a lot of his advantage as a columnist by spending too much time telling readers what should happen and not enough time telling them what’s happening. It’s always easier to write “If only” columns because you can ignore all the annoying reasons why people don’t behave according to your ideal. The resulting made-up people are invariably more boring than real people. If I read one more bit of made-up fantasy dialogue Friedman has written for a Middle East leader, I’m going to plotz. But this, from the bottom of today’s column, sure caught my eye: