Bring me the head of Thomas L. Friedman

A couple weeks back I caught Friedman being his usual affably histrionic self on the Charlie Rose show, spouting pithy profundities on where the US and the world should be headed. It got me thinking...which is dangerous.

Quite independent of my on-going respect for Mr. Rose as the consummate (and supremely unflappable) TV interviewer, I found myself agreeing with the walrus-visaged sage even as I wanted to clock him upside the head with a urine-dampened Qur'an (in translation, of course) or a dead mackerel. His insistence that "'Green' is the new red-white-and-blue" - i.e., that establishing viable alternatives to hydrocarbon-based energy should be this generation's space race - coincides with what I tried to impress upon students in my globalization course.

Nevertheless, I found myself possessed by the urge to strangle Friedman.

Not to shut him up. To take his job.

Or David Brooks'. Or one of the McLaughlin gang's. Or the job done by any of the multiplying media-friendly set who are mainly known for knowing (or being able to spout) something about everything.

How can I get that much pay and adulation just for quasi-learned quote-spouting? 'Cause let me tell you: if it didn't sink in before, the road to recognition doesn't pass through the lower echelons of academe, Juan Cole notwithstanding.

Occasionally I get reporters and production assistants trolling for quotes on some of the esoterica I am marginally known for studying. A double-edged sword, the journalists' pen (or word processor); not the safest tool, even on loan, for carving one's path to punditry. I usually find ways to weasel out (thank you, deadlines). It's a damn shame, since those journalists aren't going to find another expert who takes an equally serious, contextualized approach to this stuff. The one time I threw myself at a media outlet - Coast to Coast AM, but still - they never returned my call. This was after I got my PhD.

Maybe I just need to blog up a storm. Or bombard the Trib with op-ed artillery.

But how to convince people to buy what anthropologists are selling when you have Friedman and Jared Diamond and Malcolm Gladwell dividing the territory Margaret Mead conquered?

Crap. Charlie Rose has David Brooks on.

Off to sharpen my witticisms. Or a whatever else will make a decent shiv.