Yesterday, Thomas Friedman published yet another article lambasting American public education. Every time he writes about public schools, it is a put-down. He said in one article that America is “in decline” because of low scores on international tests, because McKinsey & Co. said so. Google his name and “Teach for America,” and you will get more than 100,000 hits.
David Sirota, an investigative journalist, wondered why New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman always sides with the economic elites in this country and around the world, and he suggests the answer: He married into one of the richest families in America.
He wrote in 2006:
I’ve documented repeatedly how New York Times columnist Tom Friedman parrots the propaganda of Big Money, using his column to legitimize some of the worst, most working-class-persecuting policies this country has seen in the last century – all while bragging on television that he doesn’t even bother read the details of the policies he advocates for. I have always believed Friedman’s perspective comes from the bubble he lives in – that is, I have always believed he feels totally at ease shilling for Big Money and attacking workers because from the comfortable confines of the Washington suburbs he lives in and the elite cocktail parties he attends, what Friedman says seems mainstream to him. But I never had any idea how dead on I was about the specific circumstances of Friedman’s bubble – and how it potentially explains a lot more than I ever thought.
As the July edition of the Washingtonian Magazine notes, Friedman lives in “a palatial 11,400-square-foot house, now valued at $9.3 million, on a 7½-acre parcel just blocks from I-495 and Bethesda Country Club.” He “married into one of the 100 richest families in the country” – the Bucksbaums, whose real-estate Empire is valued at $2.7 billion.
Sirota thinks that full disclosure matters. In the case of Ted Kennedy, for example, everyone knew about his family and its wealth. And, furthermore, he did not advance his family’s economic interest.
As we have seen again and again, whenever Thomas Friedman writes about education, he writes with hostility towards public education, towards career educators, and with indifference to the struggles of many middle-class and poor families. He consistently writes admiringly about corporate reform policies such as high-stakes testing and Teach for America (one of his daughters joined TFA).
Sirota writes:
Friedman, unlike Kennedy, uses his position to push the very specific economic policies (such as “free” trade) that the superwealthy in this country are pushing and exclusively benefit from. That’s why his billionaire scion status is so important for the public to know – because it raises objectivity questions. If, for instance, Richard Mellon Scaife wrote articles in newspapers demanding the repeal of the estate tax – don’t you think it would be important for readers to be warned that Scaife was a multimillionaire whose family (and the few families like his) would almost exclusively benefit from the policies he was writing about? Of course. That’s called full disclosure and transparency, the very things critical to an objective free press and democracy – the very thing Friedman says is so important for other countries when he writes about foreign policy.
So the next time you read a piece by Tom Friedman telling us how wonderful job outsourcing is or how great it is to pass Big Money’s latest trade deal that include no labor, wage, human rights or environmental provisions – just remember: Tom Friedman, scion of a billionaire business empire, is just doing right by his own economic class.
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