Talk:Thomas Friedman/Archives/2014

Merge Friedman Unit to Thomas Friedman
It was suggested by User:Korny O& at Articles for deletion/Friedman Unit that Friedman Unit be merged to Thomas Friedman. As rationale for the proposed merge, comments by Korny O'Near and me (Cnilep) are quoted below.
 * At heart, this is some political invective against Thomas Friedman - not that different from "Tricky Dick" or "Slick Willie", or, even more relevantly, "You forgot Poland". All of those are redirects or disambig links back to the larger topic, which makes sense since the amount of information that could legitimately be said about any of them, as with "Friedman Unit", could fit comfortably into about three sentences. (Korny O'Near, 20 July 2014)
 * Notability is not temporary, but neither is it inherited. This seems to be a once-notable critique of Friedman, occasionally extended to other political writers/speakers. (Cnilep, 22 July 2014)

Cnilep (talk) 03:32, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose I believe that there is enough reliably sourced information at such examples as: So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits-- and the President-- Failed on Iraq, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats and Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won the War in Iraq: The Experts Speak to support logically independent articles per WP:MERGE ("Merging should be avoided if: The resulting article is too long or 'clunky', The separate topics could be expanded into longer standalone (but cross-linked) articles, The topics are discrete subjects warranting their own articles, even though they might be short"), whereas including all of it here or at Atrios would be WP:UNDUE. As that last book reference notes that Atrios coined the usage, that page might be, and has been, argued for as a target of the merge. Should we include a notice of this discussion at Talk:Atrios? 24.151.10.165 (talk) 18:08, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose: Thanks to 24.151.10.165 for alerting me to this discussion, as i participated in the last AFD.  I was also an active reader of news content in this area when the term was coined; indeed I remember Atrios coining the term when it happened.  My concern on merging is the issue I mentioned in the recent AFD: "While merging to Thomas Friedman is theoretically possible, it would surely be eliminated over time as an "attack" or something.  Though not as notable as Campaign for "santorum" neologism, I believe its a historically relevant neologism in regards to the Iraq War."  I am interested in seeing how this discussion goes, however.  There could be other places it might be addressed more fully (Iraq war criticism articles?), with only a shorter reference in the Friedman article?--Milowent • hasspoken  18:28, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose: The word has become common currency in liberal media in the United States and has been used by a number of writers, many of whom are linked in the responses above. The merge request fails the Google test; when excluding pages where the two words do not appear side by side, the results still contain notable pieces by established writers in the field. MediaMaven3 (talk) 23:53, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

"Views and opinions" esp. "Israel" is terrible
The "Views and opinions" section does not actually seem to be focused on his views, but reads like a dumping ground for criticism. For example, the "Israel" subsection does not include ONE opinion of Friedman's on Israel, but only random cherry-picked criticisms. This is clearly not a NPOV, and neither is the rest of the section. Needs a severe rewrite. --Bobjohnson111980 (talk) 20:15, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Committee to Protect Journalists is entirely misquoted
I'm going ahead with an edit to correct this, but I want to have the explanation on record: The description "war-mongering, crude race-hatred and war-crime agitation" was from FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), not CPJ as is clear from the reference that is provided. DWorley (talk) 00:41, 22 September 2014 (UTC)