Thomas Friedman will just have to do without his fresh squeezed prune juice this morning. He has pissed me off. He's whining that he's just buffed and filed his nails and can't use his soft, pasty hands to squeeze prunes. Well then he can just do without, can't he?
The paper hits the door this morning and thanks to Nicky K's Fourth of July meltdown, Thomas Friedman knows I haven't been reading his rantings. So before I can even finish my coffee, Thomas Friedman is waving his latest in my face. It's called "Learning From Lance."
As he sings the praises of Lance Armstrong, one thing stands out: no mention of the divorce.
We should all look up to Armstrong and he is the model American, that's what Thomas Friedman is implying.
"Thomas Friedman," I say, "are you not aware that his marriage broke up in 2003?"
"Huh," says Thomas Friedman, sopping up some egg yolk on his plate with a piece of toast (and overlooking the yolk now matted in that disgusting mustache).
"You know I don't follow the personal lives of people," Thomas Friedman demures.
As though he weren't the one obsessing over the state of Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey's marriage? As though I'm the one leaving all those In Style Magazines in the bathroom?
He warms to the topic once I call him on it and, no surprise since he watches every tabloid show on TV, he begins defending Lance Armstrong as "our modern day Judy!" Thomas Friedman's obsession with Judy Garland can be strangely humanizing at times but this isn't one of them.
I'm quite aware that his columns are not the well thought out observations and critiques of the world we live in. Instead they are all about him.
So if Thomas Friedman's lionizing a man as a hero, a man who left his wife two years ago, I think I have a right to ask my husband, the not so great Thomas Friedman, what is up with that?
"Bettina, Lance is like Judy at the Palace," Thomas Friedman says as he licks the yolk off the plate. "A once in a lifetime thing. An event. An earth shattering moment that if you blink, you will miss it."
Looking at his chin and mustache yolk-stained face, I said, "Cut the crap, Friedman."
Thomas Friedman looked nervous as I stood and took my plate to the sink.
"Bettina, we get the leaders and stars we deserve," Thomas Friedman offered waving his empty glass at me.
I just stared at him.
"Prune me!" he insisted like the angry child he so often is.
"Prune yourself," I shot back as I left the kitchen.
I'm confused as to whom it could be, but I'm pretty certain Thomas Friedman is either cheating on me or plotting to. And my suscipions turn to one Patti Nelson Limerick. More to come later.
