Friedman's Brilliance Lost on Me

I know Thomas Friedman is "brilliant" and knowledgeable about the Middle East and supposedly China, and that he's written many "bibles" for these regions [From Beruit to Jerusalem, The World is Flat, etc], but I can't stand him. Should all people working in China read The World is Flat? I don't know.

Writing for the NYT, his style should be more formal, but it seems to come off as common and condescending. Here's yesterday's opener:

As readers of this column know, I have a rule that there is a simple way to test whether any Arab-Israeli peace deal is real or not: If you need a Middle East expert to explain it to you, it’s not real. I now have the same rule about global climate agreements: If you need an environmental expert to explain it to you, it’s not real.

I needed 10 experts to explain to me the Bali climate agreement — and I was there! I’m still not quite sure what it adds up to. I’m not opposed to forging a regime with 190 countries for reducing carbon emissions, but my gut tells me that both the North and South Poles will melt before we get it to work.

For a top notch writer, that's an awful lot of I's and me's. It's two whole paragraphs, and he hasn't told me a thing. And he's not funny.

UPDATE: Check this out.