JonathanE - February 18, 2010 | 5:43 pm · Link

Did you say something? I’m sorry, I was too busy drinking a highball while getting a deep tissue massage next to my olympic size swimming pool.

Jim, Foolish Literalist - February 18, 2010 | 5:43 pm · Link

Was this before or after Wifey’s Daddy’s company got bought up cheap by its main rival?

Actually, I think I read that even after the crash, Mrs F’s stake in General Properties (isn’t that it?) was worth 25 million

soonergrunt - February 18, 2010 | 5:47 pm · Link

Well, at least we know where he keeps all the arab taxi drivers chained up for when he needs one for a quick, impromptu discussion that confirms his worldview. Right there in the basement of the lower left corner.

Bob L - February 18, 2010 | 5:48 pm · Link

Seems a little over the top for a columnist doesn’t it? Sure he one of the top ones but still.

Sharl - February 18, 2010 | 5:50 pm · Link

Some years ago (approx. 17 FUs, IIRC), I was chatting with my cab driver – a foreign-born gentleman wise in the ways of the world – when he gave me a tip on this fine bit of real estate.

Third world cabbies rawk!

/Tommie “suck on this” Friedman

The Moar You Know - February 18, 2010 | 5:50 pm · Link

Glad to see the Gilded Age back in full force.

Fergus Wooster - February 18, 2010 | 5:52 pm · Link

-Point of Mustache!! Point of Mustache!!

-The Chair recognizes your Mustache.

jamie - February 18, 2010 | 5:55 pm · Link

It must suck to be Tom.

freelancer - February 18, 2010 | 5:56 pm · Link

At the end of the driveway is probably a six taxi garage.

John Cole - February 18, 2010 | 5:59 pm · Link

Why does everyone keep saying Taibbi is taboo or controversial here? I think every one of the front pagers loves us some Taibbi. I don’t always agree with him, but I always like reading him.

robertdsc - February 18, 2010 | 6:01 pm · Link

I have no idea what I would do with that much space.

Kevin Phillips Bong - February 18, 2010 | 6:02 pm · Link

@John Cole: It’s the usual “but he’s no Hunter S.” stuff. Probably because it seems like he tries to be relatively sober when he’s writing.

cat48 - February 18, 2010 | 6:02 pm · Link

Interesting. I’d like to see BoBo’s houses. He has one in China also I hear.

The Moar You Know - February 18, 2010 | 6:05 pm · Link

In the not-so-distant future, with unemployment at 40%, when I am roaming the wilds of the United States, starving, looking for food, I will arrive at Mr. Friedman’s doorstep with an offer he won’t refuse; I’ll clean his pool and feed him bon mots for his columns for the privilege of eating the scraps from his garbage cans.

All will go well for a few weeks, until at a pre-arranged time and date, I’ll open the security gates for my friends, a mob of starving, angry mohawked-up space punks on motorcycles, and we’ll rob and burn his estate and use his head for a soccer ball.

For a dose of irony, we’ll leave his Lexus burning, upside down, in an olive grove somewhere.

asiangrrlMN - February 18, 2010 | 6:10 pm · Link

@robertdsc: I’m with you. Houses like this leave me cold. And, it’s ugly.

@freelancer: Meh. You only need a pole for that.

@The Moar You Know: I was thinking something similar as I looked at this picture, except, I was surprised that someone hasn’t already punched out Friedman.

Martin - February 18, 2010 | 6:11 pm · Link

Uh oh, Cole forgot to feed Tunch:

A West Virginia Air National Guard officer says a Navy helicopter has gone down during a joint training exercise
...
Gilliam says it’s unclear what caused the accident in a remote, hilly area.

jim - February 18, 2010 | 6:12 pm · Link

Yeah, sucky books….

HyperIon - February 18, 2010 | 6:12 pm · Link

@The Moar You Know: For a dose of irony, we’ll leave his Lexus burning, upside down, in an olive grove somewhere.

good one.

Bob L - February 18, 2010 | 6:16 pm · Link

@Mark S.:

Holy John McCain!

Clearly I need to got find some heiress to shack up with. This relying on my own testicles and work ethic is just so quaintly 20th Century these days. I need to be a kept man.

J.W. Hamner - February 18, 2010 | 6:17 pm · Link

Honestly, if I had Friedman money I would buy an island and set it up like a Bond villain hideout. Frankly I’m a little disappointed in his lack of imagination. Nice looking house though.

Church Lady - February 18, 2010 | 6:20 pm · Link

I wonder how many kilowatts get burned in that particular palace…... Guess conserving energy is for me, not for thee. Right, Tommy?

gbear - February 18, 2010 | 6:20 pm · Link

@robertdsc:

I have no idea what I would do with that much space.

I worked as a drafter at a firm that designed high-end housing. One of the clients kept adding rooms to the house and the Architect finally descibed one of the extra rooms as ‘another place to sit and feel small’. I loved that line.

Friedman: what a fucker.

edit: gawd, you can tell I work in architecture. I capitalized ‘architect’. I’m so sorry…

Napoleon - February 18, 2010 | 6:23 pm · Link

I am surprised no one mentioned this but Simon Properties made an unsolicited bid for his wife’s families company yesterday (or maybe the day before and I just saw it hit the papers yesterday). They say it is to low but it will be interesting what happens.

ellaesther - February 18, 2010 | 6:27 pm · Link

@robertdsc: I know. That’s where my mind always goes when I see these enormous places. I seem to recall that Candy Spelling had a room dedicated to wrapping presents. To which I could only go: Wha?

Though, having said that, I wouldn’t mind a bigger kitchen…. Hey, I’m an expert on Israel/Palestine, and make more sense than Friedman does when he pulls his I/P expert card! Someone owes me a damn kitchen!

Bas-O-Matic - February 18, 2010 | 6:28 pm · Link

Not to be a killjoy or anything, but I was able to use the information in that picture to find Friedman’s house on Google Maps.

Just Sayin’

MikeJ - February 18, 2010 | 6:29 pm · Link

Zillow :

Zestimate $4,410,500
Monthly Payment: $18,771
Baths: 8.5
Sqft: 11,420
Lot: 326,825
Built: 2003
Heating system: Other

(address left out, but it ain’t hard to find. I used to date a girl in his ‘hood.)

dr. bloor - February 18, 2010 | 6:33 pm · Link

@The Moar You Know:

For a dose of irony, we’ll leave his Lexus burning, upside down, in an olive grove somewhere.

Well played.

Comrade Scrutinizer - February 18, 2010 | 6:35 pm · Link

@ellaesther: Ah, but you aren’t a serious I/P expert, see. If you were a serious I/P expert, you’d have a column in a major newspaper, you’d have written serious books that serious people read, and you’d have a Seriously Big Fucking House to live in, see.

dr. bloor - February 18, 2010 | 6:37 pm · Link

@MikeJ:

Heating system: Other

“The owner’s endless pontificating.”

Mike E - February 18, 2010 | 6:41 pm · Link

@asiangrrlMN:
Not a punch in the neck, but nearly as satisfying.

Bill E Pilgrim - February 18, 2010 | 6:44 pm · Link

Knowing that he married into wealth is far better if you ask me, If I thought that he lived like that off writing those inanely incomprehensible books I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

This would be a small thing were it not for the overall pattern. Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It’s not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It’s that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it’s absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that’s guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.”

One of the most biting, well-written take downs I’ve read, from any century.

I get that some people don’t like Taibbi’s style or politics, but people who claim “he can’t write” are just kidding themselves. If even that.

Fergus Wooster - February 18, 2010 | 6:51 pm · Link

@inkadu:
No it doesn’t. At least I bloody hope not, as does the Missus.

It still doesn’t compare to the earlier one he wrote, confessing that when Taibbi had had a drug problem, he’d call the NYT office staff and pretend to be Friedman ranting about his parking space. “The Wildebeest of Freedom and the Mongoose of Discontent”. Classic.

SiubhanDuinne - February 18, 2010 | 6:55 pm · Link

@asiangrrlMN:

By the way, someone here linked to the Esquire article on Roger Ebert. I can’t remember who linked it, but thank you so much. I really like Ebert, and this article was poignant and beautiful.

Thanks, asiangrrlMN, for linking again. (I think it was actually John who mentioned it originally, but am not sure now.) Anyhow, I had made a mental note to look for it and then of course I forgot to do so until your reminder. Looking forward to reading it at leisure. I do love Ebert.

kommrade reproductive vigor - February 18, 2010 | 6:58 pm · Link

If you look closely at the upper-left hand section of the photo you’ll spot one of the shy and elusive Friedman Units grazing on the lawn.

maus - February 18, 2010 | 7:01 pm · Link

@The Moar You Know:

In the not-so-distant future, with unemployment at 40%, when I am roaming the wilds of the United States, starving, looking for food, I will arrive at Mr. Friedman’s doorstep with an offer he won’t refuse; I’ll clean his pool and feed him bon mots for his columns for the privilege of eating the scraps from his garbage cans. All will go well for a few weeks, until at a pre-arranged time and date, I’ll open the security gates for my friends, a mob of starving, angry mohawked-up space punks on motorcycles, and we’ll rob and burn his estate and use his head for a soccer ball. For a dose of irony, we’ll leave his Lexus burning, upside down, in an olive grove somewhere.

God, I have a friend who worked on one of the Fallout games. I wish I had thought of that plot point to beg him to include, ghoul manservant and all.

Bill E Pilgrim - February 18, 2010 | 7:02 pm · Link

@kommrade reproductive vigor:

one of the shy and elusive Friedman Units grazing on the lawn.

Is he housebroken, or is he going to be leaving little batteries all over the yard?

PanAmerican - February 18, 2010 | 7:07 pm · Link

@demkat620:

+1

He’s a liar and propagandist.

JK - February 18, 2010 | 7:13 pm · Link

@asiangrrlMN:

Hi,

Thanks for linking to that great article on Roger Ebert again.

I would have bet dollars to donuts that the house in question belonged to Maureen Dowd.

maus - February 18, 2010 | 7:19 pm · Link

@Violet:

I wonder if a cab driver would give him a heads up if the pitchfork-n-torch crowd were on the way?

That assumes that the jolly little people he interacts with (but only in transit) ever escape his head.

AhabTRuler - February 18, 2010 | 7:30 pm · Link

I wish a crowd with pitchforks and torches would show up and storm the gates.

Gotta’ lotta cops ‘round here, but you are welcome to try.

Fergus Wooster - February 18, 2010 | 7:32 pm · Link

@inkadu:

I’m reading his stuff at the NY Press. I’ve moved from arousal to love.

It’s really pretty good stuff, right up until the “diary of a collaborator” and “40 funny things about the upcoming death of the pope”, which I still found a little funny.

All of the Friedman stuff is gold. And the Stalinist fantasies about the death of our punditocracy, platinum.

Kevin K. - February 18, 2010 | 7:35 pm · Link

@John Cole: I still like Taibbi, but I liked his writing a lot better before he became an economist. I miss stuff like this when he was undercover as a Bush volunteer in ‘04:

In my first six weeks on the campaign, I saw only one black person enter our offices. He was a recently released armed robber from Newark, New Jersey, who was the guest of a local female Republican politician. The ex-con was not particularly interested in Republican politics, although he did say something about wanting to hit Christine Todd Whitman in the face with a brick. I urged him to support the president, even though he couldn’t vote. He didn’t make any promises.

freelancer - February 18, 2010 | 7:44 pm · Link

@rootless_e:
@FlipYrWhig:

Yeah, JC, what is all the talk on this site about Taibbi being a polemic? Seems to materialize out of the ether, who knows?

Fergus Wooster - February 18, 2010 | 7:52 pm · Link

Here we go:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/2.....bbi/single

FlipYrWhig - February 18, 2010 | 7:53 pm · Link

@freelancer: What can I say, the guy gets on my nerves. He’s like the pundit equivalent of that player on every professional sports team who’s called “scrappy” and “pesky” and a “sparkplug” by his team’s fans and “fucking aggravating” by everyone else’s fans. It’s not like I go out of my way to bring him up, but if he should be the subject, I’ll go through my ritualized gestures noting my low tolerance for him.

Same goes for Greenwald.

YellowJournalism - February 18, 2010 | 7:54 pm · Link

@SiubhanDuinne: My god. I can’t finish that article right now. I’m at the part where it explains his “sign language” and it’s just killing me. I admire that man so much. I need to read the article when all is quiet. (Canada vs the Swiss is on right now, so it’s hard read something so emotional while the hubby is cheering at the TV.)

I wrote an email to Ebert once asking some silly question about the dialogue screens in silent films. He actually wrote me back, which greatly suprised me. I wish I’d saved that e-mail. So let me add a thank-you to those who brought the article up in this thread.

Corner Stone - February 18, 2010 | 7:54 pm · Link

@The Moar You Know:

For a dose of irony, we’ll leave his Lexus burning, upside down, in an olive grove somewhere.

This may be the funniest thing you’ve ever posted here. Granted, there’s zero competition from your other posts.
But I have to admit I gave a mildly intemperate golf clap when I read this.

freelancer - February 18, 2010 | 8:02 pm · Link

@rootless_e:
@FlipYrWhig:

I think he has his place (I think his prose on Friedman deserves its own wing in the Smithsonian, yet his economic coverage is nothing short of hyperbolic armaggedon forecasting), but I was more highlighting the dissent out to Cole, since he seemed to be so oblivious to it.

gwangung - February 18, 2010 | 8:12 pm · Link

@freelancer: What can I say, the guy gets on my nerves. He’s like the pundit equivalent of that player on every professional sports team who’s called “scrappy” and “pesky” and a “sparkplug” by his team’s fans and “fucking aggravating” by everyone else’s fans.

AKA “talentless white guy”.

inkadu - February 18, 2010 | 8:17 pm · Link

@scudbucket: Thanks for that article… I’m still wondering why the question about financial bonuses isn’t, “How can those bastards be making as much money in a recession as during a bubble?” Bickering about bonuses seems petty.

AhabTRuler - February 18, 2010 | 8:21 pm · Link

Hell, for their kind of money, the location is teh suxxor. I would look for something in Chevy Chase, Rock Creek Park, or Foxhall (that local rich dickhead Rupert Murdoch wannabee, Joe Allbritton has or had a house there). There are some bomb-ass properties to be had in NW Washington, DC if you have real money to throw around (and trust me, the DC government actually works for the people in those neighborhoods). But you definitely don’t need mad money to get into that part of Bethesda, especially now. 2 lawyer income would do it, to say nothing of the large number of civil servants who nest in those environs.

Comrade Jake - February 18, 2010 | 8:24 pm · Link

I thought you were going to tell us that was Cole’s pad. A couple million hits on the naked Pam Anderson link and voila!

Anne Laurie - February 18, 2010 | 8:32 pm · Link

@Brian J:

What I want to know is why he charges $75,000 a speech… Or better yet, who in their right mind is paying him $75,000 a speech?

Rich, entitled arseholes who wish to be reassured that they’re rich because of their brilliant grasp of the newest paradigm, not because they were born to the right parents and/or lucky. Although they’re probably not “paying” Friedman so much as charging his fee back to their corporation, to be offset against taxes. So, my guess is, your hard-earned tax dollars & mine are siphoned back to pay the Moustache of Understanding to tell the Masters of the Universe that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Feel better now?

@JK:

I would have bet dollars to donuts that the house in question belonged to Maureen Dowd.

To bring class and gender back into the equation, against TimF’s explicit instructions… “Witty female political columnists”, however often they are quoted by their fellow Media Village Idiots, do not have anywhere near the income-earning potential of their “serious male business” fellows. Part of this is that it’s easier to expense Friedman telling them that the world is just as they want it described in their business models than it is to expense Dowd telling them that Obama, like Al Gore, is pussy-whipped. But the big difference is that Ms. Buckbaum’s brothers wouldn’t get enough social points for marrying a NYTimes-certified Serious Person. Friedman is very much a Trophy Husband, but the vast majority of Trophy Wives are still tanned, blond Social X-Rays with a limited shelf life. A sugar daddy who chooses a smart girltoy over a pretty one is very much a curiosity—and a sugar mama who chooses a pretty boytoy over a smart one is a public joke. One more way sexism shapes our economic landscape (grin).

demo woman - February 18, 2010 | 8:36 pm · Link

If you enjoyed reading the article in Esquire about Ebert make sure that you read his response. http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/

Anne Laurie - February 18, 2010 | 8:40 pm · Link

@wrb:

Americans seen to have suffered from a lack of vision, or confidence in their worth, or in our empire’s permanence.

Most of us are the children or grandchildren of people who had good reason to believe that eventually the Land-Lords would show up with a piece of paper and their own private army to evict us. Being ready to quit the premises one step ahead of the authorities is very much a part of the American psychological genome.

FlipYrWhig - February 18, 2010 | 8:45 pm · Link

@Bill E Pilgrim: Point taken. I suppose I meant more that it’s a lot easier to win fans with invective, rather than that it’s a lot easier to write invective. Taibbi’s insults are often verbally creative, but they’re still essentially calling the people he doesn’t like—generally easy targets—stupid and evil. Meh. It doesn’t do much for me. It’s like coming up with another version of “The Aristocrats.”

(I also think he fits facts around a thesis rather than vice-versa, like in the banking pieces, where he ended up having to characterize Austan Goolsbee, one-time proof that Obama was a Chicago-school free-trader, as an ignored progressive. But we’ve been through that before.)

inkadu - February 18, 2010 | 8:46 pm · Link

@Fergus Wooster: I’m a bit bummed by New York Press’ indexing of Taibbi’s stuff. Every article seems to have a different list.

What did you find bizarre about the Clark piece? It seemed OK to me; but I don’t know much about Clark except that I never understood the appeal.

Bill E Pilgrim - February 18, 2010 | 8:54 pm · Link

@FlipYrWhig: I felt that way once in a while, in some of the more crude and really over the top imagery for example.

On the other hand have you actually read those Friedman critiques, the two linked above?

Taibbi’s not always on, but he can be one of the funniest and best stylists around when he wants to be, and he sure wanted to be when he wrote those.

As you say, worthy target in that case. I tried to read that Flat book once and I couldn’t finish a page, it was some of the worst writing I’d ever seen. I found Taibbi’s review of it a year or more later and was gratified that others had noticed. He’s the opposite for me, I could read him all day long.

mr. whipple - February 18, 2010 | 8:59 pm · Link

Just my luck. I’m in love with Julia Mancuso. I googled her hoping to find her phone number. What does wiki say?

“When she was five, her father, real estate developer Ciro Mancuso, was arrested and convicted of running a $140 million marijuana smuggling operation.[1]”

So close to an heiress!

Brian J - February 18, 2010 | 9:05 pm · Link

@maus:

Wouldn’t that money be better spent by, say, hiring a team of energy efficiency experts to find out how to save money on electricity and heating?

And Another Thing... - February 18, 2010 | 9:17 pm · Link

One of my Taibbi favorites is “Jesus Made me Puke” from Rolling Stone a couple of years ago:

DonkeyKong - February 18, 2010 | 9:22 pm · Link

I wonder if they have their own “piss boy” to follow them around that monstrosity.

SiubhanDuinne - February 18, 2010 | 9:34 pm · Link

@YellowJournalism #91
@Demo Woman #107

Wow. I just finished reading the Esquire piece by Chris Jones and I am drained. It would be churlish and glib to use words like “inspirational,” but I’ve gotta say, I am not at all sure I would be capable of Ebert’s equilibrium were I in similar circumstances.

The section about Gene Siskel just chewed me up. The original TV shows with the dueling thumbs were brilliant and intelligent entertainment. And please, may we use the full panoply of asiangrrlMN’s rusty toolshed on whomever at Disney signed off on removing Ebert’s tribute show to Siskel. Not to mention trashing the balcony set. I don’t have words enough in my vocabulary to express my outrage.

Ebert’s respomnse was both classic and classy. As is he. He may be “dying in increments,” as Chris Jones has it, but I hope those increments are tiny and widely spaced. Ebert is a treasure and I selfishly want him around for a very long time.

Pococurante - February 18, 2010 | 9:46 pm · Link

Oh look, DougJ playing all cute and trolling for page hits contrarian again.

Cheryl from Maryland - February 18, 2010 | 10:59 pm · Link

Since he lives in Montgomery County, not only do we have property tax, but we have county income tax. Thank you Thomas Friedman for helping fund my local services!

slag - February 18, 2010 | 11:30 pm · Link

@Jager:

Looks like it was designed by the same firm that did work for Saddam.

The Bluth Company?

Wile E. Quixote - February 19, 2010 | 2:37 am · Link

@J.W. Hamner:

Honestly, if I had Friedman money I would buy an island and set it up like a Bond villain hideout. Frankly I’m a little disappointed in his lack of imagination. Nice looking house though.

I’d have a war room like the one in Dr. Strangelove.

PurpleGirl - February 19, 2010 | 8:52 am · Link

No one has asked it yet… Did Friedman have to sign a pre-nup before they married?

Solomon Slay - February 19, 2010 | 1:27 pm · Link

His wife’s maiden name is Bucksbaum?

He … actually married a money tree.

Gary K - February 19, 2010 | 3:13 pm · Link

But it’s not half as cool as this.

woody - February 19, 2010 | 6:15 pm · Link

Friedman married “well”: an heiress whose family fortune fell by nearly 90% when the real estate bubble burst. Still has a comfortable couple of hundred mill, but no longer the billionaires of former times…

KarenJ - February 20, 2010 | 2:26 pm · Link

Gosh darn, compared to that, Sarah Palin’s compound up in Wasilla Alaska—all the houses seen in this picture—is “proof” that SHE is really “one of us”!

HER compound is only HALF the size as his!

jajaja - February 21, 2010 | 8:11 pm · Link

KarenJ – idiots like you kill me. Friedman is the one telling us how to live our lives due to the danger of climate weirding.