Leah Garchik gently caps on Tom Friedman...
n the plaza outside Zellerbach Hall before the start of Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd's joint appearance at UC Berkeley on Friday night, 60 or 70 bicyclists whipped around in a large circle, like horses in a circus ring, one dragging a trailer carrying a large amplifier blaring "Time Warp" from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show.'' Inside, serious business was at hand: The heavyweight columnists of the New York Times were due, opinion-makers more or less responding to questions posed by journalist/Professors Cynthia Gorney and Mark Danner.
The "less'' was when Friedman, a man who at least once referred to himself in the third person ("This columnist has used his column ...''), responded to one of Danner's queries: "It doesn't strike me as a very interesting question.'' Perhaps he felt comfortable doing that because that's the kind of straight talk he shares with President Bush in their give-and-take, off-the-record White House gab fests, which the columnist made sure to mention.
Friedman had been on tour for six weeks promoting his book "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.'' That's six weeks of admirers hanging onto his every idea, which must be a pretty, oh, empowering experience. Friedman, who'd helicoptered to UC direct from speaking at Google, seemed pretty darned empowered, and it was mentioned several times that his book is on top of the best-seller lists.
It took Dowd to observe slyly that at the Times, "We were very excited when Tom overtook Jane Fonda. If it didn't happen this week, we were going to change the title to 'Flat World, Flat Abs.' But Tom didn't have any threesomes. ''
This drollery from Dowd, glamorous in a satiny yellow skirt and formfitting green sweater, got everybody laughing. But it was also a riff that tidily pricked the balloon of the best-seller list, on which the latest celebrity tell-all competes with a treatise on global economics.
