The question of who is the worst English-language writer working today occasionally surfaces in the media, if only for a moment or two. It usually reminds one of the kind of literary fights and feuds which, as Henry Kissinger once remarked about academia, are only so violent because the stakes are so small. Yet some targets stand above the rest.

There is, for instance, Harold Bloom’s famous, and from my point of view, welcome assault on Stephen King, whose receipt of the National Book Award was referred to by Bloom as “another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life.” Not content with that, Bloom elaborated, “I’ve described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.” And there is A.S. Byatt’s rather savage attack on Harry Potter in the New York Times, which held, “Ms. Rowling’s magic world has no place for the numinous. It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip.”

Perhaps because they confined themselves to fiction, neither Mr. Bloom nor Ms. Byatt have their man (or woman). The worst writer in the English-speaking world today, and certainly the worst writer in America, is New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.

Granting all due respect to Mr. Bloom, Friedman is not merely inadequate, but breathtakingly awful — and not merely on a sentence-by-sentence but a word-by-word basis. Indeed, the only thing commensurate to Friedman’s staggering inability to navigate the English language is his equally staggering popularity. Despite his rank incompetence, Friedman is revered in many circles as something of a post-modern sage on the topics of the Middle East, globalization, and their intersection with American and international politics. He is one of the most widely quoted and breathlessly followed commentators in the American media. While he certainly has his detractors, they tend to be political in nature: the radical left despises him for being in favor of globalization and inadequately anti-Israel, while the right dismisses him as a limousine liberal who is insufficiently pro-Israel. Both sides have a point, even as they miss the point. There is no doubt that Friedman’s views hew reliably and aggressively to the middle of the road, and his primary role often seems to be the restatement of the blatantly obvious in terms the Times readership will find relatively comfortable.

Politically, Friedman is at best a master of conventional opinion. One does not have to dig very far into his columns to realize that whenever he says something of ostensible significance, someone has already said it, said it better, and said it quite a long time ago. They usually did not, however, say it in the New York Times.

Friedman is not a bad writer, however, merely because he is a rampaging banalist with no original ideas. He is a bad writer because he cannot write. His syntax is chronically mangled, he is hopelessly addicted to clichés, dead metaphors, and unnecessary prepositions, and his ideas are incoherent at best. To illustrate this, I have chosen, entirely at random, a missive entitled “Rescue the Rescue” (we will give Friedman the benefit of the doubt and assume that he did not pick the title), which is about the first, failed attempt at a bailout of Wall Street, defeated by congressional Republicans in the final month before the last presidential election. It was published on October 1, 2008 and opens thusly:

I was channel surfing on Monday, following the stock market’s nearly 800-point collapse, when a commentator on CNBC caught my attention. He was being asked to give advice to viewers as to what were the best positions to be in to ride out the market storm. Without missing a beat, he answered: “Cash and fetal.”

Besides the obvious problem that no one particularly cares what Thomas Friedman watches on television, the first thing one notices is the extraordinary awkwardness of his phrasing. The first sentence is akin to a knot of wet hair: Untangling it is as sickening a process as looking at it straight on.

The third clause is clearly the best opener, and the second makes little sense at all. Is it referring to chronology or the subject of Friedman’s viewership? Nothing that follows makes this clear. “He was being asked” unnecessary uses a reflexive tense when none is needed, and the entire sentence that follows is cluttered beyond recognition, using “to” no less than five times when none appear to be necessary. All of this, as it usually does with Friedman, leads into a cliché and a joke. “Without missing a beat” is one of those belabored dead metaphors which George Orwell famously warned against in his first rule of English writing: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” Friedman is, column for column, probably the most egregious violator of this rule in the entire English-speaking world. He is incapable of finishing a paragraph without at least one cliché, usually a false colloquialism that falls as flat as Friedman’s sense of humor, as evidenced by the final joke, which is obviously the whole point of the preceding wretchedness. It isn’t actually a very funny joke, and could probably have been dealt with in an opening sentence rather than an opening paragraph, but given what follows, it isn’t difficult to imagine that Friedman himself probably thought it was the height of wit.

I’m in both—because I know an unprecedented moment when I see one. I’ve been frightened for my country only a few times in my life: In 1962, when, even as a boy of 9, I followed the tension of the Cuban missile crisis; in 1963, with the assassination of J.F.K.; on Sept. 11, 2001; and on Monday, when the House Republicans brought down the bipartisan rescue package.

Here we have two remarkable assassinations of the English language, both in terms of what is being said and how it is being said. As regards the latter, we have “I’m in both” with cuts off before elucidating what he is in or what both are, which is the kind of shorthand reminiscent of corporate memos rather than serious prose writing, and demands the reader return to the previous paragraph and suffer Mr. Friedman’s unfortunate sense of humor all over again. Then, following an unnecessary em-dash, we have “followed the tension of the Cuban missile crisis,” which should simply read “I followed the Cuban missile crisis” or, even better, “during the Cuban missile crisis.” In any case, one does not follow tension, one feels it, even as a boy of nine. We are then treated to a series of superfluous semi-colons and such contortions as “in 1963, with the assassination of JFK,” which should read “JFK’s assassination in 1963,” were one to adhere to certain basic laws of conservation such as Orwell’s wise dictum that “when it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”

Moving on from the how, the what underlines another of Friedman’s more egregious flaws: He has a distinct weakness for hyperbole of the most inexplicable kind. Put simply, Friedman’s claim that the failed bailout was an “unprecedented moment” and he is now “frightened for his country” is a demonstrably mad statement. There is simply no sane or logical way that Friedman can actually mean what he says. In 1962, the world was threatened with nuclear annihilation. In 1963, the president of the United States was assassinated. On 9/11, 3,000 people were killed by terrorists. “On Monday,” a controversial and unpopular bill was voted down in the House of Representatives. Had the congressmen then assembled, and proceeded to detonate a small nuclear device in the House chamber, one imagines that Friedman might have a point. In the obvious absence of such an event, however, the reader is left wondering what institution Mr. Friedman―mustache and all―managed to escape from before the Times retained his services. On the more basic, factual level, Friedman is also simply wrong, as a great many Democrats also voted against the “bipartisan rescue package,” whose nature, incidentally, Friedman never bothers to explain. This omission smacks of either bad faith or simple incompetence. In either case, it is not particularly fair to the reader, who could be forgiven for thinking that Friedman is trying to put one over on him.

But this moment is the scariest of all for me because the previous three were all driven by real or potential attacks on the U.S. system by outsiders. This time, we are doing it to ourselves. This time, it’s our own failure to regulate our own financial system and to legislate the proper remedy that is doing us in.

I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system — one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it.

Again, we see Friedman’s total inability to be concise: “This moment is the scariest of all for me” should read “this moment is the scariest for me”–we shall leave aside the problematics of starting a paragraph with “but,” even one three sentences long–and there is simply no need for “our own” to appear twice in seven words. Nor is there any clear indication of what is supposed to be recieving “the proper remedy.” Our financial system? The crisis in general? Our failure to regulate? Context allows us to make some assumptions, but, as with most of Friedman’s work, the longer one contemplates his deformed syntax the less sense it makes.

What follows is even less decipherable. “I’ve always believed the American political system was unique, because…” might be less confusing, but not by much. In fact, the first two sentences as a whole are completely unnecessary, and likely exist only because Friedman felt that he had thought of something witty to say and wanted to put it in somewhere. Unfortunately, it comes off as cheap cynicism at best and frankly ridiculous at worst, since one doesn’t “run” a political system, one participates in it. Nor, it should be noted, can a system be “smart,” or stupid, for that matter. Still, I digress, a weakness for fallacious anthropomorphism is the least of Friedman’s sins.

This is dangerous. We have House members, many of whom I suspect can’t balance their own checkbooks, rejecting a complex rescue package because some voters, whom I fear also don’t understand, swamped them with phone calls. I appreciate the popular anger against Wall Street, but you can’t deal with this crisis this way.

Friedman has an unfortunate tendency to begin his paragraphs with declarative phrases which appear to be constructed for the convenience of Times readers on the go. “This is dangerous” is, of course, redundant, as Friedman has already pronounced “this” to be the apocalypse. It also forgoes the most basic necessity of polemical writing, which is to be clear about what you’re talking about. Is it the crisis that is dangerous or our failure to deal with it? Or is it the “incompetence” of our political leaders? One could possibly conclude that this mangle of alarmist generalizations is, in and of itself, dangerous.

The sentence that follows, however, is simply a masterpiece, one of the most extraordinary pieces of bad writing I have ever encountered. It has five clauses, only three of which are actually relevant to the issue at hand. The other two are dedicated solely to voicing Friedman’s personal prejudices and have no basis in objective fact whatsoever. The fourth clause claims that voters “also don’t understand,” although what they are supposed to be understanding is unclear, though, admittedly, it is no less unclear than the use of “also,” which one must assume refers to the second clause, which only talks about people balancing (or not) their checkbooks, and not their level of comprehension. The use of the royal “we” is equally bizarre, since Friedman could simply have written, “House members rejected,”etc., though this would hinder his opportunity to pontificate on their qualifications for personal finance management. Nor is it clear why one should have to “appreciate” popular anger rather than “understanding” or “sympathizing” with it. This somehow leads from a royal “we” to an equally abstract “you”, and two “this”s in embarrassingly close proximity. Still, Friedman’s bad writing is at least in service of something here, namely his need to express his contempt for others–who, I fear, probably write better than he does.

This is a credit crisis. It’s all about confidence. What you can’t see is how bank A will no longer lend to good company B or mortgage company C. Because no one is sure the other guy’s assets and collateral are worth anything, which is why the government needs to come in and put a floor under them. Otherwise, the system will be choked of credit, like a body being choked of oxygen and turning blue.

This Idiot’s Guide to Finance–written, apparently, by the idiot in question–is redolent, as usual, with Friedman’s total inability to refrain from morbid attempts at what he imagines to be colloquial English. This patronizing exercise in pseudo-populism seems to originate from the conviction that the average American has the vocabulary and intellect of a third-grader, and continues on accordingly. “A lends to B,” etc., “the other guy,” “needs to come in and put a floor under them,” are all equally belabored and equally unnecessary, and are clearly intended to illustrate a straw man argument, or at the very least a scenario so over-simplified as to be essentially useless to any thinking person.

I totally understand the resentment against Wall Street titans bringing home $60 million bonuses. But when the credit system is imperiled, as it is now, you have to focus on saving the system, even if it means bailing out people who don’t deserve it. Otherwise, you’re saying: I’m going to hold my breath until that Wall Street fat cat turns blue. But he’s not going to turn blue; you are, or we all are. We have to get this right.

Now, at last, Friedman “understands,” or rather he “totally” understands, an unnecessary term which reminds one of its reckless overuse by surfers and valley girls. In the penultimate sentence, there is the use of the word “or” when “and” is clearly intended, and starting a sentence with “but” again. But (irony indeed…) this pales next to ending a paragraph with a cliched epigram which is left largely unexplained by what has preceded it. Not to mention that it is never fully explained what might actually constitute “getting it right,” except for, presumably, whatever Tom Friedman recommends. There are plenty of people who think that rejecting the bailout package was “getting it right”, but they are dismissed by Friedman as suicidal lunatics. A few paragraphs ago, it was “the system” which was turning blue from lack of oxygen, now it is those who oppose the bailout, but we will leave that aside because mixing metaphors is, for Friedman, essentially a perfected technique, and without it most of his writing would simply cease to exist. How the mechanics of auto-asphyxiation relate to the credit system is, in any case, a bit of a mystery.

My rabbi told this story at Rosh Hashana services on Tuesday: A frail 80-year-old mother is celebrating her birthday and her three sons each give her a present. Harry gives her a new house. Harvey gives her a new car and driver. And Bernie gives her a huge parrot that can recite the entire Torah. A week later, she calls her three sons together and says: “Harry, thanks for the nice house, but I only live in one room. Harvey, thanks for the nice car, but I can’t stand the driver. Bernie, thanks for giving your mother something she could really enjoy. That chicken was delicious.”

It should be a rule of thumb for all prospective Jewish columnists never to repeat stories told by rabbis to prove a point. By and large they consist of essentially meaningless anecdotes which may appear amusing and profound when one has already spent hours standing and sitting in a synagogue, but on the whole they dissipate when faced with the real world. Traditionally, rabbis aren’t supposed to give sermons at all, and when they do it is generally to explicate a point of Torah. Needless to say, this is usually more illuminating then telling a fairly unfunny Jewish joke that was probably somewhat endearing in Yiddish but dies in English translation. An ironic point, as the experience of reading Friedman’s columns is oddly reminiscent of another Jewish joke which I will not recount here, but ends with a Jewish mother (who is generally omnipresent in Ashkenazi Jewish humor) remarking “Its alright, as soon as I hang up the phone I’m sticking my head in the oven.” In any case, a rabbi who needs to resort to vaudeville to amuse his congregants is usually in as much trouble as a columnists who has to recount stories from his rabbi to make a point. What point is actually being made is, in any case, somewhat unclear, though Friedman does try to clarify in the following paragraph.

Message to Congress: Don’t get cute. Don’t give us something we don’t need. Don’t give us something designed to solve your political problems. Yes, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke need to accept strict oversights and the taxpayer must be guaranteed a share in the upside profits from all rescued banks. But other than that, give them the capital and the flexibility to put out this fire.

What is revealed by this is the simple fact that Friedman could easily have left out his rabbi’s less than edifying sermon and simply skipped to this paragraph. Not that doing so would leave us much more illuminated. What the phrase “upside profits” might refer to is a mystery, though those better versed in economics may have an idea what Friedman is talking about, or it could be a perfectly meaningless term which he made up to sound intelligent. It could simply refer to the profits which may come the way of our financial institutions when (and if) the economy returns to its prior form. In any case, to leave one’s readers in a guessing game on an important point is not particularly good writing.

I always said to myself: Our government is so broken that it can only work in response to a huge crisis. But now we’ve had a huge crisis, and the system still doesn’t seem to work. Our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have gotten so out of practice of working together that even in the face of this system-threatening meltdown they could not agree on a rescue package, as if they lived on Mars and were just visiting us for the week, with no stake in the outcome.

The story cannot end here. If it does, assume the fetal position.

Trust us, Tom, we’ve been there awhile already. Obviously, Friedman’s massacre of his native tongue carries through to the conclusion of his polemic. “I always said to myself” can’t seem to decide what tense it’s in; the following sentence is, as usual, desperately overburdened with prepositions; and “gotten so out of practice of working together” is probably a typo, though given what has come before I cannot say that with complete confidence. The final sentence of the first paragraph is much too long, and could easily have been reduced into two shorter sentences, or even one, since the Mars remark is another fairly pathetic attempt at wit and could easily have been cut.

The most striking thing about this final section, however, is its extraordinary cynicism and mean-spiritedness. “Our government is so broken,” “still doesn’t seem to work,” “out of practice of working together,” “as if they lived on Mars,” “no stake in the outcome,” etc., all point to an emotional rather than intellectual outlook which can only be described as a pervasive loathing for other people. One can almost hear Charlton Heston pounding the sand and shrieking, “You maniacs! You blew it up!” which is fine for the movies but not for an ostensibly serious commentator on world affairs. Friedman seems to be convinced that the halls of government are populated by corrupted, suicidal lunatics who are bent on sending the world over a cliff into oblivion. The more sober explanation is that we are facing a systemic crisis which no one really knows how to deal with. In the absence of any good options, some elected officials wondered if throwing good money after bad was an advisable strategy. Friedman’s response to this was to cry apocalypse and claim they’re all crazy. No thinking person could possibly take such an outburst seriously, and the fact that many ostensibly thinking people clearly did should give us some pause.

Whenever obviously inferior writers become famous, respected, and widely read, there is usually a reason beyond simple stupidity. As much as it may pain some of us to admit, popular bad writers obviously serve a particular need, and people read and believe them for purposes which, while perhaps unknown even to them, are nonetheless compelling. In Friedman’s case, I think the answer lies in the nature of his readership and its relationship to a phenomenon briefly mentioned above, namely the universal nature of debt in American society. Friedman’s readers, and the Times readership in general, are the kind of middle to upper-middle class people who are the primary beneficiaries of the American culture of debt. Without it, they would not have a home, an education, or the numerous small and large consumer items which, for many Americans, make life worth living. The fact that this entire class has been living beyond their means for a very long time–and they must be at least vaguely aware of this–makes the current financial downturn more than a mere crisis. It has become a threat to an entire way of life. A life lived in perpetual financial deferral and dependence, yes, but one of relative material abundance and luxury. When the boat starts to sink, it is more emotionally comfortable to believe that someone has deliberately drilled a hole in the bottom than to admit that the boat was never particularly seaworthy in the first place.

Friedman’s hysterical accusations and end of the world rantings (which, considering his own enormous personal wealth, are probably personal and not economic in origin) nonetheless reflect his readership’s visceral need for denial and their desire to blame someone else for their own shortcomings. This allows them to believe that the financial crisis is the result of irrational and corrupt politicians–who are, after all, replaceable–rather then facing the hard truth that they have spent the last several decades buying things which they could not possibly pay for. This is somewhat understandable. Most of us would agree that looking into the face of a slow death on the installment plan is never a desirable experience, but in the long run the truth is usually preferable.

It must be admitted that “Rescue the Rescue” is not a particularly representative piece. Friedman’s unfortunately large oeuvre includes far more egregious examples of bad writing. The worst are probably the frankly embarrassing columns in which he composes fake letters, ostensibly from major political figures to other major political figures, which express Friedman’s own opinions on why they’re doing everything wrong. Were such experiments a Borgesian hoax they might have a certain anomalous charm, but given that their author actually takes them seriously, it is difficult to regard them as anything other than, at best, expressions of serious delusions of grandeur and, at worst, a symptom of incipient megalomania.

Still, there is at least the possibility that Thomas Friedman can ultimately be put to some positive use. His career is a fairly good road map for the bookish but unscrupulous college graduate who wants to make a lot of money but lacks the talent for serious accomplishment and the discipline to achieve it. Such unfortunate people can simply ascertain the neuroses of a particular, relatively affluent subculture, and exploit it by both alternately stoking and calming them. This may not be the most dignified of occupations, but as Friedman’s career proves, it is undoubtedly lucrative.

For the rest of us, Friedman provides a valuable lesson in what not to do. If you want to write serious political or social commentary, Friedman’s work is an excellent barometer: Do the opposite of everything he does and you may not get hired by the New York Times, but you will probably become a vaguely competent writer: Think clearly about things, make your sentences comprehensible, refrain from redundant anecdotes and stupid jokes, don’t treat your readers as though they are mentally deficient, remember that emotion is not a substitute for thought, don’t play to cliches and popular prejudices, attempt to retain some sense of objectivity, hold on to a measure of generosity toward other people, and write with a modicum of respect for the English language. This may not make for good writing, but it seriously impedes the possibility of bad writing. Everyone violates these rules quite often, and I have broken a few of them in this piece myself, but even the attempt to follow them will likely result in something which, if not necessarily popular, will be at least readable. It will not make you the best writer in the world, but you will be far from the worst. That position, in any case, has already been filled.

Benjamin Kerstein is Senior Writer for The New Ledger.