As “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation,” Fareed Zakaria is a busy man–not just as the host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” but also as an editor-at-large at TIME, and a columnist at the Washington Post. Since his post-9/11 famous (or infamous) Newsweek story, “Why Do They Hate Us?” Zakaria has made the list of Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” alongside modern-day Aristotles like Thomas Friedman and Malcolm Gladwell. “My friends all say I’m going to be Secretary of State, [but] I don’t see how that would be much different from the job I have now” he allegedly told New York Magazine in a 2003 profile (a quote he later disputed). More importantly, Zakaria is a decorated journalist, having won a Peabody for his work on CNN, a Deadline Club Award for his “Why Do They Hate Us?” column, a National Magazine Award for his Newsweek work, two Overseas Press Club Awards, and an accolade from the Indian government for his contributions to journalism.
He’s also a plagiarist.
The Pulitzer…an award for those who lack bundlers…
Great minds think alike?
“My friends all say I’m going to be Secretary of State, [but] I don’t see how that would be much different from the job I have now” –
– a Freudian statement about the undue influence of presstitutes on public/foreign policy in an age of democratic decline. When you see the politically co-opted 4th estate either hawking policy for their political cronies or – acting like a special interest elites pimping their own agendas which bypass or evade majority rule, the only words I can come up with to describe it is “social vandalism.”
These people vandalize the democratic system and policy making process by negating and depleting enlightened public consensus – they are in the business of manufacturing public consensus for the most damaging special interest agendas.
Rule by informed consensus of the majority is now deeply compromised – we now have policy making that reflects only the interests of a small elite and MSM manufactured consensus by an disinformed electorate as a rubber stamp – the MSM have made the leap from media whores to social vandals.
In this very real information dystopia, awarding a Pulitzer is like putting lipstick on a pig.
Seems to be the new thing with lefty f-knuckles. Robin Williams was so famous for stealing other people’s work, that stand up comics would refuse to perform if he was in the audience.
The award winning ‘Roots’ by Alex Hailey was plagiarized too. Turns out he scribed most of that from a fiction novel.
Now this award winning dufus.
Keep it up liberals, you have nothing to fear but fear itself!
Thomas Friedman is a modern day Aristotle? Well, Aristotle ran around telling people how many teeth were in the human mouth without actually, you know, looking in a few mouths and counting the teeth contained therein (But there’s no need to examine the real world without making pronouncements about it, AmIRight?). Aristotle was also the most famous tutor of a sociopath who conspired with his mother to murder his father and then set out on a rampage across the known world employing his soft-power principle of ‘surrender your city to me now or I will butcher every man, woman, child and animal within your walls’.
Seems a little harsh to say that TF might give that kind of advice to others.
I have no idea why a widely read and obviously intelligent journalist would think he could get away with plagiarism. Someone is going to notice.
Well, ya know, yo, if you have an essay or a book, you didn’t write that.
Yes. We knew this is a Presstitute.
Of course he has no original thoughts of his own.
Except the internal dialogue of constant self congratulation.
He is a Muslim. That is all you need to know.
A Musilm????? I thought he was a kicker for the Bombers.
When a progressive does it it’s not a crime.
I thought he was a celebrity chef!
Occam is dead on with this one. There’s a logical progression from “just the facts” to “interpret the news” to “shape their thinking”. Just another would-be philosopher king purporting to shed light and guidance for the masses.
Plato: most destructive philosopher ever.
I don’t think Plato spawned any religions tho!
Reading the list at the link, at least some of the instances of “plagiarism” seem to me to be more unattributed re-reporting, than the outright lifting of entire sentences or paragraphs from the work of others. In other words, sloppy journalism, but not plagiarism as I understand it to be defined.
I think the claims of Zakaria being an intellectual are just so much wishful thinking on the part of the liberal hive.
Once you get past that sort of BS/Hype it is easy to understand that there is no reason for any expectation of intellectual rigor or honesty in his work.
He is a hack … period.
Actually your reference to Aristotles influence on Alex the Great is a bit off.
Little evidence exists about the patricide you allege but much exists off Alex ruthless annihilation of the coup that did the deed.
Alex was a cool pragmatic thinker….who cut the Gordian Knot.
Besides if I recall it was Plato rather than Aristotle who tutored Philip’s spawn.
No, it was Aristotle. Plato was dead by then.
No, Alex was not a “cool, pragmatic thinker”. He was a near-perpetually drunken, homicidal, paranoid megalomaniac who was also a parricide and with a severe oedipal complex. Evidence for his murder of his father is indeed circumstantial, but compellingly so.
He was very very good at just one thing: armies and battlefields.
NME, “spawned religions”? No, but he was the driving force behind RC’s intolerant philosophy emerging out of Augustine. He was extremely anti-democratic and a justifier of so-called enlightened tyranny.
I admit that I have been heavily influenced by a biography of Alexander that was written by someone who started off by declaring that his biography was a deliberate attempt to analyze what is known about Alexander from the standpoint of realpolitik. I don’t remember the author and the book is in storage, but I remember the author pointing out that biographies of Alexander generally fall either into the category of hagiography or of demonization depending upon whether the biography was written by someone romanticizing A the G or by someone from one of the regions in which he slaughtered people wholesale.
The treatment had the ring of truth to it as it viewed A the G as just another ambitious conqueror who worked hard to write his own legacy by traveling with his own bevy of epic poets to compose works celebrating his deeds. Empires come and go, but human nature stays the same and there is no reason to start with the assumption that Alexander somehow transcended the baseness of most leaders.
The biography made a very good case that many of the things commonly believed about Alexander are likely false. In particular,
* Alexander, though a very skilled commander, was not undefeated in battle as there are accounts of a battle fought at a river (I’m sorry, I don’t remember the name of the battle) which don’t make much sense in their details, but do make some sense if Alexander impulsively launched an initial attack that failed the first day, then launched a more thoughtful and successful attack the next day and instructed his “press corps” to write their accounts as if there was only one attack that was successful. The suspect parts of the account of the battle involved, among other things, the use of mounted cavalry at the top of the steep bank on the far side of the river across which Alexander attacked when the defender had at his disposal large numbers of Greek spearmen and pikemen which would have been the obvious choice to use in the defense.
* Alexander was motivated by personal ambition, not by a desire to spread Greek enlightenment to the rest of the world. In fact, when Alexander conquered a region, he didn’t impose Greek culture or replace the existing ruling structure, rather he simply replaced the existing ruler and adopted the customs, symbols and rituals of authority of the conquered territory. For example, when he conquered Egypt, he proclaimed himself Pharaoh and when he conquered Persian satrapies, he made himself the new satrap and required his Greek commanders to observe the Persian habit of bowing and touching their heads to the floor in his presence – something which was extremely unpopular with his much more egalitarian Greek commanders many of whom were older and much more experienced than Alexander.
Good points in this, SE. The battle you are trying to remember is Granicus right at the outset of the campaign. There’s also been a great deal of mystery about his second battle at the Ipsus. Macedonian casualties seem to have been much higher than the contemporary historians indicate, given his need for substantial new drafts from Macedonia ahead of normal rotation.
What just about all historians agree on is that his role model was Achilles. And that tells you just about all you need to know about his character. And the rest comes from the fact that he named more than two dozen cities after himself.
The aforementioned cynical biography also claimed that it was common back in the day for conquerors to assert that they were demigods so that much of Alexander’s self-agrandizement was just standard practice made memorable by A’s remarkable military success.
It’s a good thing that not all conquerors founded a bunch of cities named after themselves otherwise there would be Ghengisvilles scattered all over Asia.
I think you are being a little hard on Plato. To see my point, list, in order, the all-time top 4 causes of human death.
Here’s my list:
1. Accidents, physical trauma or disease.
2. Starvation or exposure.
3. Old age.
4. Communism.