I've been thinking a lot about Friedman lately (yeah, I'm twisted). When he defended his Friedman Units to Howie Kurtz he revealed a lot about how he sees the world.
FRIEDMAN: Not really. You know, the problem with analyzing the story, Howie, is that it doesn’t — everyone, first of all, this is the most polarized story I’ve certainly written about, so everyone wants, basically, to be proven right, OK?
So the left — people who hated the war, they want you to declare the war is over, finish, we give up. The right, just the opposite. But I’ve been trying to just simply track the situation on the ground. And the fact is that the outcome there is unclear, and I reflected that in my column. And I will continue to reflect.
Friedman doesn't actually consider himself to be an opinion columnist. He sees himself as a reporter. As a reporter, he's reporting the facts. The Truth. Therefore, his every statement is simply Revealed Truth to the world. He's never wrong, and in fact he's incapable of being wrong. Other people have opinions, but only the Moustache of Understanding possesses the truth.
It's pretty weird.