Know a Pundit: Zakaria's Post Reality Revision of the "Rise of the Rest"

Since his new book and new Sunday morning talk show came out this week, Another Pundit figured Fareed Zakaria would be the first to get skewered.

Wikibio:

Dr. Fareed Zakaria PhD (born January 20, 1964, Mumbai, India) is a journalist, columnist, author, editor, commentator, and television host specializing in international relations and foreign affairs.

He was named editor of Newsweek International in October 2000. He writes a weekly foreign affairs column for Newsweek, which appears biweekly in the Washington Post. In 2003, his book The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Norton) was published.

On television, Zakaria hosted the weekly Foreign Exchange with Fareed ZakariaPBS. From 2002 until 2007, he was a regular member of the roundtable of ABC News's This Week with George Stephanopoulos and an analyst for ABC News. In the fall of 2007, he joined CNN to host a weekly show, called Fareed Zakaria - GPS (Global Public Square), on international affairs that premiered worldwide on June 1, 2008. news show for

Estimated Net Wealth: Shit, I don't know. It's in the millions, no doubt. It's a great question, though.

So you wanna' be a corporate pundit, and make the big bucks? Fareed's story is a great lesson in how to do it. As corporate media's go-to brownie on "why they hate us," he's the quintessential "good cop" neo-liberal propagandist, known to many as a "pundit" for the fourth estate.

He's semi-famous for his participation in a not-so-secret meeting set up by Paul Wolfowitz that was to set the tone for the Bush Administration's middle east policy post 9/11.

His pundistyle? It's a pretty formulaic mix of simple metaphors, fake gravitas, unauthentic provocation, and, of course, the requisite kneel to those in power.

(A confession: I watched and liked his first show today. He's not a bad interviewer. It's about the rest of the world. He had Blair thinking and choosing his words carefully. Yet I doubt he'll have Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales on soon ;)

Fareed's latest:

The Future of American Power: How American Can Survive the Rest

And a new book, The Post American World.

An excerpt, "The rise of the rest," was published in last week's Newsweek.

(Another confession: No, I haven't read the book. Probably won't read the whole thing - especially with an excerpt with the thesis out there!)

"Let them drink Coke." J. Gauna

His central basis for the rise of the rest:

...The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism.

...We are living through the third great power shift in modern history. The first was the rise of the Western world, around the 15th century. It produced the world as we know it now—science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the industrial and agricultural revolutions. It also led to the prolonged political dominance of the nations of the Western world. The second shift, which took place in the closing years of the 19th century, was the rise of the United States. Once it industrialized, it soon became the most powerful nation in the world, stronger than any likely combination of other nations. For the last 20 years, America's superpower status in every realm has been largely unchallenged—something that's never happened before in history, at least since the Roman Empire dominated the known world 2,000 years ago. During this Pax Americana, the global economy has accelerated dramatically. And that expansion is the driver behind the third great power shift of the modern age—the rise of the rest.

More proof that, as a friend of mine recently told me when I passed him this article, that these neo-liberals don't have a clue of what's happening out there.

The only power shift I see is slight. While the elite class is growing, it's still an elite class. It's not as if the PEOPLE of "rest" of the world are benefiting from this so called power shift (yet the latest code for neo-liberal economic policies that have become the conventional wisdom solution to globalization).

The message is still the same:

...hunger for the (people), "investment" as charitable hand-outs and visits to (the rest of the world) as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of life behind it.

That's right. Let them eat cake. Let them drink coke. And let them watch corporate news.

Oh yeah, and thanks for the natural resources.