The world's worst lefty blogger goes after the world's worst columnist. Hilarity ensues...I guess we should all be relieved that Sirota doesn't use the word "Establishment" at all, and only uses the word "elite" four times, but simply using a dictionary would have helped. First of all, Thomas Friedman is neither a "scion" nor an "heir" to a multi-billion dollar fortune. His wife is. It's her family that has the dough, not his; since he has no legal expectancy of receiving a dollar of that fortune through any future probate proceeding, he's not an heir, and since he is not a blood relative of his wife's family, he's not a scion.

Secondly, the attack on Friedman suggests that because support for Free Trade, job outsourcing, etc., supposedly benefits only the wealthy, and since he is "...an heir to a multi-billion-dollar business empire," that means his opinion is inherently tainted on the subject. I happen to agree that Mr. Friedman is a bit of a loon, but that's because he's usually wrong about what he writes, not the fact that he married into a family that made its fortune in real estate. If we were to impose the strictest trade barriers imaginable, and if we were to criminalize the practice of outsourcing jobs to the Third World, Friedman's in-laws would still be just as wealthy. Their investment is in land, not WalMart.