The Trabant and the Crabgrass Patch

Thomas Friedman says our next Secretary of state should "break all the rules."

Unless Friedman means breaking these rules he previously set forth, this is ridiculous.

So John Kerry is to go all unilateral cowboy? Sadly, no. Friedman's only rule-breaking impulse seems to be ceding ground to the Palestinians and Iranians. In any event, this advice is superfluous, since John Kerry is to be the next SOS.

Honest to God, I'm not saying you can't drown in a pool of Thomas Friedman's wisdom; but you would have to be drunk and face down to do so.

I eagerly await Friedman's decision to turn his ginormous, nuance-fortified brainpower to the rules that Hagel should break at the Department of Defense.

Unless I'm just missing the obvious that this is a joke column hacked into the NYT site.