{"id":194869,"date":"2008-08-13T17:19:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-13T22:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/13\/thomas-the-mustache-of-pablum-friedman-is-proved-wrong-again\/"},"modified":"2008-08-13T17:19:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-13T22:19:00","slug":"thomas-the-mustache-of-pablum-friedman-is-proved-wrong-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/13\/thomas-the-mustache-of-pablum-friedman-is-proved-wrong-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas &#8220;The Mustache of Pablum&#8221; Friedman is Proved Wrong Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 1996, Thomas &#8220;The Mustache of Pablum&#8221; Friedman <a href=\"http:\/\/query.nytimes.com\/gst\/fullpage.html?res=9B03EEDD123FF93BA35751C1A960958260\">had a theory<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p> So I\u2019ve had this thesis for a long time and came here to Hamburger University at McDonald\u2019s headquarters to finally test it out. The thesis is this: No two countries that both have a McDonald\u2019s have ever fought a war against each other.<\/p>\n<p>The McDonald\u2019s folks confirmed it for me. I feared the exception would be the Falklands war, but Argentina didn\u2019t get its first McDonald\u2019s until 1986, four years after that war with Britain. Civil wars don\u2019t count: McDonald\u2019s in Moscow delivered burgers to both sides in the fight between pro-and anti-Yeltsin forces in 1993.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You know, you would do more for the betterment of humanity, if you flipped burgers, as opposed to writing OP\/EDs for the <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Times<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>H\/T <a href=\"http:\/\/yglesias.thinkprogress.org\/archives\/2008\/08\/so_much_for_the_golden_arches_theory.php\">Matthew Yglesias<\/a>, who gives us this picture of the Tbilisi McDonalds:<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pic60.picturetrail.com\/VOL1689\/10590113\/20270734\/330115485.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 1996, Thomas &#8220;The Mustache of Pablum&#8221; Friedman had a theory: So I\u2019ve had this thesis for a long time and came here to Hamburger University at McDonald\u2019s headquarters to finally test it out. The thesis is this: No two countries that both have a McDonald\u2019s have ever fought a war against each other. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[964,982,979,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-relations","category-stupid","category-wanker","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194869"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}