Monday morning and the youth of New York City are up in arms over Thomas Friedman's latest unwelcome financial advice. If you aren't media crazed, then you probably don't live in this city and may have missed the article called We Found the W.M.D. (whatever that means). Well, I did not miss it and either did Shelia McClear. (Gawker, people. Duh.) But if you did, here is the part that pissed everyone off.  He writes:

"So I have a confession and a suggestion. The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: "You don't know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn't be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This finanical crisis is so far from over. We are just at the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home.""

I get that it's his job and he's a Nobel and Pulitzer prize winning economist, but what Thomas Friedman is really becoming reliably famous for these days is being a walking buzz kill. AKA Mom's minivan just pulled up. Quick! Quick! Hide the pipe in the fireplace. Spray some Lyesol. Do you have any Visine?

New Yorkers under 30, okay 35, widely agree that we shouldn't have to sacrafice our dining habits because the baby boomers, et al. fucked up the economy. Dining out is not just about dining out. Yes, dining out is the foundation of our social lives, but it is also our opporunity for career networking, an avenue for idea production and exchange and a cultural quid pro quo. Plus, I have news for you Friedman: We read. We know who you are. We can spot your dirty stache from a mile away. And should you find the courage or have the audacity to come up to us while we are dining (um, weirdo), we would tell you to shut-the-fuck-up. Because:
A ) We are outright sick of your spewing.
B )We have to support the places we love.
C ) We are living our lives.

Of course the remainder of the article highlights the real problem ailing the economy as the lack of trust and loss of confidence in our leadership and finanical system. While that is unarguably true, we are young and selfish and were more concerned about the part directed toward us, so I pooled some of our thoughts (below). I'm going out to lunch now. Peace.

On Friedman's  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/opinion/23friedman.html

"So you're allowed to be there and we're not? Not even if we're on a date or treating ourselves to a night out? Hey, Friedman: please put your thoughts and ideas in a doggy bag and take them home." -Shelia McClear, Gawker

"Snooze. No wonder you're not getting laid, Mr. Friedman." -Bookish Lookish

"And one can obviously recycle old thoughts and use again and again the same worn-out, reductionistic, simplistic, insipidly moralistic Papa Bear crap rather than investing in supposedly extravagant new thoughts, right, Tommy Boy?" -Tammyfaye

"That said, if I was out on the town, and Friedman had gone through with his urge, I'd'a been compelled to go through with my urge to slam his head against the table and hold it there, while my date goes from table to table encouraging the other diners to take turns kicking him in the ass." - Senor_Wences

"I thought we werent supposed to eat tuna because of overfishing!" -zkemeny

"But someone has to continue to support the restaurants we love, the shops where they pay attention to us and all the local businesses we have depended on, and have been good to us for 50 years.  What about the team that cleans my house? The little Thai woman who does alterations? The guy who washes my windows? The yard guys? These people need us now, more than ever. I can still afford them and don't I have a responsibility to keep them on, even though my portfolio has taken a hit?" -Priscilla Robinson

"If you want to save this economy, you should stay home and NOT talk to peole; i.e. suggest to others that they stay home. The entire point is, if people are earning money from their job, then it is a service and of benefit to society, such as restauranteurs / theaters / vendors of all sorts that people go spend some of that money in pursuit of some consumerism."  -MC