How does this happen?
By 
Seriously, how does this happen? (I assume being married to a billionaire plays some role).
Friedman wrote at least one genuinely interesting book, thirty years ago now it’s true, but he’s not an idiot, at least not congenitally.
And yet he’s become a person who can go on national TV and say something this transparently idiotic, and not strategically, but sincerely. Very very sincerely.
Friedman’s career trajectory reminds me of Orwell’s summing up of the once-famous but now largely forgotten Edwardian novelist and social critic John Galsworthy. Orwell remarks that Galsworthy’s early work provided a “not altogether untrue picture of the Edwardian days when English capitalism still seemed unassailable. “
But quite suddenly something happened; Galsworthy’s private quarrel with society (whatever it may have been) came to an end. From then on it was obvious he was in no essential way different different from the people he had made his name by attacking . . .
Galsworthy was a bad writer, and some inner trouble, sharpening his sensitiveness, nearly made him into a good one; his discontent healed itself, and he reverted to type. It is worth pausing to wonder in just what form the thing is happening to oneself.