Roger Friedman does not get Syriana, which means it must be great

I generally try to avoid writing too much about Fox "gossip" Roger Friedman, whose severe cultural illiteracy and borderline retardation make it awfully easy to tee him up for a 300-yard drive . Alas, as we learned a few weeks back when he spent a few hundred words picking Viggo Mortensen's pubic hair out his teeth, some of Friedman's Fox 411 columns attain such pornographic couplings of self-awareness and absurdity that to ignore it would be to let you down.

Take today's dispatch from a recent star-studded preview screening of Syriana, "a thriller for people who read The Financial Times":

Syriana is not always easy to follow. Sometimes I felt like I needed a study guide. But (filmmaker Stephen) Gaghan has made such an engrossing film that you can actually suspend disbelief and just go with it. Once you’re in, you’re in, too. I don’t know if it will make money or be a Best Picture candidate, but Syriana is the most intelligent movie of 2005 so far, and incredibly satisfying.

"Once you’re in, you’re in, too"? Someone up this fucker's dosage, would you?

Look, I know things could be worse: He could be Caryn James, who steals The Times's money every week with trenchant observations like this one about 2005's surfeit of straight actors playing gay: "Our awareness of these nonfiction roles makes it easier and maybe more acceptable for middle-class heterosexual viewers - a group that does, after all, include most of us in the audience - to embrace characters whose sexual preferences we don't share." But Friedman, who does pen the doozy, "Syriana may be an eye opener to westerners who don’t give much thought to world events" (keep in mind this guy works for Fox Fucking News), has clearly made it his New Year's resolution to surpass James in both myopia and irrelevance:

One note though: I would change that poster and ad showing a blind-folded, bearded man. It’s a huge turn-off. It looks like a torture documentary or a prisoner of war saga. Warner Bros. would do well to sell Syriana as a thriller soap opera with intrigue, a la Three Days of the Condor, and make sure to put (Matt) Damon and (Amanda) Peet’s pictures in there with (George) Clooney’s.

Hmm. You know, perhaps James is safe. I am thinking Friedman might be aiming even higher to supersede a real cultural mastermind.