EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

If they weren’t allowed to be such giant dumbasses in public, we wouldn’t be able to get mad at them

I feel like Matty infuriates people because no matter how many times he gets dunked on for idiocy it only makes him stronger and richer

go ahead. keep screaming "Shut The Fuck Up " at me. it only makes my opinions Worse

— wint (@dril) March 10, 2018

Matty parody account that quotes his tweets and appends them with “ain’t I a stinker.”

Sadly, not every good idea is electorally viable. pic.twitter.com/QQO4yC1Oni

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 18, 2021

How are we getting to a billion Americans without expanded immigration?

I like how Matt bravely protects Gun Regulation by killing a member of the public.

I guess he looked at his book's sales figures.

Shout out to Andy Sullivan for being worse than both of these nerds combined.

What is your explanation of the simply incredible over-representation of Ashkenazi Jews in Nobel Prizes? A group long despised and discriminated against and murdered? Tell me.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) April 19, 2021

Simple: Swedes are thirsty for our swarth

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ezf1XusXsAQlhhN?format=jpg&name=small

I think he deleted it, but I don't even understand that one. "The police killed someone" is a factual description of what happens when the police use lethal force in a manner that causes someone's death, regardless of their intent.

What are the exceptions he is worried about?

yeah I was gonna ask which incident inspired him to write that horseshit, but there's not a good answer to be had

how many times is this now that he's freely announced he's a fucking moron

icymi:

Not aligned with her on policy, but Sinema definitely seems like the senator it would be most entertaining to hang out with. pic.twitter.com/UnkmJTZCtE

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 18, 2021

"Police killed someone" is plain language whose meaning is immediately understood, but "used lethal force" is antiseptic and inert, implying that the event was wholly impersonal, as if both the victim and the police were variables in an equation whose product was "the deceased".

xp Matt Yglesias’s favorite TV show is Young Sheldon.

I don't mind some of Yglesias's contrarian impulses when they are in the service of advocating for progressive policies, but as mainstream journalists have become more receptive to ideas on the left, it feels like Yglesias has now decided to exercise his contrarianism from the right, questioning what he now sees as liberal orthodoxy by positioning himself as a reasonable moderate.

He always seemed to want to carve out his own position, separate from orthodoxies on the right or left. He tends to focus on issues that aren't traditionally associated with the left-right spectrum, such as NIMBYism and zoning. So I don't think he has changed all that much, apart from maybe realizing there is an underserved market niche for an audience (call them moderates, or maybe traditional neoliberals) who are increasingly uncomfortable with how some identity issues are becoming polarized in the mainstream liberal media.

I think he deleted it, but I don't even understand that one. "The police killed someone" is a factual description of what happens when the police use lethal force in a manner that causes someone's death, regardless of their intent.

― jaymc, Wednesday, April 21, 2021 9:00 AM (three hours ago)

this is the kind of thing he posts that makes me think he is dumb as a rock. using lethal force is killing. whether or not you believe it is justified or a murder it's a killing either way. unless his point is that we should be more euphemistic when referring to police killing people

Between Matty and this Eichenwald Tweet it's reallyt crossing the line from "ah, the pundit class" into "maybe these guys are just sick fucks sitting around thinking about ways to inject nuance into murdering children"

George Floyd: Murder
Tamir Rice: Reckless murder
Breonna Taylor: Reckless murder
Eric Garner: Murder
Philando Castille: Murder
Stephon Clark: Reckless murder or manslaughter
Daunte Wright: Probably manslaughter
Trayvon Martin: Manslaughter

I'm sorry. Ma'Khia Bryant: justified.

— Kurt "Masks Save Lives" Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) April 21, 2021

*really

my esteem for eichenwald has plummeted after following him diligently on twitter for the past eight months; every good thing he says is countered by something asinine, something he didn't research on his own (he asks Eric Feigl Ding for insight on coronavirus--Ding is a twitter grifter who should not be consulted), or something hyperbolic that results in nothing (he loudly proclaimed he 'had' the people responsible for harassing him online, that it involved all kinds of important people on the right, that the revelation was coming soon.....that was like five months ago). I think he's kind of a dummy.

yeah this has been known for years that he's a nutjob

eichenwald is the hentai guy, no?

close enough lol: https://nypost.com/2017/06/08/reporter-posts-screen-grab-showing-porn-tab-in-his-browser/

he did something else extremely weird and creepy and probably illegal "investigating" child porn, iirc?

imo you’ll never go wrong assuming 97% of “”pundits”” are utter perverts

Aside from the tentacle porn and weird conduct with a child abuse survivor story, Eichenwald just seems like such a zero it’s wild that he has a readership that can sustain a career.

wow something to think about yeah

Leaving without comment pic.twitter.com/rpDeibttOx

— Andrés Bernal ☀️🇨🇴🇺🇸 (@andresintheory) October 22, 2020

He's so boring! He can't even go full Tucker Carlson like the other substack goons, he has to resolve to a civics textbook from 1949.

the market for milquetoast neoliberal takes may not be what it once was but prob still enough to maintain a newsletter audience

kinda wondering btw but i guess not enough to actually figure it out if substack is juicing their numbers somehow like are they giving away free intro subscriptions, maybe some big corporate deals where they can claim tons of subscribers but no ones really paying much, idk some of the numbers seem kind of fishy

He has about 7,000 subscribers, I think. At the price point he charges, you could make a decent living from 2000. It’s negligible stuff.

yeah 7000 is not that many people, i just cant imagine paying for those takes lol, tho stubstack being a venture funded startup you kinda have to assume theyre doing some at least halfway shady growth hacking

I really like Yglesias (I know, I know) and I'm not paying -- the Twitter feed is exactly the right amount of MY for me. And for that amount of money I can get access to an entire magazine's worth of writing, or a whole nother streaming service. I don't really get who the customers are.

CNN's Rick Santorum: "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture" pic.twitter.com/EMxOEYDbg7

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) April 26, 2021

I feel like if substack was giving away free "paid" subscriptions we'd be hearing about it already. Also most substacks I'm familiar with (not Matty's) have a level of free content and then content that's available only for paid subscribers.

sorry to be sanctimonious, but that that video clip of MY isn't considered disgustingly racist is shocking. Like I literally never want to hear another thing from this dude who giggles his way through a mealy-mouthed endorsement of white supremacy and genocide. WTF

the neoliberal technocracy is plainly sociopathic amoral etc

yeah that was more or less my existing impression of him. I think what surprised me with that clip is how nakedly ideological he actually is, and it's not neoliberalism he's endorsing it's imperialism and colonialism. There's nothing really neoliberal about the US Army waging war on and committing genocide against sovereign native populations followed by the govt handing out free land to white settlers

anyway, this guys sucks, sorry for ranting

neoliberalism IMHO strongly endorses american empire eg dem leadership are all crazy hawks, love american exceptionalism etc, tho i guess you could just call that liberalism since it predates the neoliberal shift

I'm using a stricter definition for sure, not that there's an agreed-upon consensus, plus the fact it's anachronistic to call the settlement of the West neoliberal. We're probably due for a better term to describe the US's combination of domestic neoliberalization + a culture of nationalism + a powerful interventionist state abroad

That little clip of Yglesias talking about Manifest Destiny is so shorn of context I honestly have no idea what his view is on anything, other than that he thinks the US should be successful and powerful (whatever that means).

im not calling the settlement of the west neoliberal im observing that neoliberal ideology necessarily endorses american empire both historical and present, i mean if you want corporate power to flourish you need a enforcement mechanism, and of course you need to glorify whatever got us to this point xp

That little clip of Yglesias talking about Manifest Destiny is so shorn of context I honestly have no idea what his view is on anything, other than that he thinks the US should be successful and powerful (whatever that means).

― o. nate, Monday, April 26, 2021 3:29 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

sounds like something yglesias would say

tho im sure the great minds yglesias et al would discard past glories if it suited their purpose i dont think theyre super invested in it

*cue obama giving a super sleepy speech about the city on the hill*

I mean is the knock that he shouldn't want the US to be successful and powerful or is it that he mentioned American westward expansion without proper emphasis on the crimes associated with it?