Matt Taibbi

http://observer.com/2000/06/from-russia-with-lust

cool guy

eXile was the best source of Russian news for years, even if Taibbi and Ames are / were creeps at times.

not likely

Seriously, it was probably the only source of unbiased, fearless Russia-based journalism in English until they were shut down by the government. Whatever dickishness they got up to (Ames used to review prostitutes in a regular column) their coverage was peerless.

sure and you prob think taibbis writing on american finance is good too

I rarely read it. Seems ok, if a bit simplistic.

eXile was genuinely great, though.

“We wrote a whole bunch of editorials about the size of Putin’s penis,” said Mr. Taibbi.

o taibbi u so crazy

“People are afraid of what our paper will write about them, so they give us free shit,” Mr. Taibbi said.

“That’s the thing about Russia,” Mr. Taibbi said. “It’s a totally unironic place. When I first was a student over there I had this girlfriend who had this mobster boyfriend, so she only saw me between 3 and 6 in the afternoon, but as a going-away present when I left my exchange program, she gave me this picture of herself naked in a bathtub. It was totally serious, like, ‘Here, for you to remember me by.’ An American woman would never do that except as a joke or to be sexy.”

american chix man

Journalist James Verini, while interviewing Taibbi in a Manhattan restaurant for Vanity Fair, said Taibbi cursed and threw a coffee at him, and accosted him as he tried to get away, all in response to Verini's volunteered opinion that Taibbi's book, The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia, was "redundant and discursive."[18] Taibbi later said the incident was "an aberration from how I've behaved in the last six or seven years."[19]

taibbi's financial journalism has occasional issues, but for the most part is pretty good. i'm consistently surprised by how few other journalists have gone his route (in terms of financial reporting), all things considered.

b/c it's not as exciting as having Bloody Marys with Cokie and George Will?

anyway he uses obscenity in a whee-I'm-at-Rolling-Stone manner but he was the first journalist in 2008 and 2009 to explain credit default swaps and such in a clear manner.

legume what is your beef with dude's financial reporting exactly?

another politics thread of substance and enlightenment

legume what is your beef with dude's financial reporting exactly?

― the route is ban (k3vin k.),

was just going to ask this myself

he doesnt know what hes talking abt!

i mean 'clear' try wrong

also is writing is basically the worst

another politics thread of substance and enlightenment

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Thursday, June 7, 2012 10:24 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this guy would appeal to you, because he is so substantial

legume what is your beef with dude's financial reporting exactly?

― the route is ban (k3vin k.), Thursday, June 7, 2012 10:10 AM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kevinclovestofu

oh, this is gonna be one of these threads

dude is overrated by people who think he is 'cool,' underrated on actual writing performance by people turned off by that perception

Malcolm Gladwell S/D C/D

nobody commented on this!

errors is a single piece http://prospect.org/article/errors-matt-taibbi

dude is overrated by people who think he is 'cool,' underrated on actual writing performance by people turned off by that perception

― mh, Thursday, June 7, 2012 10:42 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

o god stfu

um who are these people who think he's *quote* cool *quote*?

Hunter Thompson aficionados who are into the renegade/substance abuse style of writing? I've run into a few, and count that shit as a guilty pleasure sometimes

lag∞n, I get yr point but there's a place for a populist reporter who appeals to those who aren't picking up well-researched political mags on the regular

it'd be nice if dude had a fact checker, though

yeah itd be cool if there was a populist finical reporter who a. knew wtf he was talking abt b. wasnt the worst writer in the world c. wasnt a weird self involved misogynist

this person clearly is not matt taibbi

what abt someone like felix salmon

he writes mostly for a p financially literate audience and doesnt generally have taibbis passion for publicly s.h.a.m.i.n.g.i.n.g. the industry

yeah itd be cool if there was a populist finical reporter who a. knew wtf he was talking abt b. wasnt the worst writer in the world c. wasnt a weird self involved misogynist

kinda hard to argue against this

“That’s the thing about Russia,” Mr. Taibbi said. “It’s a totally unironic place. When I first was a student over there I had this girlfriend who had this mobster boyfriend, so she only saw me between 3 and 6 in the afternoon, but as a going-away present when I left my exchange program, she gave me this picture of herself naked in a bathtub. It was totally serious, like, ‘Here, for you to remember me by.’ An American woman would never do that except as a joke or to be sexy.”

american chix man

― lag∞n, Thursday, June 7, 2012 7:12 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol what a simp

in a way taibbi then is perfect -- nobody knows how this shit works but people know in their bones that something is grossly wrong and the great majority are being shafted.

felix salmon is great (great name too) but he wouldn't have come up with "vampire squid" either

but yes the exile crew and their 'aesthetic' are p gross

Indisputable that they were gross. 90% of their stuff was gutter-level gonzo / Vice offensiveness but the other 10% was worth more than pretty much every mainstream reporter working for an English-language paper put together.

i will admit to liking "war nerd"

Dolan/Brecher stuff was usually p.great. When I first became aware of Vice it seemed like the worst parts of eXile combined with NY/etc advertising dollars.

sharivari srs request for evidence here, also did they do like actual reporting or was it more that they were willing to print opinions that were taboo

Both. Can't really offer links atm but will look into it later.

There was a lot of very good reporting / analysis and a definite willingness to print things that other people were too gutless to look at. More importantly, i think they understood Russian politics better than any other news source and were willing to call out all sides, and the press, on their faults.

Nothing about Taibbi is gonzo/druggy, tho.

his style is kinda gonzo imho

Taibbi's 2004 campaign journal Spanking the Donkey cemented his status as an incisive, irreverent, zero-bullshit reporter. In one memorable scene, Taibbi dropped acid then interviewed the former chief of the Office of National Drug Policy—while wearing a Viking helmet.

hmmmmm

...while wearing a viking helmet

i know that in the US today where we're practically flooded with leftist writers tackling economic crimes w/ humor and outrage, Taibbi seems redundant and his flaws are magnified. but imagine an alternate reality where actually every financial writer is either a shill for Wall St. or a blathering pundit on the Sunday morning news programs, and you can see why, even for his flaws, people would embrace Taibbi (who is often very informative - okay, so he sometimes gets confused about how derivatives work, so do I). u know. theoretically.

his crimes against reality go way beyond not understanding derivatives

r u on the jp morgan payroll?

lagoon, would you recommend Michael Lewis

he's waiting for that one perfect anti-oligarchy journo

the Democratic Party's *darling* surrender on single-payer has me on the cancer expressway to the fuckin' poorhouse

I was just in need of clarification after you decided to carve out part of my sentence so you could prop up Taibbi's ludicrous position

reminder that Taibbi wrote a book titled Insane Clown President

but that was two years ago; clearly he's now the Bannon of Rolling Stone

lol Taibbi 'supports Trump' now eh

Taibbi is rich enough now that it doesn't matter to him who's president.

reminder that Taibbi wrote a book titled Insane Clown President

The key word being "Clown" - it's all so amusing, don't you know.

I feel like I should know sic's story. Is it Australia?

If you have time and can cope with 4:3 cropped into widescreen, George Miller produced, co-wrote, and co-directed a 3 x feature-length miniseries about the events in 1983

(shot by Dean Semler, co-directed by Philip Noyce)

cute non sequitur xxp

you might want to take issue with ilx then, and its apprec of gallows humor

x-post: Does it have a talking pig in it? Otherwise I'm not a fan of Miller.

yes, its name is John Kerr

7yxWY6vubZknda875toEURP8MlnD4ChruA5MkGAY4

this is really good

― treeship., Monday, October 14, 2019

It's not.

yeah, it's pretty bad.

The whistleblower whose complaint against Trump has led to an official impeachment inquiry is a CIA agent. Let's just sit a moment with that, shall we?

this line of argument is so fucking dumb. dan ellsberg worked for the pentagon and the rand corporation, ed snowden worked for the CIA (as a subcontractor), and mark felt held the second-highest position at the FBI. does andrew o'hehir know what a "whistleblower" is?

shall we?

The only reason to cite the connection of the whistleblower to the CIA would be to bring their credibility into doubt. But the WH released a transcript of the phone conversation, so we now have ample and reliable evidence of the crime, coming not from the CIA, but direct from the WH. Consequently, at this point in the proceedings the whistleblower's credibility is kind of not a question any more. As for their motive for exposing Trump as a criminal, who the fuck cares?

i think it's fair to 1.) want trump gone, he's a lunatic and 2.) be wary of people using his lunacy as an opportunity to consolidate power for themselves.

But treesh, where do you see anyone consolidating power? Power would be moved to Mike Pence if Trump was impeached, and... That's basically it, everything else is speculation?

I think it’s kind of odd that liberals love james comey and people like this now honestly. And the line that trump is bad bc he is a putin asset—which i STILL see, especially as an explanation for the abandonment of kurdish allies—is gratingn, because it seems like a way to fundamentally misunderstand the problem with trump. He is not a foreigner sent to undermine our democracy. I wish he was bc then the problem he represents would be easier to solve, but he is a very realand homegrown far right nativist who managed to capture the presidency. Needs to be faced

That’s not what Taibbi is doing. His position is full on #2 because he thinks the country deserves and wants Trump.

I read plenty of liberal-ass shit and they all hate Comey.

Treesh, that's not wrong, but I don't see what it has to do with impeachment. Trump was abusing his office to help his reelection chances, that needs to be impeached. Unless you are arguing that the rules should be suspended, so that he can be defeated in another way you would find more effective. And I'm not sure that's a good argument, for a multitude of reasons.

Trump won because of American problems and not foreign intervention. Sure (it's not actually that certain, but let's say it is). He was still trying to get foreign involvement to help him next time. If that's allowed to pass, then it could very well be that the fight against American problems won't succeed, because that can't beat foreign involvement. And what's the worst case scenario in removing Trump without defeating the underlying problem? It's that the problem just pops back up, but if you think it can be defeated, well, then defeat it then. There's no argument here for not fighting against what is clearly an abuse of power.

I think it’s kind of odd that liberals love james comey and people like this now honestly.

xxp This is confused thinking, similar to the idea that if someone does something stupid, they must be a stupid person. James Comey is a great example of someone whose limited and oversimplified understanding of the world around him can show up in his actions as both bad and good, depending on whether the complexity of the situation exceeds his grasp of it.

In the case of Trump, the situation was not complicated, and his system of ethics responded adequately, for which he deserves credit. This does not make him any more reliable or loveable. He's as likely to clumsily screw things up as he ever was. However, the fact that he no longer holds a position of power makes his potential to screw things up less threatening.

I think it’s kind of odd that liberals love james comey and people like this now honestly.

wait what? Which liberals? Name'em.

That definitely *was* true, I think it's mostly worn off, thankfully. Then again he is getting a miniseries.

I'm with Fred on this one. If someone is trying to use their office to circumvent elections, they cannot be removed by... an election.

Trump won because of American problems and not foreign intervention. Sure (it's not actually that certain, but let's say it is)

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

idk i still think there's a big block of #resistance dorks that love when he posts pictures of himself gazing wistfully at the ocean with a semi-cryptic allusion to trump or some dorky quote about Honor

now he's getting the Jeff Newsroom treatment

It's impossible to measure the impact of Russian hacks on an election that was this close, but it's completely besides the point.

Pretty sure the electoral college was a bigger factor by several orders in any case and that is An American Problem

True, but so what? That doesn't prove he would have won without Russia. Because that is impossible to prove or disprove. And besides the point.

Pretty sure the electoral college was a bigger factor by several orders in any case and that is An American Problem

― Simon H., Monday, October 14, 2019

and voter suppression in North Carolina and especially Wisconsin.

yes, another American Problem that predates Trump by at least a few cycles.

this country is kind of fucked up in very many ways

this country is kind of fucked up in very many ways

It produced Matt Taibbi, after all.

Trump won because of American problems and not foreign intervention. Sure (it's not actually that certain, but let's say it is). He was still trying to get foreign involvement to help him next time.

His extremely urgent and clumsy attempt to get foreign intervention again strongly suggests that he, for one, does not believe he could have won without foreign intervention last time.

Pretty sure the electoral college was a bigger factor by several orders

Both campaigns knew about the electoral college and both strategized around its effect on the election. US voters have to hear endlessly about "swing states" during campaigns. It's hard to believe the Internet Research Bureau wasn't informed enough to know about the electoral college, too.

It is reasonable to think such basic knowledge of US elections would have guided some of their activities, especially since we know the Trump campaign was trying to get their own recent internal polling data in their hands. Saying that the EC was a big factor is not saying much. It's always a big factor and always has been. Russian troll farms have not always been added to that mix before. It was a new wrinkle in a very close election.

Well, Taibbi's...whatever you want to call it has been picked up by Breitbart, Instapundit, Scott Adams (FYI, the Dilbert dude is a full-on right-wing crazy), Mark Steyn, Ace of Spades and Pamela Geller.

I wish him all the best in his sure-to-be-lucrative career as a third-tier Trump-fellating grifter.

"even the Liberal Matt Taibbi says..."

This is a dumb line of attack not supported by the actual writing.

guys

Tatt Maibbi
^when i'm thinking about getting a tat

don't confuse unperson or Tombot with the writing

their Pavlovian response to M.T. is far more elusive and mysterious

We've seen this story play out over and over. Taibbi's in the "love bombing" phase of flipping to the Right, which narcissists like him are incredibly vulnerable to. I give him less than a year before he's photographed wearing a MAGA hat and shaking hands with big T in the oval office.

how much?

"narcissists" is such a popular label to assign anti-Trumpists who aren't full-blown Pelosians

anti-Trumpists who aren't full-blown Pelosians

So on your world Nancy Pelosi represents the far fringe of anti-Trump sentiment?

The highway center line, where all the roadkill ends up

If Trump loses in 2020, Taibbi’s main target for his vitriolic contrarianism will have to be the Democratic nominee and the party leadership, so he’s basically just hedging his bets, I suppose.

People who don’t believe in anything just aren’t very interesting to me anymore.

The highway center line, where all the roadkill ends up

Pithy, but it doesn't work as a simile because the roadkill I've observed is more often nearer the shoulder of the highway than the middle. Maybe the highways that abound in NYC are different.

People who don’t believe in the established military-industrial hegemony just aren’t very interesting to you anymore.

lol aimless i spent a day on whether to type "do you even DRIVE bro?" but decided morbs has enough fans

cheezit it's the metaphor police!

if i drove i'd be dead