Matt Taibbi

I think it's a pretty fair argument to say that no one who wasn't already invested in hate-watching Trump news 24/7 gave a shit about Russiagate.

*weighs factors*

you are objectively pro-oligarch, howja like them apples, ha CHACHACHA?

Taibbi has succumbed to pundit's syndrome, a condition induced by the pressure to prove you are a worthy pundit by constantly coming up with fresh original thinking, but which finally just sucks your head further up your own ass.

It's when they slide from "see, the left also has an issue with this, to some extent" to "both sides are the same" where it turns into a dumb (and, sadly, lucrative) hot take.

sorry, awful sentence there.

I’ve gotten progressively less sympathetic to Taibbi over the last few years. I think the big blind spot that he either shares or somehow forgets to acknowledge is the bizarre oligarchy/kleptocracy that’s endemic to Russia, and to some extent, was inculcated there by the US through example and economic advisory consulting in the early/mid 90s. It was a great deal for the US to have an economic base run by entities that were, if not friendly, capable of grabbing enough power to destabilize any sort of resurgent Soviet tendencies.

This, as in the US where we’ve got entrenched corporations as opposed to individual oligarchs, has bitten the international community in the ass as these people have little interest in doing anything other than fucking with other individuals and entities in the interest of solidifying their own power and keeping others in chaos. I think the Russian state has some role, but they’re really busy negotiating a bizarre detente with their internal entities, who also would like to fuck with the US and other governments as well. So there’s a Russian state and an oligarch state, just like the US has a tenuous relationship with the corporate entities that would go nuts the moment they couldn’t buy influence and stability in our country

which is bizarre too because acknowledging & reporting on that was supposed to be the whole selling point of the eXile

i thought the selling point was how when you're a man they let you do it, you can do anything

Say what you will about Taibbi, but he's still doing yeoman's work on the unfairness and absurdity of the US economy:

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/student-loan-horror-when-you-think

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/financial-devils-dictionary-spac

Fox is one channel that no longer represents real institutional political influence in this country anymore. The financial/educational/political elite with all the power is on the other side, and I think they’re the people to be worrying about.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 3, 2021

Uhhhhh

TAKE THE RED PILL, NEO

next he'll say it was corporate shills who pushed him further right

Well done, snobs of the #Resistance. You made the Horseshoe Theory real.

ah, shit. Time to take a long look in the mirror, guys.

did this all start with him getting #metoo'ed over that book he wrote years ago? and ironically didn't that turn out to be false and propagated by the right (turned out book was mostly fictional)?

yeah it’s all the feminists’ fault

let me point out a yet again that he has a ton of active namesearchers on twitter to defend him on that specific issue which is suspicious af, that he & ames did not claim their writing was fictional or satirical until they were called out for how repulsive it was, that even it was it would be indefensible & anyone who doesn’t see that is a fucking danger, that this trajectory was entirely fucking predictable & was in fact predicted precisely by the people who were called shrill, scolds, witch hunters & far worse for taking these great men to task for their bullshit

also using the hashtag in that way is a scumbag move

then just like when every piece of shit like this goes openly right wing it’s somehow a huge surprise while those who called it from the beginning are still painted as hysterical PC harpies who are now somehow responsible for turning them fash in the first place

I will admit I didn't realize this was going to happen to Naomi Wolf though it somehow makes perfect sense in retrospect

Left, I'm sick of your "namesearching." Feels like every time this thread is revived you come over to go completely nuts and spread a bunch of disproven accusations (boldly accusing him of being "suspscious"). Taibbi is still doing good work on his substack. I think his media criticism stuff is not my favorite of his work, but I still think there is some validity to his arguments around media groupthink (similar to what Zeynap is writing about).

(looks at why this thread was revived)

otoh fuck Taibbi with that nonsense.

fuck you and this rapist needs to die

Can you not with the “fuck you?” Jesus.

my recollection was that the #metoo stuff that was being pegged on him was motivated by the right, and not backed up by anything in reality, which is why I'm surprised to see him pivot so hard right (although he's been trending that way for a couple of years). but I could be wrong.

he's a piece of shit without the #metoo accusations, thankfully

I would take allegations against Taibbi seriously if there were any, but there aren’t. He sure sucks now though.

Saw this follow-up, and I just don’t know how you can look at the current state of affairs and genuinely think this way unless you’ve just been hate-watching Maddow and Scarborough nonstop and paying zero attention to what Republican states are doing:

I found your informal reply in the comments way more informative and fascinating than the article. It’s less polished but enjoyable. Why not write that way more often? pic.twitter.com/QdhCGMAvqD

— Candice📚 Got Vaxed and Waxed🔥🐣 (@redshoe9) June 4, 2021

taibbi is a jerk and his actual work has become indefensibly awful but yes, the “accusations” against him have been thoroughly debunked

I just don't understand what account you can have of US politics in which control of state legislatures doesn't count as institutional power and where elected officials openly endorsing the idea that voter fraud put Biden in office doesn't make that claim "officially approved" -- they are, literally, officials, approving it!!

I really have zero knowledge of who this guy is as a person, I just think the idea that the extremely disciplined and powerful national Republican party and its state auxiliaries with their very fervent and consistent and largely successful attempts to undercut rival institutions (e.g. by defunding unions, by stripping power from governors and judges elected in ungerrymanderable statewide elections), does not count as a locus of "institutional power" is, well, very stupid.

Boy, he's lost it..

Let’s stop right here. Imagine writing, in June 2021, that it’s Democratic elites making “profound arguments against traditional tenets of democracy.” Republican elites are currently engaged in a “debate” about whether formally legal forms of stopping Democratic electoral majorities from governing or whether extralegal violence is justified, but this one dump op-ed by an AEI fellow shows that it’s the Democrat Party that really hates democracy and the “populist” Donald Trump.

ah the centrist Dennis Perrin

I had no idea a pundit calling for destroying capitalism was a centrist #goalposts

or should I be reading hot defenses of Matt Taibbi someplace else?

Yes, I, the person who revived this with his insanity am definitely looking for hot defenses.

Good faith criticism (or defense) aren't coming from the blog that Bush era self-suck.

He loves ivermectin btw

well then why doesn't he marry it

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/ivermectin-can-a-drug-be-right-wing

Is this really that objectionable?

results from fluvoxamine trials looking pretty good

xp I don't think there's a hard criterion for "objectionable" but I, personally, did not care for it.

Physicians have a limited toolbox to treat patients who have contracted covid, especially if they are showing severe symptoms. Adding to that toolbox seems like a good idea. ivermectin should be investigated on that basis alone.

But none of these potential treatments are cures and they should not be discussed by anyone as if they were an adequate substitute for the vaccines, which are extremely safe and effective at preventing covid infections from happening at all. Once you're ill with covid it's all a roll of the dice how sick you get or how long it might take to recover... or die.

i'm not a taibbi fan but this isn't a pro-ivermectin article

I read Taibbi's ivermectin article. By and large he peddles the same thinking I just wrote, above. But he drops in little poison pills of conspiracist thinking and structures the whole article to confuse the issue and avoid his own stated positions. Witness the final paragraph and the "some say this, others say that" refusal to commit himself:

Should people on their deathbeds be allowed to try anything to save themselves? That seems like an easy question to answer. Should the entire world be allowed to practice self-care on a grand scale? That’s a different issue. Some would say absolutely not, while others would say the corruption of pharmaceutical companies and the medical system unfortunately make it a necessity.

i would also be confused if i thought this was an article about whether people should be allowed to use unproven medications. but it's not, that's why he titled the article "can a drug be right wing" and the last sentence is "the world is increasingly divided along this trust/untrust axis." and this sentence: "Ivermectin has suffered the same fate as thousands of other news topics since Donald Trump first announced his run for the presidency nearly six years ago, cleaved in two to inhabit separate factual universes for left and right audiences."

If that were the whole point of the article, then just stating that thesis and connecting it to ivermectin could have been accomplished in 10% of the word count he employed. All the rest was beside that point, which leads me to think the point was not what the headline indicated.

On reflection, I think what bothers me about Taibbi's post is its structural similarity to "just asking questions" posts about climate change; the same "experts almost universally think X but I found some equally credentialed people who say Y," the same "look there's no evidence that the mainstream view is wrong and every attempt to find evidence like that has failed, but that's not proof the mainstream view ISN'T wrong," the same sense that "the people promoting the mainstream view SAY there will be big negative consequences if they're not listened too but who made them the absolute arbiters?"

I guess articles like that about climate change, you could say, "they're not denying climate change, they just say that climate scientists shouldn't be so sure of themselves and the view that climate change is either not happening or could actually be solved easily without reducing fossil fuel consumption should be given a fair hearing and not be dismissed." But *is* that what you'd say?

Do a lot of climate denial apologists reiterate the findings of experts who warn of climate change?

Stories like these aren’t proof the drug works. They don’t even really rise to the level of evidence. People recover from diseases all the time, and it doesn’t mean any particular treatment was responsible. Short of the gold standard of randomized controlled trials, there’s no proof.

and

There clearly is not evidence that ivermectin is the next penicillin, at least as far as its effects on Covid-19. As is noted in nearly every mainstream story about the subject, the WHO has advised against its use pending further study, there have been randomized studies showing it to be ineffective in speeding recovery, and the drug’s original manufacturer, Merck, has said there’s no “meaningful evidence” of efficacy for Covid-19 patients. However, it’s also patently untrue, as is frequently asserted, that there’s no evidence that the drug might be effective.

This past week, for instance, Oxford University announced it was launching a large-scale clinical trial. The study has already recruited more than 5,000 volunteers, and its announcement says what little is known to be true: that “small pilot studies show that early administration with ivermectin can reduce viral load and the duration of symptoms in some patients with mild COVID-19,” that it’s “a well-known medicine with a good safety profile,” and “because of the early promising results in some studies, it is already being widely used to treat COVID-19 in several countries.”

The Oxford text also says “there is little evidence from large-scale randomized controlled trials to demonstrate that it can speed up recovery from the illness or reduce hospital admission.”

Is it just that he typed the word ivermectin at all?

Stories like these aren’t proof the drug works. They don’t even really rise to the level of evidence.

Yes. These observations are made, briefly, but only after retailing a very long, detailed anecdote that suggests the exact opposite and is given the prominence of leading the article with no hint that the point of telling it is to call it into question. Rhetorically, it is the main course, not the supposed disclaimer.

Also it carefully fails to mention that ivermectin has had adverse effects in patients, and it's currently recommended against because it can do more harm than good.

i don't think it's quite a just asking questions thing but it's close enough; the thing i hate about him is he makes all these observations like wow there's such a political divide on the topic of ivermectin! there's no place for people to look up information on it! then that's it, no discussion of what causes this or who is benefiting, this phenomenon just appeared out of thin air. similarly his subtitle calling is "hostage to a global fight between populists and anti-populists." like populism is where the line is drawn.

There does not seem to be a media blackout on fluvoxamine. Maybe ivermectin just isn’t that good for covid.

I thought this was a good discussion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlLr8xuJcF8