Matt Taibbi

if he's no better at it than his readers, he'd be out of a job.

on second thought, I was wrong. many a commentator on current events gains and keeps an audience by being exactly as lazy a thinker as his readers, by confirming their biases for them, but doing it with style and a level of polish and articulation they could not achieve on their own. it's the bread and butter for most politicians, too.

Alfred - I agree that this new work of his has attracted a bunch of confirmation-bias-seeking CHUDs. I don't think that is the point of it all, though. I think the point of a lot of this work is trying to figure out how to break down the different media bubbles that we inhabit, and keeping the MSM honest is an important piece of that. Or maybe it's a lost cause...

Eephus - good point about him maybe looking too hard to find a way to make his point.

Taibbbbi's been doing this all through COVID, last year he wrote about how "no one was talking" about Sweden's COVID response when in fact there had been a lot of media coverage.

I think people who are on Twitter a lot tend to do that - assume because they hear too little/too much about something in their (personalized!) Twitter feed, that NOBODY/EVERYBODY is talking about it.

DJI, but what is Taibbi getting right that other COVID-covering journalists aren't?

I hadn't even heard that the convalescent plasma thing was a bust.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, October 8, 2021 1:56 PM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's too bad, it was perfectly reasonable to hope this would be helpful but so far no dice

https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2021/09/large-study-finds-convalescent-plasma-doesn%E2%80%99t-help-seriously-ill-covid-19-patients

DJI, but what is Taibbi getting right that other COVID-covering journalists aren't?

his name

DJI, but what is Taibbi getting right that other COVID-covering journalists aren't?

Hilarious response as always, DJP.

I think he is getting at the frustration that some of us have with feeling like we are being manipulated, lied to, talked down to, etc.

Here's an example - I still don't think we've gotten a good answer to the simplest question: Has anyone ever actually gotten COVID while outdoors? What I've seen from the media is a lot of "these outdoor events were associated with COVID outbreaks (but they had indoor bathrooms, or everyone also went to indoor bars and restaurants), so keep masking up outdoors just in case!"

Or, how dangerous is COVID compared to the seasonal flu for kids under 12? I have not seen a straight answer to that. Anything approaching an answer to either of these questions is so larded up with caveats and context that it seems more like propaganda than science or journalism.

Has anyone ever actually gotten COVID while outdoors?

The trouble is, there are very few cases of COVID where we can definitively say when, where, and from whom the person contracted the disease. But outdoor transmission is generally thought to be very rare relative to indoor transmission

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/briefing/outdoor-covid-transmission-cdc-number.html

And... that's the message I get from reading the mainstream media, like the New York Times piece above! I really don't think "keep masking up outdoors just in case" is a message enforced by media mandarins. I will admit that this more recent Times piece

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/well/live/covid-delta-variant-vaccine-symptoms.html

says "Most experts agree that you don’t need to wear a mask outdoors if you’re not in a crowd and have plenty of distance (at least six feet) from people whose vaccination status isn’t known" which suggests that you MIGHT need to wear a mask if you're outdoors and NOT distanced; well, all I can say is I live in an ultra-blue city where everybody reads the New York Times and NPR and next to nobody is masked outside.

Or, how dangerous is COVID compared to the seasonal flu for kids under 12? I have not seen a straight answer to that.

Both create minimal, I would even say negligible risk of illness at the level that requires hospitalization. Again, I think this information is presented pretty straight in places like New York Times, Washington Post, etc. There is the complicating issue of whether there might be long-term sequelae for kids I guess, but I've started to feel like that's kind of an unknowable at this point, and not because the media's being suppressive about it.

The issue with kids is always framed wrong, for deliberate reasons by anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers. Yes, kids are less likely to get seriously ill or die from COVID, BUT they can certainly carry COVID and spread it to non-kids.

yes

I think he is getting at the frustration that some of us have with feeling like we are being manipulated, lied to, talked down to, etc.

are you really one of these people?

The CDC wants to avoid a mass panic or mass outbreak. I have been having coffee and meals outdoors for at least a year -- way before vaccines. Not once did I think the CDC was lying to me. Instead, I thought, well, I'm one person who doesn't take any other COVID-related risks except the hour I'm going to sit at my bookstore cafe outside with a coffee or salad. I'll be the first to admit the CDC waited too long to finally acknowledge in April and May that outdoor anything presents little risk -- those of us who protested masked last year knew this -- but, you know, so fucking what?

xxp OMG yes. We know this. Thanks for caveating and contextualizing my post, just in case, for some insane reason, I don't already know that.

This reminds me of the acquaintance who told me in March that "We can't tell you how fucking good these vaccines are" because he was afraid it would make unvaccinated people more reluctant to take them. Well, uh, here we are.

the acquaintance works on the epidemiological staff at my local public university, I should point out. He also said in March that the vaccines were so good we could "more or less" return to normal if everyone else got'em too.

Well, uh, here we are.

If we can't trust the CDC to tell us the truth, isn't that a problem?

I guess there are two options:

1. Be overly-cautious and don't present nuanced information because some people might act irresponsibly.
2. Be more honest and risk some people taking it the wrong way.

I suppose #1 is more safety-focused, at least in the short term. But it's gotta hurt their (and the MSM's) credibility for the next time. And like you point out, it didn't seem to help for this time around either.

BTW, thanks for engaging in this on a level other than a one-sentence dismissal. <3

The thing is, if you're someone who doesn't listen to talk radio or isn't a Trumper, why are CDC guidelines offensive? All of us have worked out in the last 18 months some measure of risk mitigation that absorbs those guidelines but is personal. I read Taibbi's twaddle, though, and realize this interests him not a bit. He wants to posture for cranks, libertarians, and anti-Fauci people.

multi xps - DJI you complain of frustration at being lied, manipulated and talked down to, but neither of the particulars you cited to illustrate this show evidence of the media lying to you, manipulating you or talking down to you. Instead they are based on your desire for 'straightforward' answers to those 'simple' questions that you aren't getting. This frustrates you, because life would be simpler and more straightforward if such answer were forthcoming. Did it occur to you that maybe this really is the best information out there?

Anything approaching an answer to either of these questions is so larded up with caveats and context that it seems more like propaganda than science or journalism.

The people responsible for assembling the science which might answer your questions would, if anything, lard their answers with more caveats and context than the reporters can insert. If you suspect that they know these simple straightforward answers you expect, but are nefariously withholding them from you, all I can say is such a conspiracy does not exist and would make no sense at all.

"if we can't trust the CDC to tell us the truth" huh?

Yeah, maybe there aren't any easy answers. I don't think that's really what I'm looking for but maybe I have a blind spot.

The thing is, if you're someone who doesn't listen to talk radio or isn't a Trumper, why are CDC guidelines offensive?

i have no opinion on the Taibbi thing or the media's framing, but i have been found some writers who were highly critical of the CDC throughout the pandemic (zeynep tufecki most prominently) to be very persuasive

Yeah, she's great.

can understand criticism of the CDC but it's an evolving problem

Any sufficiently advanced Jordan Peterson is indistinguishable from Matt Taibbi

It's mystifying to see so little skepticism of oft-vilified big pharma re covid vaccines on the left. Can someone explain this?

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) October 9, 2021

I love “Why aren’t people on the left saying X” posts from people with no direct working knowledge of “the left.” The left not only distrusts big pharma, it wants to dismantle it. But in the meantime somebody has to make vaccines and that’s something big pharma is useful for.

The left doesn’t distrust big pharma because it thinks it’s implanting us with mind-control chips. It distrusts them because it thinks they are greedy assholes way more interested in making money than helping people.

i have no opinion on the Taibbi thing or the media's framing, but i have been found some writers who were highly critical of the CDC throughout the pandemic (zeynep tufecki most prominently) to be very persuasive

― flopson, Friday, October 8, 2021 5:29 PM

zeynep tufecki, really

I like tufecki a lot too, though haven’t really kept up with her over the past 6 months or so

Xp- you don’t like her? why not?

i like this recent ish one a lot https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/opinion/covid-data-vaccines.html

The CDC certainly deserves criticism for its failures of communication to the general public around covid-19, not because they failed at an easy task. It was a savagely difficult task, given that the audience consisted of 330 million people of wildly different backgrounds, education and prejudices. But because CDC is supposed to bring the highest levels of expertise to the extremely difficult tasks they are given to perform and they did not.

Trump’s decision to address this crowd was fairly heavily scrutinized in the mainstream press. Outrage that Trump chose to lionize Babbitt was universal, but the reasons differed from outlet to outlet, as did the intensity of the disgust.

John Berman of CNN’s AC 360 represented the most common response, expressing disgust that Trump would “try to make a hero out of a member of a violent insurrectionist mob,” while he termed January 6th “the worst act of political violence since the Civil War.” MSNBC’s Steve Benen wrote a companion piece to a Rachel Maddow segment that focused on Trump’s changing language with regard to January 6th, noting that he’d previously described the riot as a “heinous attack” by people who’d “defiled the seat of democracy,” but was now using terms like “innocent” to describe people like Babbitt. New York berated Trump for winding up Witthoeft.

Not sure what the point of this piece is. Of course the first few comments are anti-BLM.

Outrage that Trump chose to lionize Babbitt was universal, but the reasons differed from outlet to outlet, as did the intensity of the disgust.

Amazing that different people used different words to express very similar thoughts. What could this possibly mean? Let us take a moment to consider this fact and its deeper implications.

Found it to be a pretty innocuous piece of writing. I thought the paywall cut it off early. Don't really get the point of it other than that the fact that he's the author of it at this point creates kind of a subtext. Kind of like the Gruden piece, which some of his commenters seem to think actually happened.

I know. It's mystifying to me why he even put it up. There's no specific criticism but he quotes media figures sounding kind of hyperbolic, and his audience immediately picks up on what he's doing?

can kinda hear the whistling here

Ya think?

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/note-to-readers-on-the-invasion-of

GG would never

"Come to the light."

My mistake was more like reverse chauvinism, being so fixated on Western misbehavior that I didn’t bother to take this possibility seriously enough. To readers who trust me not to make those misjudgments, I’m sorry. Obviously, Putin’s invasion will have horrific consequences for years to come and massively destabilize the world.

Oh.

good stuff

maybe he'll start coming to his senses on other shit now too (prob not)

I would guess probably not too

When a man’s paycheck depends upon him not coming to his senses…

::shrug:: wish we'd see more of this sort of thing from others. good on him.

Disappointed Katie Halper has not also said more, other than "Hey FYI we recorded that show BEFORE the invasion" (no shit, bc your guests said there was no way Putin would invade!).

Given that they call Zelinsky an American puppet at the beginning of the episode I’m not expecting a lot of apologies

Sometimes I feel like their brand of "left" commentary is really just about needing to feel smarter than everyone else, like "I know what's *really* going on, unlike you corporate media stooges," and therefore there's an endless need for there to be a counternarrative that represents "what's really going on"

there are also a way in which opposition to US imperialism curdles into a belief that the US is the only country with any agency.

Meantime

Matt Taibbi three days ago: "I was wrong."

Matt Taibbi today: "No, actually I was right all along." pic.twitter.com/IARevHnJRs

— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) March 1, 2022