SocraticGadfly: Matt Taibbi further deconstructed

October 30, 2021

Matt Taibbi further deconstructed

Ross Barkan's piece on what the fuck is wrong with Taibbi isn't bad. It's got a Doug Henwood quote about him going off the rails. And, I didn't know that he and Mark Ames had a 20-year non-speaking feud going. (Ames refused to talk to Barkan, but Yasha Levine gave him an earful.)

It's not bad, but it's incomplete, as I told Barkan, with cc-s to Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald (because) on Twitter.

Let's just work from the Tweets I sent and build on that.

First, the Glennwald tie:

Then, my follow on that, based on my blogging:

So, Matt saw something in Glenn. Whether it was more money, more fame of being a contrarian with a schtick, about 50-50, or what, who knows.

Then, Taibbi's lies by omission about cancel culture:

Followed by what that means:

This core issue of many famous public quasi-intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals (you, Bari Weiss) who claims to oppose cancel culture while instead promoting it is some of the rankest of hypocrisies.

Taibbi does have some real issues about identity politics. But, left-liberals and leftists like the quoted Henwood, and myself, do as well. Didn't make us nutters. Doesn't make us agree with nutters. That led to this tweet:

And, I concluded with other things Barkan overlooked:

That one, by the way, applies to the aforementioned Ames and Levine, as well, and also to Aaron Maté and other allegedly outside the box stenos, the Russian hacking and related issues part of it. And Glennwald, while I'm here. The Tulsi part was seen through by Ames and Levine, but Glennwald fellated her and Maté flirted with that.

Update: Taibbi is now dropping "poor me" bullshit on Twitter.

My response?

Was that "public housing" or "campus housing"? Matt's dad (dunno about Mom) was either a junior or senior at Rutgers when he was born. And, about everybody in college is broke.

But, was Mike Taibbi that broke? He grew up in an upper middle class suburb of New York City, Malverne, Long Island. Read the City-Data profile. After Rutgers, Mike went to U of Chicago Law. Not Harvard, but a cut above average for sure. Then, within a couple of years of that, his TV gigs were in Boston and NYC, not the hinterlands. Luck?  Connections?

And, that said? Taibbi jumped the shark LONG before Barkan's piece, as I note.

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at Saturday, October 30, 2021 Posted by Gadfly

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