Matt Taibbi

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

we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good! lulz.

Ok I can't get to the original story because of a paywall, but this prospect thing is pretty bullshit. It's 90% insider baseball about who supposedly has what responsibility, and most of that isn't factual at all but just disagreeing with Taibbi on intepretation.

Look at what it says about Gensler, for example! It doesn't even argue with Taibbi, just whine that Gensler is supposed to be fighting "to close the loopholes in derivatives regulation that Taibbi complains about later" -- which is basically Taibbi's point, that Gensler is a former goldman banker and maybe not the most trustworthy person in this position.

Again, the prospect piece complains that taibbi writes that biden "seems more interested in foreign policy than financial reform" but in fact they say "Biden has taken the lead on the stimulus and jobs efforts." That's not a factual error -- that's a matter of editorial opinion.

Later on the prospect piece confuses Taibbi's figure on "total cost of bailouts" with expenses to date exclusively for TARP.

And then a dispute over the effectiveness of the CFPA and whether it is "castrated-in-advance" or just "somewhat compromised." Again, not a factual error.

ffs.

In this sort of policy analysis, everyone either overstates or understates or only gets part of the picture. These are mostly not errors (there may be some actual minor ones but I can't check without the article) but differences in interpretation and expectation, which reveal more about the prospect author than anyone else. I mean, lo these three years later, whose projections for govt. policy outcomes w/r/t the banks seem like they were more prescient?

It's rather difficult to find stuff in the Exile archive as i'm essentially just googling half-remembered stories i read eight years ago but there's lots of really good, really detailed material there.

As a semi-random example, Mark Ames' piece on Montenegro:

http://exiledonline.com/kremlin-whores-how-mccain-staff-sold-countries-to-putin/

Press analysis from Taibbi:

http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6274&IBLOCK_ID=35

Kompromat Korner, which gave a regular update on corruption:

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8213&IBLOCK_ID=35

Again,this isn't "the best" of their work but it does show that they did take the role more seriously than it looked at times.

Also worth remembering that, regardless of how often Luk3 H@rding likes to bleat on about the time he was jostled by a man in a leather jacket at Sheremetyevo airport, Ames is probably one of the the only Western journalists the Russian government has legitimately run out of town for being too dangerous.

maybe he just scored the wrong babe one too many times, man

not that i nec. want to side with putinism or anything

They say they also take advantage of what they like to call the “white god factor” and make trips to the provinces. “Tens of millions of people live in dire circumstances, stranded in the center of the world’s largest continent, with little hope of going anywhere,” said Mr. Ames. “Which means–sexual opportunity for me.”

rly cool guy

in post soviet russia you rape and pillage across mongols

poverty for you-sexual opportunity for me

that was the underlying principle of the columbian triangle right?

from taibbi's boehner article, this is just a really nice bit of prose styling, describing "the 2000s, back when America was still unfucked enough to enjoy a phony real estate boom and launch recreational wars of conquest in the Middle East."

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/06/15/how-new-york-will-improve-its-on-street-parking/

p decent summary of asshole Dimon's testimony, if you'd like to get away from Taibbi's ancient peccadilloes:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/senators-grovel-embarrass-themselves-at-dimon-hearing-20120615

from the comments, a nice response to the salmon piece: http://quantiger.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/is-11-billion-a-fair-price-for-new-york-citys-parking-meters/

hmm maybe rando blogger shoulda done basic research on the subject, where they'd quickly learn that the only thing being privitized is operations

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markbergen/2012/06/14/what-matt-taibbi-misses-on-the-nyc-parking-meter-deal/

“The basic structure is totally different—Chicago sold the system for a one-time cash infusion,” a Bloomberg spokeswoman told Dana Rubinstein. “We are looking for a private operator but we would still own the meters.” The city’s request, dug up by Rubinstein, is more subtle, but no less cutting. “In contrast to certain precedent U.S. parking transactions, the City’s objective is not to structure an upfront payment,” (emphasis theirs). If this commitment falters, then Taibbi should scream “grifter.”

"his acidic tongue"

really not keen on another argument here. i'll just note that being on forbes doesn't make one less of a rando blogger, nor do promises from the bloomberg administration give one cause for hope, and finally that the "operations" bit doesn't mean the revenue stream isn't going to go to the private operator and furthermore the details on the administration retaining certain elements of control were in the salmon piece already that the blogger was responding to, and aren't at all relevant to the y'know, math, that the blog post actually contained.

+ the plan also means cutting city jobs with decent pay and benefits, regardless.

if bloomberg were throwing away easy money, this would be a huge issue for transit activist groups. it's not really an issue at all, and it's only 'a scandal' for people who haven't been paying attention and don't care to read the details. the revenue stream is not going to go to the private operator. prices will eventually go up, the money will go to the city. there is no reason to believe that nyc public sector would be better at doing the high-tech renovations involved. and 'decent pay and benefits' don't come out of thin air - there's no end to the waste you could justify as 'decent pay and benefits' - you could theoretically hire a million people to do this.

fwiw salmon also seemed to be unaware of some of this, but I still linked it cause he called taibbi a parasitical suburbanite

haha

and hey read pg 10

http://www.scribd.com/doc/96706824/Request-for-Qualifications-NYC-Parking-System

http://dealbreaker.com/images/thumbs/matttaibbi.gifhttp://dealbreaker.com/images/thumbs/matttaibbi.gifhttp://dealbreaker.com/images/thumbs/matttaibbi.gif

What a boring take on his part.

He knows what the knuckle-walking chud-bros who consider him a "brave truth-teller" want to hear.

Transitioning to a somehow less attractive Dennis Leary.

Every time this thread gets bumped I know I'm going to see something annoying if I click on it so why do I still click?

IDK, but this is one of the threads I routinely irritate myself with (the Amanda Palmer thread is another)

hate reading ILX is a past time some of us have engaged in for 20+ years

several of my bookmarked threads are about public figures I hate. I don't hate Taibbi, but I'm kind of fascinated/bummed by his gradual metamorphosis to Dennis Miller 2.0. Never saw it coming.

This dick is testifying before Jim Jordan's committee right now

Plaskett refers to Taibbi and Shellenberger as "two of Elon Musk's public scribes" who "release cherry-picked, out of context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative, Elon Musk's chosen narrative, that is now being parroted by the Republicans." pic.twitter.com/x97D14mZqR

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 9, 2023

Plaskett is going off

get him

Stacey Plaskett Emergency

He tries to squirm out of admitting how much more money he's making now

lol

Plaskett refers to Taibbi and Shellenberger as "two of Elon Musk's public scribes" who "release cherry-picked, out of context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative, Elon Musk's chosen narrative, that is now being parroted by the Republicans." pic.twitter.com/x97D14mZqR

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 9, 2023

whoops wrong tweet

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Journalists should avoid accepting spoon-fed, cherry-picked information if it's likely to be slanted, would you agree with that?

TAIBBI: I think it depends

WS: Really? *plays clip of Taibbi basically agreeing with the premise of her question on Rogan's pod* pic.twitter.com/LWAKg4ogG1

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 9, 2023

lol at

"Who is this Bari Weiss person? Does she work for Twitter?"

"She's a journalist."

"And when did she first make contact with Mr. Musk?"

"I don't know."

"So you and Ms. Weiss are part of a threesome?"

ew

can't get enough of your love, babe

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:izxpomdyri45gzhppiiyattq/bafkreiabj5jeilqrmnzaobn4wg7f6l23nfrrt7fns67adyi5a5ffkzqcnm@jpeg

consider me triggered

http://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did%3Aplc%3Aof56nmyuqzvjta7qlf7gwht6/bafkreih62etlmp4sin52r5fugve44sl47pudpzla4wiu7fehqhm7paozh4@jpeg

having a meltdown on twitter apparently because Musk shadowbanned him

The role of the journalist is to repeatedly decline to criticise the comfortable

https://www.mediaite.com/tech/you-are-dead-to-me-twitter-files-journalist-matt-taibbi-posts-unhinged-messages-from-elon-musk/

Amazing comment from Bluesky on all this:

this is like the scene where Daniel Plainview shoves Eli into the mud and holds him down there, except instead of Daniel Plainview it's Grimace

you hate to see it. well, i mean me, i hate to see it. i feel gross now.

lolz

imagine a blanket search ban on a journo's tweets - forever

If you can’t trust a petulant billionaire, who can you trust?