Matt Taibbi

For a left-wing hero, Taibbi sure is leaning hard on a classic right-wing defense: "How can we take seriously the accusations of anyone stupid enough to take me seriously?"

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I'll just say: 1. He should have written this years ago. 2. I should have prodded him to write it years ago. For my part, I'm sorry.

slackbot otm.

This story is very upsetting:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-the-great-college-loan-swindle-w510880

Paul Campos and others have been crushing that beat for years and years, albeit with a more narrow focus on law schools, esp. the for-profit variety. Campos' distillation of the issue that was published in the Atlantic actually turned into the inspiration for the latest John Grisham novel.

So excited for my son to go to college in a few years...

Man that article is horrifying.

"By the time I die," she says, "I will probably pay more than $200,000 toward an $8,000 loan."

fuck, that should not be possible

It would have been a huge boon to Clinton's run if the DNC had welcomed not only Sanders but other serious candidates into the race, in the true spirit of what the primary process is supposed to represent – the winnowing of many diverse views into one unified message.

But the attitude in Washington is now the opposite. Primary challengers are increasingly seen as reprobates who exist only to bloody the "real" candidate. So they should be kept down and discouraged whenever possible.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-why-donna-brazile-book-on-hillary-clinton-primary-matters-w511099

There's a very good discussion/flagellation of Taibbi on the newest on the media podcast.

I hear OtM nearly w/out fail every week (the OG way on the radio) but missed this one, I'll give it a listen

brooke said its a podcast extra.. I think a more stripped down version of the interview will be on the newest ep later in the week

ah gotcha thx

@mtaibbi stories are false. Spoke to eXile employees

It's a Gamergate-style attack: https://t.co/bhKkWd9xkm

Please RT #TaibbiGate pic.twitter.com/uzX5QzL5hh

— Alayne Fleischmann (@alayne_f) November 20, 2017

#TaibbiGate

This is the most pathetic defense yet.

??

apparently she talked to 12 ppl who actually worked at the exile and they confirmed that the stuff in the book is fiction. no idea why that amounts to a "pathetic defense."

Try reading the next line in the tweet, the one calling it a 'Gamergate-style attack'

Do you think the page or two of explanation she gives in the 21-pg document don't actually account for that description?

Did you listen to that On the Media podcast mayor jingleberries mentioned upthread? You think that discussion of Taibbi is like GamerGate?

Actually, it's not pathetic, it's gross. GamerGate made up stories and harassed people out of their homes. It's not the same thing as taking an old book presented as non-fiction, and claiming it is non-fiction. Taibbi had decades to reckon with the misogynistic bullshit he made his name on, and he refused to do so. Trying to portray the people upset about this as a right-wing mob is disgusting, and people doing that should in all honesty be shunned from the left.

I'm referring to the specific context she gives, in 21 pages, for using those two words in a 140-character tweet. The latter are a tiny pointer to the former, not the entirety of the defense, pathetic or otherwise. You appear not to have read the former, which makes dismissing it in toto v. bad faith.

xpost she's not doing that, she's talking about the ground-up disingenuousness of the inaccurate information.

taking an old book presented as non-fiction,

I hope you're thirty years into a campaign for every writer on Viz to be shunned from polite society.

I read the beginning of the document, that was absolute bullshit. I'm perfectly fine dismissing it. I repeat, have you heard the podcast?

The idea Taibbi made his name on that terrible book is funny, though

I can't find anything in the OTM podcast feed and there's no link provided here. What are you guys talking about?

It's the interview with Rebecca Traister, still up there.

nobody's read that book, you goon

I don't understand at all what those cernovich statements have to do with what that woman posted on twitter.

(not much then, and certainly not lately) xp

oh ok I read the actual link. interesting.

Well here’s some fun:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/12/the-destruction-of-matt-taibbi.html

Featuring cameos from Jim Goad and the Gorilla Mindset himself!

This part I found aggravating:

However, the narrative that the book was an accurate portrayal of the lives Taibbi and Ames led in Moscow wouldn’t really take off until October of this year—ahead of the book tour for I Can’t Breathe, Taibbi’s look at the death of Eric Garner and its aftermath. Jessa Crispin of The Guardian included a reference to eXile passages in a piece about liberal misogyny on the Oct. 19. Days later, the news was appearing everywhere, from The Daily Beast to The Daily Caller; Jezebel to Newsweek; Reuters to Newsmax; The Nation to Breitbart, and so on. Even Cernovich got in on the action, writing a Medium post titled, “Matt Taibbi Confesses to Forcing Employees to Perform Sexual Favors.”

[...]

Despite how widespread the story was, not a single journalist or editor contacted the women named in the controversial passages. Crispin, whose Guardian piece appears to have set the train in motion, justified the decision by telling Paste over Twitter direct message that, “I have not written about these accusations as a journalist.”

Gunna go out on a limb here and say that this lazy shit doesn’t actually help anyone.

Crispin has elaborated a little on twitter:

I said Matt Taibbi boasted about harassing women in his book, not that he harassed women. Boasting, which is exactly what he did. To make a point about the misogyny among leftist men. Read the original piece.

so when she says “I have not written about these accusations as a journalist” I guess she means she hasn't written about the accusations in as much as she hasn't speculated on the whether the things described in the book really happened? people seem to be interpreting it as "I have written about these accusations, but I wasn't writing as a journalist, I was writing in another capacity which meant I didn't have to get my facts straight", but I don't think that's what she meant.

The same writer of that Paste piece fwiw https://t.co/cl1Tq1OuWH?amp=1

^not worth much imo

I did some house cleaning, turns out I had a box of junk I thought I'd thrown out. That is, if anyone knows a journalist who was saying the eXile book is out of print and hard to come by, let me know.

The Guardian’s Jessa Crispin, on why she didn’t contact the women in my case: “I have not written about these accusations as a journalist.”

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 11, 2017

think Taibbi is kinda singling out Crispin like this, given that her article literally only mentions him once, in passing, as one example of problematic left-wing male behavior:

Harvey Weinstein champions female directors, so how bad can he truly be? Mitchell Sunderland works at a feminist publication, so there’s no way he facilitates the harassment of women online. Matt Taibbi writes celebrated pieces about the misogyny and corruption of politicians, so we ignore his boasting about sexually harassing women who worked for him.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/19/liberal-men-feminism-harvey-weinstein

people referring to your boasting about sexually harassing women who worked for you seems like an occupational hazard of co-authoring a book that includes boasting about sexually harassing women who worked for you? I don't see how she's at fault here (though some of the other outlets that ran with the story may be)

look, what she wrote about taibbi was dumb and lazy. it's ok, lots of people write dumb and lazy shit (taibbi included)

taibbi isn't perfect, no one is, but this shit happened years ago, it was fictional, and he's apologized. i don't know what the currently fashionable essentialist take on the ability to change oneself for the better but i still believe in it

No, what she wrote about Taibbi seems absolutely accurate?

judging from twitter the ppl who hate taibbi have changed their angle to "it's bad enough that he even wrote it."

it really doesn't surprise me that the exile shit was mostly made up. i doubt HST did most of the things he wrote about either. writers are mostly just boring ppl who like to hide in their rooms.

No, what she wrote about Taibbi seems absolutely accurate?

― Frederik B, Monday, December 11, 2017 3:09 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

considering that the stuff she’s referring to has been pretty extensively litigated on twitter and elsewhere, i don’t really think it’s fair to say it’s been “ignored”.

she's not saying everyone ignores it, but a hypocritical "we" that excuses harvey weinstein (okay i don't know anyone excusing harvey weinstein but you get the point..)

hmm, sounds like it might be lazy writing

The only thing that’s surprising is how many of the men who have long abused their power have gotten away with it in part by hiding it behind a sheen of progressive politics and claims of feminism.

Harvey Weinstein champions female directors, so how bad can he truly be? Mitchell Sunderland works at a feminist publication, so there’s no way he facilitates the harassment of women online. Matt Taibbi writes celebrated pieces about the misogyny and corruption of politicians, so we ignore his boasting about sexually harassing women who worked for him.

It's pretty clearly about the pre-Weinstein world, and it's fairly spot on? Did you read it before you wrote about how lazy it is?

you're pretty big on the "did you read it??" line for a guy who also writes things like "I read the beginning of the document, that was absolute bullshit. I'm perfectly fine dismissing it."

i don't know what the currently fashionable essentialist take on the ability to change oneself for the better but i still believe in it

yes, what a British friend of mine (formerly a NYC resident) calls the Preachy US Left will have none of this, ever.

(I have a different name for it which would be much more unpopular here)

...but they do resemble religious fundies, only they're making up scripture as they go along.

I don't have a problem with Taibbi per se (and certainly don't believe his career should be ended because of something he wrote years ago and has apologised for), I just think it's a jerk move for him to single out Crispin and suggest that she negligently misrepresented him when afaict she didn't write anything inaccurate, and the blame really lies with him for writing the stupid book rather than her for referring to it in her article.

JD: You do realize there isn't any contradiction there, right?

soref otm. It hurts the whole thing about him having apologized as well.